Courage when facing authority

Shemot 4:29

וַיֵּ֥לֶךְ מֹשֶׁ֖ה וְאַהֲרֹ֑ן וַיַּ֣אַסְפ֔וּ אֶת־כָּל־זִקְנֵ֖י בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

Then Moses and Aaron went and assembled all the elders of the Israelites.

A few pesukim later, Shemot 5:1

וְאַחַ֗ר בָּ֚אוּ מֹשֶׁ֣ה וְאַהֲרֹ֔ן וַיֹּאמְר֖וּ אֶל־פַּרְעֹ֑ה כֹּֽה־אָמַ֤ר יְהוָה֙ אֱלֹהֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל שַׁלַּח֙ אֶת־עַמִּ֔י וְיָחֹ֥גּוּ לִ֖י בַּמִּדְבָּֽר׃

Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Let My people go that they may celebrate a festival for Me in the wilderness.”

The obvious question is, if Moshe and Aaron gathered all the elders of Israel, showed them the signs, and convinced the people. why is it that only Moshe and Aaron are standing before Pharaoh?

Rashi on Shemot 5:1

ואחר באו משה ואהרן וגו'. אֲבָל הַזְּקֵנִים נִשְׁמְטוּ אֶחָד אֶחָד מֵאַחַר מֹשֶׁה וְאַהֲרֹן, עַד שֶׁנִּשְׁמְטוּ כֻלָּם קֹדֶם שֶׁהִגִּיעוּ לַפָּלָטִין, לְפִי שֶׁיָּרְאוּ לָלֶכֶת; וּבְסִינַי נִפְרַע לָהֶם, "וְנִגַּשׁ מֹשֶׁה לְבַדּוֹ אֶל ה' וְהֵם לֹא יִגָּשׁוּ" (שמות כ"ד) – הֶחֱזִירָם לַאֲחוֹרֵיהֶם (שמות רבה):

ואחר באו משה ואהרן AND AFTERWARDS MOSES AND AARON CAME — But the elders slipped away one by one from behind Moses and Aaron until every-one of them had slipped away before they arrived at the palace, because they were afraid to go there. At Sinai they were punished for this, for it is stated (Exodus 24:2) “And Moses alone shall draw near unto the Lord, but they, (the elders; cf. Exodus 24:1) shall not draw near” — He bid them stay behind. (Exodus Rabbah 5:14)

I taught this to my son this year. I am thinking about how every time one has to face the authority and the consequences, there will be redeemers, and there will be elders, the ones who will stay on the sidelines with perfectly good excuses and see how it all plays out. The elders get punished because staying out of conflict is still making a choice, and that choice carries its own consequences.

המבין יבין

summer is coming

It is June. End of school year is nearing or already passed. It seems like a good time to draw some conclusions, see where we are holding.

I started a vegetable garden after a long hiatus. We had wooden boards leftover from the deck construction that have been sitting for all these months. I wanted to make raised garden beds because local clay soil is not conducive to plant growth. Every simple DIY project called for circular saws and power tools. I don't own any of them. I could not manage to be around when others could help me. Desperately, after digging through my husband's toolbox and coming up empty, I went to Home Depot on Mother's Day and bought L-shaped brackets for the corners. At that point, the kids came out to "help". Then my husband appeared, drilled the holes and voila, after months, I had garden beds.

I planted some veggies and begged the kids to keep the backyard gate closed, lest the deer, rabbits and other local wildlife would eat the plants before us humans.

My oldest graduated from middle school. He is going out of state to yeshiva high school next year. I have been very careful to separate my feelings about it from his feelings. He seems to be excited about the idea. I am excited for him. This past year it felt like he was dragging his feet, not getting anything out of school. A change was necessary. Change ought to be good.

12 yo just finished the review of Beshalach today. That is four parshiyot covered this year. His Hebrew reading has improved, even though he balked at any and all approaches that I tried. Somehow, it clicked enough to be smooth enough when he is calm enough. However, Hebrew is still gibberish to him. The shorashim mean nothing. He flails in the dark, not sure what goes where.

I found a gymnastics/parkour place for 12 yo. They also have classes for 8 yo sister. It is not around the corner, but at least I found a place and signed them up. They seem to enjoy the lessons. 12 yo is especially looking for teachers that do not put kids down.

We are babysitting two geriatric guinea pigs. A friend got them from someone who was moving and then she went out of the country for three weeks. Good thing we practiced on my daughter's class pet. The average lifespan of a guinea pig is 6-8 years and these guys are 9. I feel that this is a very easy assignment: no need to bond, train, discipline, contain. Just feed the piggies and keep them comfortable. Try to keep them alive, but if they happen to kick the bucket while on our watch, well, that's old age... They are cute. The kids enjoy them. 3 yo has gotten quite gentle with them, although she keeps moving their castle houses because leaving them alone and observing them with her eyes is not an option. I am considering this a trial run for pet ownership.

3 yo is potty-training. It had to happen one day, and that day was a day before an 8-hour car ride for Shavuot. She is still working on bowel movement, but no pee accidents and dry all night. We have not shut down the pool (yet).

Speaking of the pool, we will be living there this summer. I have four swimmers! I am even finding myself enjoying pool time because there is much less watching required. 5 yo has been trained by me to swim and then his older siblings took over, especially 12 yo. He has been encouraging and working with his little brother, teaching him to dive, to swim in the deep end, and even to go down the water slide. That leaves me just 3 yo to watch. That girlie got comfortable near the water. She can stand in the shallow end of the deep pool, which was a large confidence booster. Within a few times, she started jumping into the pool, putting her face in the water, blowing bubbles and even attempting to swim in the baby pool. I sort of hope that she will learn how to swim by the end of the summer. All of this happened without swim lessons. When the kids are ready, they will try things. When the kids are gently encouraged by an adult in the water without pressure to do this today and that tomorrow, they will develop their own timeline and set their own goals. My 5 yo son was SURE that he will have to be 7 or 8 until he'll be ready to go down the water slide, and I was not so sure whether his timeline was wrong. But then he got enough encouragement and support from his siblings to try it. No, he is not interested in stroke refinement. He is interested in being dumped into 11 feet of water.

Oh, and 12 yo somehow almost finished 7th grade Khan academy math... And he is excellent with little kids. And he knows exactly the right thing to say to a child who is feeling down. And he gives awesomely sincere pep talks. If only he would apply them all to himself...

The kids are not going to Jewish summer day camps. I do not trust the leadership. I do not trust that anyone out there cares for the well-being of my children. I love the concept of a Jewish summer camp as a positive experience of Judaism, but I am no longer naive (or desperate). I wish it were not so. I wish I would get a week's break from all the kids' management. But it looks like camp Mommy all summer long. Zoo, science museums, pools and parks, here we come!

