To each their own

Twice a year Artscroll holds a large book sale: they give you 20% off everything. I try to time my book browsing to this time period. It is accompanied by numerous email reminders and a glossy catalog that arrives in the mail. I do not always buy, but I do browse heavily.

Since I will be homeschooling 11 yo next year, I asked him for his input in what kinds of books he was interested in. He opened the catalog, got fixated on the cookbooks, then told me he does not want anything. Except he did want one thing. It was an oversized illustrated coffee table book of the Beit Hamikdash. I was eyeing that book myself for years, but its price was making it into an unjustified purchase. We have so many resources available online, for free. We have other books with the Beit Hamikdash payout. Our money would be better spent on other causes. So every time I longingly looked at that page, I said: not now.

11 yo might have known exactly what I was thinking (or possibly even saying out loud in the past), so he immediately took his request back by saying that he does not expect us to spend that kind of money on a book. I stopped him: do you really want it? He said, yes, but it's too much. I went on Amazon to see if it can be bought used for less. No. I checked whether it is available in a smaller size. No. I resolved to buy the book. Then I added a few other titles to the mix: historical narratives, biographies, a book on Shmirat HaLashon (The laws of speech), halacha pocket guides, and a small group of inspirational quotes and stories.

The packages arrived today. When it was brought in after Shabbos was over, 11 yo ripped the whole package apart to get to his Beit Hamikdash book. He oohed and aahed over the spread. He asked me whether he can bring it into his room, a code expression for reading it in bed.I asked him to leave it on the coffee table till the morning. His excitement over this book was so genuine, so palpable.

Yet my heart is heavy.This is the same kid that failed Judaics this year, that thinks that he can't learn, that is burned out on Hebrew and Gemara and halacha. This same child miserably told me on Friday night that there is no purpose in Shabbos now because when he was in school he looked forward to Shabbos as a two-day break before he had to go back to school and start all over again. Mind you, he was not horribly miserable the whole year, and he had a very decent Shabbos once he lifted himself from the funk. But I keep on thinking how he needs such an untraditional approach to his education that none of the standard rules apply.

For now, I am recording it that he is ecstatic to receive a Beit Hamikdash book, so he is willing and eager to engage with Judaism on his terms. Now, please G-d, give me the courage to guide him so his spark of desire to learn grows and does not diminish.

How easy and pleasant it was to be in a large classroom with one student, or two, or three--even four or five. Above five was when the noise problems began. One grownup can't teach twenty digital-era children without spending a third of the time, or more, scolding and enforcing obedience. What if we cut the defense budget in half, brought the school day down from six hours to two hours, hired a lot of new, well-paid teachers who would otherwise be making cappuccinos, and maxed out the class size at five students? What if the classes happened in parental living rooms, or even in retrofitted school buses that moved like ice cream trucks of bookmobiles from street to street, painted navy blue? Two hours a day for every kid, four of five kids in a class. Ah, but we couldn't do any of that, of course: school isn't actually about efficient teaching, it's about free all-day babysitting while parents work. it has to be inefficient in order to fill six and a half hours.

Nicholson Baker, Substitute pg493-4

no reason to worry

My daughter is reading. Yes, we have been doing a Bob book here and there (she is on fifth book in the first set, I believe), and yes, I knew that she could sound out first letter of 8 yo's spelling words, and yes, I have been pointing out words that she asked me about. But I did not expect that she is much further along.

My future SIL gave her a set of sticker books for Chanukah. They are pretty simple, with sticker outline in the book and a sticker on a separate piece of paper. However, there are words under the outlines, telling which sticker goes there. I saw that she was reading/guessing some of those. Of course she did not know how to blend two consonants, or "e at the end makes the vowel say its name", but she was motivated enough to try to figure those out. Unfortunately, all of this was taking place in 20 minutes before I had to leave for taekwondo, so we parted in the middle of this activity. I should also mention a certain young man who was busily trying to peel off stickers and rip up the whole exercise. Before today, I spent a fair amount of time beating myself up for not reading those Bob books consistently.

Yesterday, I took three older kids bike riding. 4 yo inherited her brother's bike, which is sort of big. My husband attached training wheels. This was second or third time that she was riding it. She was so not sure of herself at the beginning, with boys zooming right ahead into the park and then returning to hustle us along. She was worried about going too fast. She was worried about not making it up the incline. She kept braking and stopping "to breathe". Considering the size of the park, I almost asked her whether she wanted to put the bike back in the car and simply walk. Yet she persevered. We made it to the playground, and there, after swinging and playing for a few minutes, she got back on her bike, to practice some more.

By the time we were done, she was quite a pro. She even started talking about taking off those training wheels. All of this blossoming of confidence and mastery took place over less than two hours.

1 yo is talking. He was quite a quiet baby, lots of expression, but almost no words for a long time. He got just about everything he wanted by pointing, saying "this", and making incoherent sounds. For a while, he would not imitate words being spoken to him. All my other kids started speaking pretty early or on time, so he was definitely behind. He was constantly being spoken to, and read to, so exposure was not the concern. Yet, over the course of a past month, his vocabulary exploded. I am not even keeping track of how many words he has, but all those words spoken to him are there. He has word combination, idioms, fragments of speech. His speech is purposeful and clear. I have no more reason to worry.

