First day of home

Many of you have been waiting for this post. Some were expecting to hear that it surpassed my wildest expectations and resulted in accomplishing more than they would do in school. ( Ironically, there is no school today; parent-teacher conferences). Others were waiting to hear that this was pretty bad and I don't know what I was thinking, being home with (gasp) three kids and trying to teach them something.

The truth is, it was neither. Over the years, I learned not to let my expectations get ahead of me, so I was planning to play it by ear and this is how it went:

I got up to exercise at 6 am, at which point 2yo heard me and got up too. Before I got out the door, 7yo was up, excitedly asking to go to Krispy Kreme. He has this fixation that if he doesn't have to be in school, we should not waste a perfectly good opportunity to get heavenly donuts. I was sorry to disappoint him, but he took it in stride. By the time I got back from working out, the boys were sitting on the floor in their pajamas, reading books. 5 yo greeted me by announcing that he wants to be a robotic artist when he grows up and there is only one more dodo left in the world.

Everyone got dressed and had breakfast. 7 yo happily put on a stripey shirt, something that he couldn't previously do because of uniform. I also discovered that he doesn't have yoga-worthy pants. Then I had breakfast while they played. We davened, one at a time. Then we went to our homeschooling coop classes.

I got my 7 yo into classes mid-term, so we just took whatever was open. He went right in and 5 yo excitedly showed him around. He did art experimentation, yoga and board game club. I used to do yoga, so he was excited to try that out, but I think the board game class really got him in. He was taught to play backgammon. We have lots of games at home, but between sore losers, lost pieces and toddler interrupting, he has not been very interested to play at home. Except for chess. With daddy. Those Russian genes run deep.

Then they got home, everyone had lunch, toddler didn't nap. I tried Rosetta Stone Hebrew for the oldest, but this is when our computer went on strike. It kept not responding, so we quit. The oldest wrote a story, did some Hebrew reading. The 5 yo did handwriting in English and Hebrew.

The boys had a birthday party that afternoon, another homeschooled friend. They were quite excited to go, especially since they got to dress up in their coveted Purim costumes a whole month before Purim.

Afterwards, after dinner, 7 yo announced that he's going to learn Torah. He went to the shelf, got Artscroll Tanach and read some Melachim. For me, that was the proudest moment of the day. I believe in prepared environment and prepared minds, and when those are combined, real learning happens.

We read good-night stories. Two of those had to do with trees, that's my loose unit for Tu B'Shevat. One was a story of a tree and the other one discussed photosynthesis.

An ordinary day, and may there be more like it.