Daily schoolwork for 11 yo

I have one child at home and this is what we aim to do every day:

• Chumash. His bar mitzvah Torah reading is the first day of Pesach, last bit of Parshat Bo. We have started Shemot from the beginning. We have agreed to do four pesukim per day. The latest round of child's input landed us at him reading one day and me reading the next, with him translating to the best of his ability and me supplying the words he does not know or remember. We are using a Chumash with Rashi menukad, and I aim to do one Rashi per day. Sometimes it works, sometimes it backfires. He continues to have reading difficulties, so my goal is to build his confidence in being able to read Chumash and Rashi.
• Yahadus. We are using Yahadus textbooks, reading a chapter a day. I do all the English reading, while he reads the name of each mitzvah in Hebrew and the pasuk that the mitzvah is derived from. Then we pull out Stone Chumash and he highlights the relevant part of each pasuk. 11 yo also made a "Mitzvah Man": on graph paper he made a large rectangle that contains 600 squares (geometry snuck in there) and added extra 13 as hands and feet. For every mitzvah deoraita, he highlights a square. I also use The Taryag Mitzvot Manual tables as a review and reinforcement. Since 11 yo is a kinesthetic learner, I photocopied the relevant pages onto cardstock, cut out each mitzvah and separated its Hebrew name from Hebrew description from English summary. As we learn more mitzvot, 11 yo's goal was to line them up in order and match up all three parts. This was not trivial when we got to Avodah Zara. My secret goal is for him to know all 613 by heart following the order for Mishne Torah. I got these ideas from the One Minute Masmid by Jonathan Rietti. I am proud to say that we finished the first textbook this week and he was able to organize all 86 mitzvot with their explanations and translations correctly.
• Chayienu. He does one page of Chayeinu workbook Daled. I know that he's technically in 6th grade, but Vav proved to be too hard and he started to give up, so we backed up a bit. It's Yediyot Klaliot, and there is plenty of new to him material in there. Currently we are working on knowing the seder of Parshyot in order. ( I know there are young kids who know this, but I also know plenty of adults who learned the song as kids and totally forgot it).
• Lashon Hatorah. Honestly, I could not remember where we were a year ago before he attended day school, so I did what I do best: went online and ordered a new workbook for middle and upper school students. It is faster paced than other books. So far, it is review material, and he is going at a good solid pace. I skip along pages that are repetitive.
• Math. He asked me more than once NOT to continue with Math Mammoth. Since last year he did some 6th grade math, he placed himself into 7th grade Khan Academy math. There are holes in his knowledge, so I have to often sit next to him when he hits unfamiliar areas. He gets to pace himself, so he sees his progress through badges and percent of material covered and decides how much time he wants to devote to math on any given day.
• Grammar. He also does that at Khan Academy. From what I see, good solid progress. 
• Coding. Khan Academy and Scratch from homeschool coop.

These are the skeletal basics. This is what he has as a daily plan. He can get it all done by 10 am, but it does not always happen.

Now, what this does not reflect is the insane amount of helpful housework 11 yo does. He sets the table without being asked, unloads the dishwasher, cooks for himself and others, plays with younger siblings, changes diapers, washes 4 yo, brings in groceries, cleans up, babysits. As far as being a mentsch, this child shines.

second day of (home)school

11 yo davened at home. I had to drop off 2 yo and get an oil change. We agreed that he will complete a certain amount of school work on his own and he was all done by the time I came back. He did three pages of Chayeinu workbook and read over the next mitzvah in Yahadus. Meanwhile, I'm slowly plowing through Rabbi Rietti's One Minute Masmid. I am very inspired since for the first time in a long time, I feel that there is an approach that I can use both in my own learning and in helping 11yo. The basic is that you start with Tanach, then Taryag, then Mishna, then Gemara, cover a lot of ground to build up the breadth and to feel progress and review like crazy. Since we are doing Yahadus at 11 yo's request, it leads naturally both to looking mitzvot up in Chmuash, reviewing Taryag and learning halachot. Today, when I got home, I asked him to find a high lighter and go back into Chmuash to highlight parts of the pesukim where the mitzvot are found. They are quoted right in Yahadus, so it was a beatiful exercise to see where Rambam pulled each mitzvah from. I also got a review in and even some Hebrew reading. 11 yo asked me whether Daddy will approve of his marking up Chmuash. I said that it is for purpose of learning, so it is OK.

I had grand plans for doing one more mitzvah, reading one perek of Navi a day with him, reading one Aliyah of Parsha, but for now, I will have to sit tight and see how all this goes. I told 11 yo to take a piece of graph paper and mark up a shape encompassing 613 squares. That sent us on a half an hour hunt for the ruler. We never fully unpacked homeschooling supplies since our move. I was also thinking how disorganized space reflects disorganized mind... but I have totally given up on that. I just don't go into the basement, don't deal with those boxed up hopes and dreams. I also cannot keep up.

So once the ruler was located, drawing this shape proved to be an estimating challenge with a small dose of math. 11 yo wanted to use extra 13 squares to make a person shape. I just watched. I can be very patient with one kid. Then, when he got the shape to his satisfaction. I told him to color in the squares equal to a number of mitzvot we high lighted. I want to give him a visual of our progress, in hopes to both address his anxiety about learning Judaics and to encourage him with tangible progress.

As an aside, he looked up the very last word in the Torah, noticed how some pesukim already contain more than one mitzvah and noticed how Rambam used the pasuk about not testing G-d to mean not to test Navi too much.

I went over his Chayeinu pages. I located abandoned Lashon HaTorah.

We had lunch. We tried going biking, but the bike rental rack would not allow me to get into the system today. 11 yo tried out dirt bike trails. We saw deer. He got exhausted after less than an hour. He also remarked how the day is going well. I asked him how he knows and he said, I'm not throwing fits.

When we got home, I did Hebrew Duolingo. I tested out of a whole bunch of levels, so now I am swimming in a sea of new words that I supposedly know. He watched me. I would like him to try his hand at it, but not now, when he feels confident or curious enough.

He did Khan academy math. I don't know what he knows, so it is nice that they are catching the holes and giving him a chance to practice both lower and higher level skills. He placed himself in 7th grade even though technically he's in sixth. He did grammar and some coding too. I caught him pausing the explanatory coding video and taking notes because he knew from previous experiences that they will expect him to use those commands.

taking notes on coding

Finally, he had his first tennis lesson at the JCC around the corner. 13 yo and 7 yo also started on swim lessons yesterday. I dropped them off and ran into the issue that the coach would not let my oldest walk back on his own. I had to drive back to pick them up all the while thinking how we complain about spoiled rotten millenials. 13 yo is allowed to use the pool on his own according to JCC rules. Why is he not allowed to walk back home? The coach said that he just needed to hear my agreement before letting them walk. So today with tennis, I found 11 yo's coach and clearly told him that I am allowing my son to walk over and back on his own. Coach's first words: "Does he know the way?" We live around the corner, literally. The child is 11. What is this world coming to? Who is not allowing for independence and responsibility?

Today was overall a good homeschooling day, even though all the crazy from the rest of the kids ended up being concentrated into a few evening hours.

P.S. I have so many photos of just kids' backs. It just hit me today that all those photos mean that I do not stop my kids in their tracks with my presence, but I get to see the path that they are on.

school visit

Yesterday I took 9 yo and 6 yo for a mandatory tryout day at school. It's the elementary portion of the preschool that 6 yo and 3 yo attend. The night before, as I was telling kids to prepare them, 9 yo said: "I don't have much choice, do I?" and I wanted to scream: you had choices for the past five years! You could have appreciated homeschooling. You could have tried to control yourself, or do relaxation techniques, or not be so stubborn, or... something. But you didn't. And I'm burned out. And we are trying school for a change. Let's hope they take you.

But I didn't. Instead I asked boys to have everything they need for the morning, since I had to take them in by 8:15 and pick them up by 10:30.