8 yo has been saying "al hanisim" the entire Chanukah. I know it was hard for him, as we read over it together a few times and he was not fluent. I was discussing with my husband how his chumash has not been happening over the course of a past week, but he pointed out that he is clearly working on all this davening. He has been going to shul, saying the entire shemone esre, and participating in shabbos mincha and maariv. The other day, he got to say birchot hashachar for the congregation. He glowed like a million bucks, although he said that it was no big deal. For a child who cannot sit still through long davening, all this hard work is taking place on his terms.

As parents, it is so easy  to look at all those other kids, and worry. It is easy to worry about kids walking, and talking, and reading, and mastering Judaics, and developing middos. It is easy to give up, thinking that kids will never say "please" without prompting, or they will never grasp algebra, or get to gemara, or stop harassing their sibling. Yet, one of the beauties of doing homeschooling ( or just spending so many darn freaking hours) with a child is the slow realization that most of these things will happen in their proper time, on child's terms. My job as a parent is to be a guide, and a support. I do not need to constantly cheer them on, I do not need to bribe or harass them. I do not need to punish them. I do not need to reward them, either. I just need to be present, available for help or consultation as it is solicited.

I need not worry.

reading as a way of life

This week I saw a statistic that 80% of Americans did not buy or read a book in the past year. I am shocked.

In our house, reading is synonymous with breathing. The way my boys operate: you get up in the morning, and saunter over to the bookshelf, pull something out, and start reading. We have books strewn everywhere: on the floor, on the couch, on the table, piled up in stacks, spilling out from cubbies. We have a box of magazines. We have a dedicated shelf for library books which kept getting mixed up with our books. We bring a giant bag to the library every time and then the boys teeter under its weight as we walk to the car. They have their pick of books, and I add some that I think they would find interesting or important.

I used to worry about what they read, especially when the first chapter book that 7 yo picked was "Captain Underpants". Now I find that overall they consume a varied and balanced literary diet: fiction and nonfiction, chapter and picture books, above and below their grade level.

About a year ago I read a recommendation from a librarian never to deny a picture book to a child on the grounds that it is too young. There is more to a picture book than words;
there are illustrations, design, story, conflict. I like this suggestion, and I often see 9 yo browse through his sister's books. 7 yo will often join as I am reading a book to her. Nowadays the boys really prefer to read on their own, and I miss reading to them.

The nature of unschooling is the lack of preconceived notions. The other day in the library 3 yo kept picking up chapter paperbacks based on their covers, bringing them over to me to read, and deciding based on the first couple pages whether she wanted them or not. She was not daunted by the length of the books or their lack of pictures. Later, when we got home, 7 yo read one of those girly paperbacks that she picked out. He was not embarrassed about reading a girl book.

If literacy is so important, and reading is the primary way to acquire new information, why aren't more Americans reading? Do they feel that reading is something you do for school only, as an assignment, and never for pleasure?

worksheets

We are unschooling, right? So why all of a sudden am I sitting at the computer on Amazon, looking up workbooks? Why does my cart have four of them in there? Moreover, why are two of them for my 7 yo, the kid, who time and again, let me know how much he despises workbooks?

A few times a year, I find myself on chinuch.org. It is an excellent website, brimming with ideas and resources. Then I am frantically printing out pages for my kids. The next day, they warily see the pile, eye it, maybe browse it, and we start the fine sport of head-butting over it. Usually, I give it up within a short time, but sometimes it takes me days to get to that point. Sometimes, I file unused pages away, in hope of using them someday, when everyone is older and more mature. Now, my filing cabinet is like a bottomless drawer: no matter how many times I organize it, and see all these great ideas, somehow the time is not right, so they just sit and fester there, making me feel guilty for not doing all these creative and amazing things with my kids.

By now I know that whenever I am feverishly scrolling through chinuch.org, it is just my anxiety talking. I can scroll for a bit, and then step away. I can stay up all night ruminating. I do not need to print. Usually, within a few days, my kids will ask or tell me something demonstrating that somehow they already know the material without the worksheets. The anxiety releases, or switches over to something else. With kids, there are plenty of things to worry about.

But the worksheets utter their siren call. They are cute, and colorful, all the things that were missing in my textbooks as a child. They are bright and appealing. And they teach! I mean, I need to sit and show how they teach. I mean, I have to tell my kids to drop what they are doing so that the worksheets can be pounded into them. I mean, what is the point?

STOP!!!

By now I feel confident that my 7 yo does not need phonics instruction, or a reading book. He reads plenty from the library, both fiction and non-fiction. He reads out loud. He tells me about the books he reads. He asks me to read to him. We definitely do not need workbooks for that.

9 yo does not need geography or history workbook. He might not cover grade-appropriate material, but he reads and discusses plenty. He draws connections, prints out maps, finds causes and effects of historical events.

