hectic day

Today was very hectic. My husband had a delivery to attend in the middle of the night, and the baby was up quite a bit. There was a laundry backlog, so in the morning one boy had no tzitzit. 9 yo asked to watch Pokemon for his davening treat which made sense at the time, since I wanted to make piles of laundry for the boys to fold and put away. What ended up happening was that I stopped them in the middle, and which 7 yo folded his laundry and taught his sister how to to fold shorts and pants, 9 yo sulked about chumash. He does not want to do it. There is more speeches about how its unfair that he is doing chmaush while his brother is doing laundry and then he will be stuck doing laundry while he will get to watch. I pointed out that he could be working on chumash instead of wasting time complaining about it, but he did not feel any better. He does not want to review. He does not want to do Rashi. He did not want to fold laundry either. I felt that I spent the whole morning coaxing him to do what he should be doing anyway.

spontaneous group davening

Then we drove out to a filed trip in Tellus museum. When I committed to it, I did not realize that it will involve an hour of driving. Thankfully, the baby slept the whole way. When we got there, my kids knew other homeschooled kids, so they hung out a bit watching a pendulum. There was a workshop on bubble-making for the boys. I let my daughter lead the way through the rest of the exhibits. One of the moms told me about a room where one can pan for gems, and about a dinosaur dig. I made sure that we attended those. 

experimenting with inclined planes

When I give a chance for my daughter to spend as long as she wants on the activities in the absence of boys, she picks a few things and does them for a long time instead of covering a lot of ground. She spent the bulk of the time panning and fossil digging. She got to keep all the gems and a shark tooth. Little did I know that 9 yo will covet those more than the bubble fluid they made in the workshop! He was upset that they did not get to pan. We had to rush out since we would not get back in time for taekwondo and the boys were supposed to get their fighting gear. 

On the way back we hit some traffic, so the boys were late. The baby woke up once we got off the highway, and nobody could reach his pacifier. I hate it when we are rushing. Once we got to taekwondo the boys still had to change into their uniforms, and I had to nurse a screaming baby. 3 yo fell asleep and woke up screaming that the baby is screaming and that is bothering her. Oy!

digging for fossils

On the way back I had to stop by the library to return a book and couple of DVDs. I dropped them off, only to come home and find a message that one of the cases was missing its DVD. Sure enough, it was still in my computer. 

We got home after 6, and I still had dinner to make and laundry to tackle. 9 yo kept asking which other chores he needs to do, as he wanted to watch TV before 7. At some point, I just had to tell him that it will not be happening and that led to more disappointment.

Finally everyone was fed, and changed into pajamas. I read to 3 yo, while the boys read on their own. Our library has a summer reading program, where for every 15 minutes of reading we are supposed to attach a sticker and then turn in a log for prizes. What it leads to are never-ending questions of "How long have I been reading?" Well, I did not see when you started, and I have no doubt that you read enough in a week to finish the log, but, for propriety's sake, you need to keep track of it. I just saw a statistic that kids need to read 4-5 books over the summer to keep up their reading level. I think they read that many in the course of the day. Even 3 yo is "trying" to read, i.e. memorize a book and recite it back.

Oh what a day! Somehow our unschooling is not producing as low-key experience as I would like it to be.