My husband was on overnight call that night, and we have a guest staying in the space where teh boys keep their clothes. Luckily for me, my husband was able to come home in the morning to drive 3 yo to his preschool at his usual time. But before he arrived, I asked 9 yo and 6 yo to get dressed and get breakfast before we drive out. That's when 9 yo went into total meltdown mode before 7 am: he could not find his clothes, and the rest of his clothes were in the space occupied by our guest who was still sleeping. I calmly told him to get into his clothes from the previous day. He screamed that he they are not in the laundry, and he has no idea where they went. I told him to rummage through clean laundry of 11 yo and put on something of his (the boys are almost the same size). He screamed that he will not do this and he cannot go. At this point, I had 3 yo tantrumming about his breakfast not going according to his plan and baby crying to nurse. Did I mention that it was 7 am? I just ignored 9 yo.

My husband sweetly informed me that he will be on time. I responded that I needed him now. He came home instead of going to shul and convinced 9 yo to wear his brother's clothes. Then there was no time for his breakfast, so he took a bagel to go in the car.

When we got to school, both kids went into appropriate classrooms. 9 yo has a few friends in his, and he walked in and was greeted warmly. 6 yo was all of a sudden very shy. However, she did separate and walked to the listening center. I turned around and ran, full of mixed emotions. The building is not well-suited for a school. It was a last-ditch attempt by the previous administration to find temporary rental space. I was told that the school will be held here next year, but the plan is to find a permanent home the following year. However, after bright and cheery Montessori preschool, the gloominess and darkness was the first thing my husband and I noticed on our tour. I know it's not something they can do much about, but still, it feels more like a dungeon than an institution of learning.

When I picked up the kids, they both seemed in good spirits. The teachers said that they did fine. 6 yo made a project. 9 yo did a few pesukim in Chumash. He was excited that he knew them, since the class seems to be about a perek behind from where we are. I breathed a sigh of relief. In my head, we are going through Chumash so slowly, that I was sure all 4th grade students are ahead of us. Additionally, 9 yo complained about the way they do chumash: "They are given all the words, Mommy. They just need to read and translate, not to look up new words. Then they just memorize it. It's kind of lazy." Hm, and what about all the fighting that you put up in our way of doing Chumash? I guess it paid off.

6 yo was quite ambivalent about her experience. She is cognizant of her environment and she remarked about classroom feeling squishy. She also remarked how they didn't learn much. I am normally not into kids having a final say in such big decisions as going to school, but I wanted her input. That night, I had to decide: do I send her along with her brother, or do I keep her home?

It would be so much easier to send her. She would get along with other kids. She already made friends, and her current classmates would make her peer group. My life would be easier without having to manage one more child. Yet, I have very good reasons not to send her. First of all, it's that gloomy classroom. Last year, her playgroup was in someone's basement. And she is the child who rocks the boat the least, whose needs tend to be be overlooked by her louder siblings. It is only first grade curriculum, I can definitely do it. 11 yo will be home with me, and he can help out, She can play more, color more, do her little bursts of school work. There are other girls her age who are being homeschooled, so there is a peer group. I can take her to the zoo and the museums, something that she has been missing out.

So I am sending just 9 yo to school. Now, let us all utter a collective prayer that he gets accepted and that this place is the right fit for this child.

It's all in your head

We went shoe shopping in Walmart yesterday. We really needed to go to Costco to buy shmura matzah, but Costco was closed, so we ended up in Walmart. 11 yo needed shabbos shoes, 9 yo needed sandals, 6 yo needed shabbos shoes and sandals, and 3 yo needed sandals, too. While there I decided to stop by the food aisles and stock up on  Pesach ingredients, such as salt, sugar and baking soda. We passed the coffee and tea aisle and I grabbed instant coffee and a box of Bigelow tea. There I saw a box of Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime tea with chamomile. Since 9 yo likes tea (more the process of making tea and adding sugar and vanilla to it), I asked him whether he would like me to get for him some of this tea. I personally hate chamomile, so this is not something that I would be drinking. He said, yes, he would like it. We checked out.


This morning, while everyone was rushing and getting breakfast and getting underfoot, 9 yo took a long time to emerge from the bedroom. He resents Mondays like grownups do; and I am tired of being cheery about it. Once he got his breakfast, he asked about making his tea. I distractedly said yes. He said, as he was brewing it, that he might need another cup later on to calm down again. I was too busy trying to feed the baby, wipe snot off allergy-suffering 3 yo, and get some food into my system to pay much attention to what he was doing.

After breakfast, he davened and calmly prepares his chumash, same chumash that he threw a major fit over on Friday. He wrote down the words, politely asked me to help him with shorashim and asked to indicate which parts of speech he should be looking up. He did his chumash very smoothly and pleasantly. At the end he remarked how the tea is working and making him calm, almost sleepy.

I bit my tongue.

In the movie "Dumbo" the baby elephant cannot believe that he can fly unless he is holding onto a lucky feather. The feather is just a prop, but Dumbo does not believe in himself without an external crutch. Today, the tea was the crutch. The magical effect wore off right before lunch, when the violin lesson was cancelled and I asked boys to do some schoolwork on their own while I took a phone call. He had to do some math which required application of division. He knew how to do it, but he decided that they are asking him to do something else, something that he does not know how to do. Luckily, 11 yo stepped in and helped him, step-by-step. 9 yo rewarded his brother with a second cup of Sleepytime tea.


I don't want to knock the calming effects of chamomile, but I doubt that they are that pronounced. I also don't know how long the magic will keep on working. Please G-d, let it last at least the whole week.

Manic Wednesday

I knew today was going to be insane. I forgot that I will have to drive the kids to preschool in the morning. That means getting the baby dressed and fed by 8:30, getting myself ready at the same time, helping 6 yo and 3 yo pack their lunches (they decided that they want to pack them) and shoving everyone out the door. The total driving takes an hour in the morning, so I am not back till 9:30. At 10, we leave for the coop. The baby falls asleep on the way back home. Her nap schedule is changing, and she is not so little any more to fall asleep in the car any time I drive. However, she is asleep and I transfer her into the house for a half an hour nap.

I get my lunch in order, and discover that boys did not pack theirs. They scramble for something, and I overlook that there is probably not enough food, and no fresh growing things were harmed in lunch packing. I sit 11 yo down to do chumash. As I was walking out the door this morning, he asked me whether Moshe glimpsed more of Hashem, or Yehezkel. I tell him that Yakov also saw Hashem "face to face" and there is an idea that a maidservant at the Red Sea saw more of Hashem than Yehezkel. (He knows that Hashem does not have a body, so it is not a physical revelation we are talking about.) I tell him that he can look up these places and see if he can order them somehow according to the fullness of revelation. But he did not do it, and I was not there to look them up with him. Instead, he prepared new pesukim, but I want him to do a Rashi on when exactly Moshe was setting up his mysterious personal tent of meeting. He sees the size of that Rashi and rolls not only his eyes, but his whole body. I admit, I am a bit intimidated by the length even with English translation, but I decided that we will diagram it into a timeline, and it will help in ordering the rest of the events. So he pulls himself together and reads. He can translate the whole thing. I diagram every new fact and time frame that we encounter. By the time we are done, it is 10:04. The baby wakes up, 9 yo informs me that we did not get to his chumash and he did prepare it, and 11 yo whines that we never did get to new pesukim, ugh. I grab the baby, grab a change of clothes, grab a few extra diapers, grab my lunch and get out the door.