I got Math Mammoth for 9 yo. All I need is some guide for what 7 yo is supposed to learn in math. So one workbook in math, just one. I would like to continue using Bring Beginnings and Lashon HaTorah for Chumash, so that's already three workbooks, and that is a lot for a workbook-averse kid.

Take a deep breath. Empty the Amazon cart. Save money. More importantly, save sanity, both mine and my child's. Teach each child according to his way.

Delilah

We went to the library on Friday, I asked 6 yo to pick out five books. I thought he grabbed first five books that he saw. Well, so far one was about a boy who wanted to become an aeronaut and made a flying bicycle. We read that he had "more gumption than a gopher" and were looking up "gumption" in the dictionary. (Last week we were looking up "indomitable" from tae kwon do, he tends to pick words which are nor present in the illustrated dictionary, but he liked finding the right letter, then the next letter, etc. I am glad he does not mind asking about the words he does not know and looking them up). There was also the phrase "disaster struck" and I had to explain what that meant. Finally, he asked "how mistakes are the pathway to perfection"? I think we are having good time with reading comprehension, even without any formal curriculum.

The other book is "Delilah" by John Marciano. On the surface, it is a book about the unlikely friendship between a farmer and a sheep, but, as I was reading it, I realized it's the perfect book about homeschooling/unschooling. It is a book about being different, blazing your own path, doing what you feel is right instead of being told what to do. And it is a book about enjoying life and having fun. Check it out in your library.

diving into books

I got up early and worked out. By the time I got home, the kids were all up, but nobody was in the mood to get dressed or have breakfast. Eventually, they did get dressed. My husband was home, so he regaled with Greek myths. 7 yo read a few of those, so they had a lively discussion.

Davening did not go so well, lots of running around and chasing each other. Then the oldest went to do Rosetta Stone, while 5 yo picked handwriting. Today's letter was i, he claimed he already knew how to write it, so we skipped to e. Now e is a big deal, as he realizes that once he can do e, he can also write shin. HTW uses baseball example to teach e, so he loves "running around the bases", making the curve part. I hope he remembers it. Then he picked megillah. I read to him probably 7 perakim in English, stopping every once in a while to make sure he understands. 2 yo walked around, sat on my lap, sat next to us, etc. She is definitely getting unschooled here.

Then the boys switched. 7 yo asked to do math first. We finished up length and I explained why there are metric and customary units. He is eager to do multiplication, so I printed out some pages from teacher's corner, setting one of the factors less than 6. He did it in a flash ( thanks to Schoolhouse Rock). Now I have to check whether he knows higher numbers.

Then he did arranging sentences from the megillah. I found this activity on http://chinuch.org/ I explained how the sentences will be formed and he dove right in, making sentences. 5 yo finished up and came up to help at this point. 2 yo kept moving the cards around, but at the end, they did form all possible sentences.

Then we went for ice cream and the library. It feels giddy to be able to take your kids for ice cream at 11 am and not to worry about school or crowds or lunch, and just enjoy it. Afterwards, we got to the library. Mercifully, they had a toddler class that morning, so my 2 yo was not the only one running around. 7 yo found Encyclopedia Brown and got lost inside. 5 yo  scanned shelves. I was trying to find books for the toddler group tomorrow. Then everyone helped my check out. When we got home, the boys just pulled out their books and were not heard from again for a while. I keep on forgetting that on the days we go to the library, I will have to distract them from new books to get anything done.

Later, much later, we did finish formal school work. 7 yo read 7 more pesukim from the megillah, did his spelling and another page of Lashon HaTorah. 5 yo learned tzadi sofit, which he called a lamed carrying a pretzel. He even drew a house for tzadi sofit--somehow this pretzel letter moved him. In Yesh Lanu Lama, we read the next page. Then we did math, even and odd numbers. 

All of this was finished by 3 pm. Then the boys watched "Alice in Wonderland" from 1915. I had to explain about black-and-white silent movies and how music came separately. I also realized that reading captions ( I do not know what is the proper name for those flashes of story in between) is good reading practice for 5 yo. They were quite drawn in.

After Alice, 7 yo went back to reading something or other. 5 yo checked on his beans and noted their roots. Then he wanted to make masks, something that I wrote down in optional section. I made an eye mask for 2 yo; he wanted a full face mask. I ended up drawing the shape fro him, with eyes and mouth, he cut it out and wrote ninja on it ( hehe, spontaneous writing). Then he decided he wants eye mask after all, so more cutting and coloring.

After dinner, 7 yo made a mask too. I am discovering that what I thought was itty-bitty bullying problem as probably larger than I thought. Last year, he dressed up as Batman for dress-up day ion school. From that day on, a certain girl teased him, calling him Batman, even though he did not like it. He sort of brought that up, but never in a way that warranted action. Now, with this new mask, he tells me that she cannot tease him, because sometimes he's a ninja, and sometimes he's a ferocious beast. Now that he's home, he hasn't seen her in weeks, yet he's still concerned. Hm, how do those itty-bitty bullying problems affect people?