We get to the coop on time. I nurse the baby. The boys are in their lego robotics class. They are loving it. In fact, when the class is over, they often linger well into the twenty minute break. Finally, they come out. I am pushing baby on the swings, and she is cooing and giggling away. I think how 3 yo hated swings, held on for his dear life. I think how he needed PT to walk and I was told that he had bad trunk control. I worry about this baby not crawling properly on her knees, she scoots on her behind or slides on her belly. But she must have decent trunk control. Or maybe she is fearless? Either way, it would be nice not to have worry about another late walker. While I am pushing her, the boys come to demonstrate the back flip off the swing that their friend taught them. It looks smooth, but it must be terrifying. They practice to do it together.

back flip off the swing

Their second class is on bridge structures. A lot of kids are absent, so the boys get out early. I ask 9 yo whether he would be able to do his prepared chumash with me off my phone (Beta Midrash app). he says that he can do it after lunch. Meanwhile I bump into a mom friend from the other location of the coop. We chat a bit, and then she asks me about 9 yo's behavioral issues. I tell her how I feel very done, defeated. She throws around a few suggestions, tells me to read, we commiserate over hard kids. "Have you prayed about it? Have you had him pray about it?" I stop, whirling. I am supposed to be davening about this kid. I barely get through brachot most mornings, hoping that nobody produces a poopy diaper and cuts my two minutes of organized prayer short. I do ask Hashem every day to help me not yell at my kids, but that has not been very successful. However, while I have taught 9 yo to daven and even told him where to insert his personal requests, I never thought to tell him to daven regarding his behavior.

A light bulb goes off in my head. "Thank you, I really have not thought about that."
"Oh, that's funny. I'm an atheist. But if it would help..."
And then we spend a few minutes chatting how prayer is about gathering your thoughts and reflections and getting clarity in formulating the requests. Did I mention how much I love my coop?

I do catch 9 yo later. "Chumash time?" He sits down next to me and we do his three review pesukim and three new pesukim. He gets worried for a moment that he cannot do them without his binder where he writes new words, but then changes his mind and goes through without a hitch. We are at Dina's rape and not exactly easy material that I want to be covering in the park. He might not even understand what exactly happened to Dina. He notices that after famously being called Leah's daughter, by the time Chamor gets to her, she is Yacov's daughter. Rashi does not comment. 9 yo also thought that Dina was pining for Chamor, so we had to set that straight. But he is done and gone.

At 2 pm, we get in the car to go and pick up 6 yo and 3 yo from preschool. 3 yo needs more diapers. He is not potty-trained yet, and he is at the stage where he wants underwear, but will have nothing to do with a toilet. I much rather deal with diapers than wiping up messes that he made and then tried to clean up on his own. Must remember to send more diapers to school.

bubbles in the museum

I drive the kids to the natural history museum that we rejoined last week. We have picture day at taekwondo, but that does not start till 4, and I do not want to go home for half an hour and then battle the traffic. The museum is just a few minutes away from the dojang, and 3 yo and 6 yo have not been there when we went last week. At 3:15, the parking lot is emptying out. We have the whole place to ourselves, even though there are still two hours till closing. The younger kids do not remember this place at all. I think 3 yo was not even born last time we were members. They ooh and aah over the dinosaur skeletons in the lobby. I warn the kids that we will only be here for an hour, but we will come back another time. Meanwhile, the baby has a dirty diaper and needs to nurse. I find a nursing room and leave 3 yo with the older kids, bur he decides that he wants to be with me, so he runs away, screaming. Then, as I am changing the baby, he runs out, looking for the boys. I sigh and finish the diaper change. 3 yo comes back since he did not find them. I need to nurse and I am in what is technically a nursing room. There is no bathroom, just a rocking chair, a changing table, and a locking door. There are some books and puzzles. I lock the door and sit down to nurse. 3 yo melts down, he does not want to be confined. I talk to him how he wants to get out so badly. I suggest looking at books or the puzzles. He tells me how everything is yucky, but he calms down.

I have mixed feelings about these nursing rooms. It is surely nice that museum provides them. They have nursing mothers in mind, and this one does not have a toilet in it, so it is designated exclusively for nursing. When 6 yo was nursing, I would give such set-up unconditional thumbs up. Yet now I feel that it is almost wrong to tuck nursing mothers away, in another room, far from the exhibits and the rest of the family. I nurse in public with a cover-up and if we really want to encourage breastfeeding, why are we putting moms away? Besides. that room did not have good ventilation, and it stunk of dirty diapers, my baby's included. Then I had to go and find an actual bathroom to wash my hands... somebody thought of this room as a PR gimmick, not as a service.

My kids delight in the museum. I thought it would be a bit boring for the boys, but they are eating it up. I get to stand back and watch all four of the older ones engage in their own ways. These outings are what we do the best. But I have to hustle everyone out since we still need to get to taekwondo and get pictures taken.

waiting for taekwondo picture

I almost chose not to go this year. We only did this once in the past, and I don't want to spend the money on the pictures. But now that I am doing taekwondo too, I want a picture of myself with the boys. Who knows how long I will keep it up? It can all change due to scheduling conflicts, but we can pull it off this year. I tell 6 yo that she will be in charge of her sister while we are getting photographed. What I did not account for was the slow-moving line. We spend time waiting. I take the baby out and let her crawl. She grabs boys' kipas off their heads. 3 yo is running around in circles. I keep on hoping that our turn will come soon. Finally, we get posed and photographed. I told the boys that we are only buying one group shot, not the individual poses. They are disappointed, but not too badly. Then we wait on second line, to select the images and the background. I talked boys out of the flaming background as being too busy. We agreed on something with a tiger in the back. My understated self cringes. Finally, we have to pick the best image. I look at myself: slouching, double chin, tired eyes. I do not look good. I do not look fierce, I do not look like I have this covered, like we are having fun. The boys look nice in almost every shot. I gently steer them towards the least tired-looking image. The baby is screeching and complete strangers are handing her toys that she tossed overboard. Meanwhile 6 yo is protecting her brother from another kid who keeps coming up and doing monster hands in their faces. I hustle everyone out to the car and drive home.

3 yo refuses to be buckled by his brothers and complains about burritos that are for dinner. Waze would not work to direct us home in the fastest way possible. It is 5:30 and the baby is not happy. We pull in and I get into my frenzy mode for everyone to unload the car and carry in more that one little item. I always seem to have my hands literally full with the baby, cups, bags, and keys. I always leave something in the house that belongs in the car and vise versa. We get in and I start dinner: defrosted burritos go on the frying pan,  defrosted corn on the cob goes in the pot, leftover coleslaw to round it off. If I would be any more organized, I would be freaking Marth Stewart. Nobody eats soup except for the baby, 3 yo, and me. 3 yo melts down because his burrito unrolled and the insides spilled out. I cannot help him, since I am seated across the table, feeding the baby. 11 yo asks some deep and meaningful questions about the nature of school and why isn't everyone homeschooled. I try to respond, but it is impossible to keep the conversation going.

My husband is on call overnight, so I am on my own. The baby throws dinner off her high chair tray. I have a Smirnoff Ice and immediately feel my face flushing. It happened with wine before, but I assumed that it was sulfites. I cannot be allergic to alcohol, can I? 6 yo cannot find "Wizard of Oz" that we are reading for a good night story. 3 yo's singing siddur does not work. "It needs new batteries!" I ask for a miniature screwdriver, but it does not fit. The baby does not settle down easily. By the time I finish washing up the dishes and sit down on the couch, it occurs that we did not do new pesukim or the megilah today. 11 yo: "You look tired." I feel tired.

And the crazy part is, this day does not strike me as out of the ordinary. Why am I masterminding this craziness?

actual homeschooling ( for real this time)

So what am I doing with those older boys?

I am calling it a taekwondo/chumash year. They are clearly progressing and achieving in taekwondo. They are earning their belts and stripes, getting stronger, lowering into splits, focusing and performing. As the year goes on, the progress is obvious. I also see that 9 yo grabs an opportunity when he sees one. He asked his teacher to check a certain sparring sequence. 9 yo got it wrong and was sent to practice. That did not deter him from asking to be checked at the next opportunity. He had to be checked three times before he got it right, and days passed in between. But he is focused on getting eligible to test for black belt, so he keeps on practicing.

With our crazy schedule, I make chumash a daily priority. We are in Ki Tisa with 11 yo, right at the golden calf right now. We do five pesukim a day, I ask both boys to prepare before they sit down with me: preread the pesukim and look up any words that they don't know in the dictionary. 11 yo got sneaky and looks up in Rashi instead. If Rashi doesn't comment, he fudges his way through, hoping that I am not paying attention. Meanwhile, I am prereading all the Rashis, just in case he asks a question and Rashi has an answer. This is doing wonders for my Chumash learning. In fact, I highly recommend for anyone who wants to master a particular area to try to teach it to their children: the preparation will force you to slow down and focus on depth. I am starting to appreciate Rashi much more.

11 yo's chumash skills are pretty good. He does moan and groan occasionally, but it is much less than it used to be. I know that he is on the cusp of mastery when we hit a Rashi on mysterious בגדי השרד. Since he didn't look the word up, I sent him to Rashi. I also asked him to pull out מקראות גדולות, to see if anyone else comments. Before I had a chance to sit down with him, he browsed through אבן עזרה and רמבן and told me that he likes אבן עזרה more. He did not even realize that he switched to a chumash without nekudot, and that he was able to do exactly what I was hoping to accomplish: independently look up מפרשים. Of course, this was one time, but it is a clear progression of daily skill acquisition.

9 yo is doing three pesukim a day. We review three previous peskim and then he prepares three new ones. He has hard time using the dictionary, as he keeps on forgetting the words that he already looked up multiple times. In addition. his ability to find shorashim is not so good, and he is afraid of looking up the wrong shoresh, or that a dictionary won't have it. Overall, however, he is at the point where he can scan the Hebrew, but recite the translation. Also, he gets plenty of pesukim that he can translate without having to look up any words. His Rashi skills are coming along. He worries about the length of Rashis, and he tries to memorize the meaning, just in case. I try to pick interesting short Rashis, but I especially make a big deal whenever he asks a question that Rashi asks and answers. For example, when we read about 11 children of Yaakov that crossed Yabbok, he asked me: Yaakov had 12 children, what happened to Dina? At that point, he did not mind reading the whole Rashi with the whole explanation. I keep hoping that slowly but surely his skills will improve and his confidence to "get it" will increase.

I spent a large chunk of the year fretting about boys not doing mishnayot. We never got a teacher for 11 yo, and the program that I tried ordering for the boys took forever to arrive only for me to realize that it is not usable without teacher materials, and teacher materials are costly and require preparation. So I did what I did best: fretted and fumed, worried and harassed 11 yo ( and my long-suffering husband) to do something! Finally, one Friday night, after refusing to go to shul, I said that 11 yo has to read something meaningful instead of another Percy Jackson-like fantasy. He opened Illustrated Mishna Shabbos, and read the whole thing! I am pretty sure that he did in a few days what usually takes months. No, he did not read it all in Hebrew. and he definitely would have gotten more out with a teacher, but, judging by his little quotes here and there, he read enough of what interested him.

Additionally, I went online looking for some sort of mishna yomi program, maybe something that would e-mail a daily mishna with some explanation. I stumbled across these mishnayot. The boys each picked an area and are reading and listening to two mishnayot a day. 11 yo picked Avodah Zarah, with a detour to Megillah in honor of Purim. 9 yo picked Sanhedrin, no doubt influenced by his brother. This is not what I had in mind, but I am learning to be flexible and accepting that children will pick what works for them.

9 yo is doing Lashon HaTorah, Workbook ד. He is having hard time with it, even though I see an improvement in his skills when it comes to chumash. 11 yo is doing Rosetta Stone, We had a glitch where our house computer died and he lost a lot of his progress. He is not in the rush to finish, but I see him trying to strike up conversations in Hebrew. Unfortunately, my Hebrew is not that good, and his siblings do not understand what he is saying, so it is not going anywhere. I am still waiting for those Israelis to enter our life and make my kids fluent...

I wanted to do Megillah Esther, but I don't think I have it in me this year. The boys read over the Youth Megillah and The Children of Shushan Fight Haman. Neither boy is enthusiastic about reading and translating. 11 yo halfheartedly suggested listening to baal koreh and following in English in Stone chumash. Megillah will have to wait another year.

What about halacha, minchagim, Jewish history? I definitely unschool those. I have Sand and Stars, and after a visit from another homeschool family, I pulled them out and 11 yo read them on his own. 9 yo might have glanced inside, or he might not have. The boys are welcome to attend shiurim in our shul, and they come and go as they please.I do not know how much they get out, but they will pipe up once in a while, so something somewhere is trickling in.

The secular subject update will have to happen at some later point.

One day out of many

7:15 am and I hear the baby cooing. Or is it older kids talking? Oh, it's both. The baby has been up again during the night, a bunch of times, too many to count.

Is it dark? No, it's getting light. Where is my husband? His bag is gone, he must have gotten called up and I slept through.

The younger kids are cuddling in 5 yo's bed. Time to get them dressed. It is menorah painting day, so they need ratty clothes. 5 yo starts arguing that what I picked out is too nice. I tell her that it will be OK to get paint on it.

The baby is cooing. Will I have to drive the younger ones to school? When will I nurse her? I set up her babysitter so I can go to taekwondo with the boys, but if I have to drive, I might not make it back on time. I will definitely not have enough time to nurse her before dropping her off.

Where are the boys? Are they playing the new Pokemon game downstairs? Is my husband possibly in shul, and coming back to drive the kids?

I text him, he's on his way back from an early delivery, but he won't be back till 8:30. OK, get his breakfast in order, get myself dressed, make oatmeal for 5 yo, pour cereal for 2 yo. The boys are just getting up, pulling the shtick of late rising.

Start making coffee; I'll try to stall on nursing till closer to 8. She nursed the whole night, she should be fine. Here, sit in the highchair, eat a piece of mushy banana and a muffin.

Where is the insulated coffee mug? It is in the dishwasher which is dirty. Wash the mug, so my husband can take his coffee to go.

The baby throws the leftovers of banana on the floor.

My husband texts me that there is a lot of traffic and he will be getting in at 8:50. The kids need to be at school by 9. It takes half an hour to get to school in the morning.

Say brachot, and think: he's sitting in traffic, just to get home, grab the kids and breakfast and turn around and go back. He will be late to the office. I should drive.

But if I drive, I don't have time to eat breakfast. I will have to nurse the baby now. I might not make it in time to drop her off and still get to taekwondo. We might be late.

I decide to take them. I call my husband and tell him that. Spread butter on his bagel (I wanted some protein, but there is no time to make eggs, or to figure out what else to have). Wash, eat the bagel while nursing the baby.

Shoot, I only made fish sticks for lunches, and I didn't pack anything else. mad rush to get the lunch boxes, and shove some snacks in. "Don't step on the banana on the floor!" Shoes for all, grab my uniform, tell boys to run the dishwasher while I'm gone, daven and get started on the schoolwork, Tell them to be all ready by 9:30, so I can just pick them up.

Buckle everyone up. It's a good thing that it is warm, so I do not need to preheat the car. No jackets to wrestle with, either.

We drive. In the morning, Waze takes me on a different route than in the afternoon. More traffic lights, more stop-and-go. We listen to the iPod. I get lost in my thoughts.

Chanukah is coming. I need to plan something fun. I need to plan a family dinner and invite my in-laws. We have not been invited out for a meal in months. We have five kids; it is too much for most people. I need to invite others for Shabbos meals. What about that new homeschooling family? I need to be social.

I get to school. The kids happily clamber out, 2 yo waving to his teacher. "He's always so happy!" They love the school. It is a constant, a happy place.

I drive back. I just get home by 9:30. The boys jump in and we drop the baby off. She wakes up as I pull up at the sitter's. I run and hope that she will last till I'm done with taekwondo.

Change quickly into the uniform. I have to review the forms with the boys, I haven't done them for the past two weeks and before that there wasn't enough practice for my muscles to remember what to do. The boys are gracious teachers, going over the steps with me, and practicing whatever I ask.

The workout feels brutal, especially after my break. My legs shake, but I do it. I feel strong and powerful. I forget about Chanukah planning, about schoolwork that still awaits. I focus on repetitions of the side kick.

When I change back at the end of class, I find a message from the babysitter, diplomatically wondering when the baby nursed last. The time stamp is from 20 minutes ago. A wave of guilt washes over me: here I am, self-improving, and she was probably yelling her head off. I text that I'm on my way.

When I pick her up, she's outside with the babysitter. She's not crying, so I finally exhale. She fusses the second I start placing her in the car seat and I briefly wonder about nursing her now. But I drive home, get the boys to open the house and bring in my bags while I sit down to nurse. She falls asleep while nursing and transfers to the crib.

I exhale again.

I get to eat lunch. The boys eat lunch of their own making. I rush them on, so we can get some schoolwork done before afternoon carpool, before the baby wakes up and I will need to finish nursing her.

We do chumash. They do everything else on their own. 11 yo really needs to add more to his day. His mishna teacher is no longer available to teach. For Judaics, I am only able to do chumash. 9 yo was upset about chumash yesterday, but today it goes smoothly. I do not prepare for him, I still remember VaYetze from last year. I remember the Rashis, too. I am getting to mastery. For 11 yo, I have to prepare. The language is different, and there is no narrative. Rashi cites gemarot and opinions which I have not heard before.

The baby wakes up. The boys trip over each other to take her out of the crib. 11 yo mentioned earlier how he misses her, For once, we finished Chumash without interruption. I nurse her. I make a chai latte for my afternoon drive. Now that the dishwasher has been run, I have a clean insulated mug. A piece of chocolate completes the afternoon pick-me-up.

I drive to get the kids from school. They are talking about Alfred Hitchcock's work on NPR. I have never seen Psycho, but when will I get the time? I get the kids and drive to pick up our betta fish from a friend. The kids are quiet in the back seat because the NPR is switched to iPod. The baby is asleep.

I get home and 2 yo does not want to get of his car seat unless I unbuckle him. His fussing wakes up baby. I need to nurse her, again. 9 yo is up to math, and he is having new issues. I still have not made dinner.

I text my husband and he's not coming home till later, much later. I nurse the baby and wonder whether I should be organizing something for Chanukah for the local homeschoolers. 9 yo moved to to have issues with his spelling words which need to be organized in an alphabetical order. I asked 11 yo to peel the potatoes, but he walked away.

I prepare dinner. First I decide that there will be no potatoes. Then I relent from punishing us all and decide not to give any to 11 yo. The baby is crawling into the kitchen, Is that chipped paint that she's licking off the floor? Why does she decide to start crawling when my housekeeping skills are at an all-time low?

I get her to sleep and hustle everyone to set up for dinner. 11 yo does want those potatoes, but I'm firm. And it's a shower night. And I'm still alone.

There was an ice-skating event for the women tonight, a chance to socialize and hang out. I forgot until the pictures started pouring in. I wanted to go. It is not happening. Is that why we have no Shabbos invites, since I don't see anyone?

9 yo washes 2 yo. "I even changed his dirty diaper and wiped him!" Thank you, child. I wash 5 yo. Then I beg the kids to watch the baby so I can take an early shower. I don't know how late my husband will come back. I don't know how long the baby will be up.

I read a story to 5 yo, tuck her in. I nurse the baby to sleep. I look up summer sleep away camp for boys. Darn, we already missed the deadline for one of the grants. I'm in a bit of sticker shock from the price. I share it with the boys and tell them that I will discuss the whole thing with daddy. 9 yo immediately decides that this means that he's not going and starts ruminating about it. I send them to sleep.

At 9 pm, my husband walks in. At 9:05, the baby gets up.

__________________

What am I doing wrong?
What am I supposed to be doing differently?
How did I trade the stress of five kids in the house for the stress of carpool?
When am I supposed to get any time to do something for my enjoyment?

First few weeks

5 yo and 2 yo have been going to their school. 5 yo loves it. She is happy to go and happy to come home. She talks about her projects, about reading, about making chains for skip-counting. She sings songs about Rosh HaShana. She talks about the new friends that she made. Overall, she is a happy child, having the time of her life.

I keep thinking  how school is meant for girls, rewarding and encouraging their behavior patterns of socialization, listening, and group activities.

2 yo is having harder time adjusting to having his nap time messed up. He is excited to go, but he is a mess in the afternoon when I pick him up. I get lots of pictures from the school and he is happy in them, participating in activities, sitting down, paying attention, crafting. Yet I do feel quite a few pangs of regret about sending out a child so young.

The boys are continuing with taekwondo three mornings a week. On Wednesday mornings we participate in the coop classes. Both boys are taking engineering and Minecraft History of Weapons. Unfortunately, these activities eat quite a bit of morning time. By 2 pm I have to leave to pick up the younger ones, so there is a lot of pressure to finish schoolwork before I go
. The baby is hanging out with us. Due to all the shuttling back and forth, she does not end up napping in her crib in the mornings. She is not a good sleeper and she is not easy to put down.

We are all adjusting.

I have finally finished reviewing בשלח with 11 yo. We have started on יתרו and, for once, he is excited to get to the "juicy stuff". I am trying to get out of the way and not kill his enthusiasm with too many Rashis. We have also been going over ספר יונה. So far we covered two פרקים. Please G-d that this year we actually get to finish it. Additionally, we have been slowly making our way through הלכות תשובה. I thought I have learned them all at some point or other, but, as I am reading them over, I am stunned by how much I do not remember. A while ago someone posted Beta Midrash app. I downloaded it and that is the text that we are using. It is nice, since there is an option to have Hebrew and English side-by-side, or just one of the languages. I can also make the font larger, Finally, all the citations are linked to the text. Moreover, 11 yo seems to enjoy the technological aspect of learning, As for me, this is quite a serious preparation. I am shaken by how much I am doing wrong, and 11 yo is getting the message, too. Sometimes I wonder whether this is too much, too soon, Yet I know that we will stop by יום כיפור, somewhere in the third פרק. This year, it is more of a taste than an in-depth study.

For math I checked out Khan Academy, but I was too nervous so I got Math Mammoth. 11 yo finished his first unit which was mostly review. Next unit has to do with equations, and I will need to sit with him, to make sure that he is not lost. So I let him loose on Khan Academy, hoping that he will either get ahead, or will get to review more of the material that he is not solid in.

We are continuing with Rosetta Stone, and I am hoping to read more of the picture Hebrew books with him.

With 9 yo, it has been touch and go. I dropped חומש for now and we are doing a lot of pages from the reading primer. I am hoping to build up his fluency and accuracy. There is still a slight possibility of dyslexia hanging over. It will not be picked up easily, as he reads fluently in English, but in Hebrew we've got problems. 9 yo is still better at reading Rashi script that regular Hebrew and I wonder whether I taught him and pushed him to read too soon.

We have been reading יונה from Artscroll children's edition. There is a lot of explanation and midrash in there, but it gives him welcome breaks between each פסוק. I have not been asking him to translate, just to focus on reading Hebrew text with corresponding English.

For math, 9 yo is going over Math Mammoth. He seemed fine with it until his brother started doing Khan Academy; now he wants to do that instead. He got to play around with it a while back, but he did not want to explore areas which were unfamiliar or difficult.

For science I am planning on using a standard 4th grade textbook with our usual mix of eclectic learning thrown in. We hanged a hummingbird feeder right outside the kitchen window and the kids have been watching the tiny visitors. There were many questions ( most from 5 yo), so i asked 9 yo to make a poster about hummingbirds by doing some research online. He threw a fit: "I am not good at science and you know it!" I understood that he simply did not know where to start. I asked him to bring me 5 index cards and told him that each card will be for a question. He sulked. I asked him whether there was something about hummingbirds that he wanted to know. He said, no. I gave him a few examples and wrote them down, leaving the last index card for him question. He finally admitted that he wanted to know how fast the hummingbird's heart beats. Then he went to Google the info, A minute later he excitedly came back, spewing numbers. Apparently, it beats anywhere between 60 and 1260 beats per minute. We have hummingbirds that live here year-round, but other species spend the winter in our state. Hummingbird eggs are the size of black-eyed peas. Many hummingbirds return to the same feeder year after year, so we have to keep ours up. The baby hummingbirds come potty-trained: they "do their business" over the side of the nest. Parents feed their babies a mixture of nectar and fruit flies, so it is a good thing that we resurrected the compost pile ( to which 9 yo dutifully takes out compost every day). Finally, hummingbirds are pushed out of the nest as soon as they are able to fly. This fact made 9 yo sad. He actually came back to me in the morning and told me again how sad he is for baby hummingbirds. I asked him, why he thinks parents do that. He said, so that they can grow up and be independent and live their own life. Somehow, this thought cheered him up.

So are we, as parents, pushing our kids out of the nest so that they can get a chance to live a life and to fly.

How do I do all this?

Five kids.

Homeschooling.

Running a household.

Getting out of the house.

How do I do this?

The truth is, I don't do it all. I don't do it all well. I do not have the magic bullet for making it all work out. I am not super-organized. I am not calm and all happy. I am not getting a lot of schoolwork done. My house is a mess. The meals are haphazard. The kids are marginally dressed. They are not all happy, either.

I hate the whole supermom cliche. I have these kids, so I have to take care of them. I have to feed them, so I have to plan meals, shop and cook. Sure, they help out, and sometimes go above and beyond. But sometimes they want to be left alone, engrossed in a book or a game, and not surface till the food is ready on the table.

They need to be washed, so the older ones wash the 2 year old and cajole him to put a diaper on. 11 yo watches our baby so I can wash 5 yo's hair. But I much rather wait for my husband to come home and wash 5 yo and 2 yo properly. Often he gets held up at work, and then we scramble.

The kids need to get out of the house, which is more of a challenge now that we are on a break from taekwondo. The park does not hold the same appeal. The other day they preferred to sit in the shade and read their library books rather than play. Actually, it is more complicated than that. The boys chose to read, 5 yo ran around with friends, and 2 yo kept climbing to the highest point of the play structure and refusing to go down a long tube slide, so I had to keep on sending one of the kids to help him down. Oh, and the baby wanted to nurse. One mom remarked: these outings never go as planned. I thought, I did not expect it to go smoothly, this is what I expected it to be.

We are doing daily chumash and Rosetta Stone. We finished Vaera with 11 yo. Somehow, it went by very fast. He is not so into it, which is a shame, since this is exciting stuff: makkos. I'm using Chumash with English translation of Rashi, and I scramble every day. I feel unprepared, and he senses it. However, I'm sticking with it, hoping that it makes an impression. He was building Paro's palace in Minecraft the other day, and then he unleashed makkos. I'm not so sure how it all worked out, but he had fun.

I am doing Chumash with 9 yo, too. For most of the year, I left it up to my husband, but then we picked it up again. We are in the middle of Chayei Sorah. He is able to do Rashi at this point. I have a strong suspicion that he is dyslexic, but it will be hard to prove, since his English reading and comprehension are excellent. He has easier time reading Rashi than regular Hebrew. He keeps reading the words backwards, reading wrong nekudot, switching nekudot and letters around, etc. I wonder what would have happened if I waited to introduce Hebrew letters till he showed interest instead of pushing them when he was 5. I was nervous, and he was the only child of homeschool age and aren't all kindergarten children supposed to at least recognize aleph-beit? Strangely, I am not concerned about these things for my daughter. She is 5, and she might or might not know all her Hebrew letters. She is definitely not reading in English, despite knowing all her letters and even writing quite a bit. But I am not pushing, and I am not worrying. 

I often joke that I will get homeschooling (and parenting) down to a science by the fourth and fifth kid. In a way, it's a blessing that there are so many of them, and I get to learn from my mistakes and get it right down the road. 

No, I do not do it all. I have no desire to do it all, either. Right now, we just need to survive.

two steps forward, one step back

We are in the middle of Shemot with 10 yo, moving right along, I think I will end up with the best textual preparation because of this; I have never read so many Rashis.

10 yo finished Bava Kamma, and we are almost done reviewing it. For the past few months, he has been going to shul with my husband for minyan, then staying to learn with his rebbe and scootering back home, and then, most days, going to taekwondo. To me, this sounded like an ideal set-up: get your davening and Torah learning done first thing in the morning, when you are fresh, and then get some physical exercise, to get your body moving. Unfortunately, it has not been panning out. He was cranky about leaving the house so early, upset about having to scarf down breakfast, and feeling that he has no time. He seemed to be retaining mishnaiyot just fine, but he was clearly not happy, dragging his feet. Once he finished Bava Kamma, we decided to take a break from formal mishna learning till after Pesach. I don't exactly know what we will choose to do at that point. Drop mishna for the summer? Find a difference set-up for learning? Jump right back in?

Meanwhile, in my panicky state of "when am I ever going to teach kids about Pesach, if it is not happening again this year", I decided to review mishna Pesachim with 10 yo. He is nor super-enthusiastic about it, but his younger brother eagerly asked whether he can join us and learn mishna together. 8 yo has been able to read the text of the mishna, and talk about the cases that we discussed. He also said how he can stay with 10 yo and his rebbe and learn mishnaiyot together, so his brother would not be lonely. 10 yo responded that his rebbe is more of a one-on-one kind of teacher, feeling infringement on his time.

8 yo asked to learn Rashi script. We have a laminated chart hanging in our dining room, and I do not recall seeing him ever studying it, but he felt ready. In fact, he repeatedly asked me about learning Rashi. I found a workbook that I got years ago for 10 yo, but did not end up using. I was actually looking for a chinuch.org file which I did use previously, but I could not find it, neither on my computer, nor online. 8 yo saw the workbook and asked whether he can do it. So far, he is getting right through, happily filling out pages.

It is funny, since both mishna and Rashi script traditionally start in 3rd grade, and I am pretty sure that were I to introduce 8 yo to them both when he was not ready, he would balk. Now, that he is the one initiating the learning, he is happy as a clam (about these two things).

We are gearing up to take ITBS next week with a bunch of homeschool kids. I am squeezing in as much info as possible, especially into 8 yo. I want him to feel ready, and to work out strategies about what to do about questions that he has not learned yet, or that do not make sense to him. It is working out, and backfiring spectacularly, all at the same time.

What's working: apparently, I can explain months' worth of math in five minutes, and the boys can do it. I can explain contractions, and simple subjects, and not worry whether we have spent a day per each, or just enough for them to understand it and apply it. I explained multi-digit multiplication and simple division to 8 yo, as it came up, and he was using it right away. I explained percent and fractional operations to 10 yo. Of course, it flies in the face of all sorts of educational theories about reinforcement, and not cramming too much material into a too small period of time.

What's backfiring: 8 yo is progressively becoming more anxious about the test. He dissolved into tears the other day, stomped out, threw the test booklet, etc. Ironically, the following day, when he picked it up again, he was able to do most of the work. So this has nothing to do with ability or knowledge. I am  a bit worried that he will shut down during the actual test, but I also hope that he will know what kinds of feelings testing provokes in him, and how to handle them.

Meanwhile, just the other day I was stressing about 5 yo and how she is still not reading. She has been more reluctant to try to read words as I'm reading to her, and we are nowhere near done with the first set of Bob Books. And then, just as I enter the living room, she greets me with the next Bob Book from the series, asking whether we can sit down together to read it. Did she read my mind? The following day, she read the next one to me. Today, she wanted to read one, but I was too frazzled, and she was a bit distracted, too. Maybe we'll pick it up later today, maybe not.

It seems that every time I start to worry, the kids will do something reassuring. And every time I feel that we have found our groove, the kids will do something or other to keep me on my toes. It's a delicate dance, a cha-cha. I am not in the mood of dancing; I am in the mood to put my feet up and have a latte.

chumash shemot and Purim

We started Chumash Shemot with 10 yo. I went to our local Judaica store, to pick up a copy with Rashi with nekudot, but they did not have it in stock, so they are ordering it for us. In the meanwhile, I pulled out regular Mikraot G'dolot.

10 yo seemed eager to start. He even talked about doing an aliyah a day. (I panicked, since I only prepared about 15 pesukim, assuming we will stick with 5 a day, and Purim being at the end of the week.) We ended up doing 10 pesukim. He seems ok reading Rashi without nekudot, although he vocalizes any way he pleases. He asked, why is Yosef not mentioned as one of the children of Yakov, but then he figured it out from the p'shat. I showed him Rashi on women having 6 babies at a time, and then we discussed whether it really meant that. I used example of post-Holocaust families having more children than average, and how that, going on for a few generations, results in appearance of teeming.

We also discussed whether this was a new Paro, or the same Paro. He asked me whether Paro was from Amalek, since he was being cruel to the Jews. I said that Paro was Egyptian, and we will see the differences in Paro's approach vs. Amalek. So far he figured out that Paro felt threatened by the Jews' reproduction rate to the point that he felt they were more numerous. I told him to consider how many Jews were there entering Egypt, and how many Jews came out, compared to the number of the Egyptians. I am finding this a nice segue into both Purim and Pesach.

Speaking of Purim, I feel like I have totally slacked off. I pulled out Purim stories after my daughter repeatedly asked about them. I have not read over the megillah with either boy. Well, actually, 8 yo read the first three pesukim to me. He read them pretty smoothly, and even translated quite a bit. That was a pleasant surprise. And then the rest did not happen. I thought, maybe we'll get through the first perek, but it does not look like it.

Every year I think, it's OK, we'll get to it next year, and every year, something is going on. I downloaded the Purim Story from Mostly Music, so the kids listened to it on our trip to the conference last week. The boy rejected my usual Purim music; they are getting too old for this stuff. I did make them compare the book that we got from the PJ library to the real story of Esther, and write out the discrepancies. In fact, the book was so bad that I ended up recycling it. My daughter asked me to read it to her, and after the first reading, I just could not bring myself up to keep on reading such inaccurate story. I recommend "Queen Esther Saves Her People", another PJ library book that we previously got.

I leave you with a picture from this book. See if you can catch what's wrong with it.

nachas

Every once in a while, even if the day did not turn out to be perfect, even if it rained, and even if the kids got on my and each other's nerves, it is nice to reflect how much nachas (happiness) they bring.

1 yo walks around the house, singing "Hashem melech, Hashem malach". He loves to get the bentcher and give it out. He loves looking at it. He demands that I say "bracha" when he is eating. No, he is too young to understand, to repeat the words, but he knows that we do not just shovel in food, there is this other element surrounding it. He is thoroughly enjoying Kid K'nex, connecting the pieces on his level.

5 yo has been looking at books more and more on her own. She was reading "ir/ur" blends today, because they happened to be in the book that we were looking at. She is also reading the state magnets that we have on the fridge.

8 yo offers to return shopping carts every time we go to the store. He has been spontaneously spelling words (thank you, Minecraft homeschool). he reads the parsha every week in English, and knows it well. Moreover, he does not hesitate to crack the chumash and do research to answer a difficult question. His temper has mellowed out so much in the past six months, that he almost feels like a different kid. I shudder what would have happened if I did end up putting him into this local dayschool. I would miss all this growth and maturing.

10 yo has been scootering back after his mishna lessons.With the spate of articles about overreacting bystanders to kids being outside alone, I do worry, not for his safety, but for what would happen if someone decided that an almost 11 yo cannot ride his scooter on his own for less than a mile. He has been producing spontaneous creative drawings and projects. Yesterday, as we were walking, 5 yo decided to recite back to me my cell phone number (it took her one day of trying to memorize it). 10 yo went into calculations of how many combinations can one get for different phone numbers. He came up with 10^100 (and may those with better skill correct him).

When I step away and stop worrying about academics, about where the kids are compared to their grade level. when I step back far enough to see the big picture, I see that they are turning out just fine. They are learning, they are motivated to do their things, they do behave like menches (mostly), and, when asked, they much rather be homeschooled. As much as I beat myself up about messing them up, about not doing enough, about not providing the right environment for growth, about missed opportunities, they seem to be just fine.

I do not know how I will be feeling about homeschooling tomorrow. But today, I am enjoying the nachas.

Where are we?

10 yo finished Horaiyot in Mishna and moved right into Bava Batra. Why? He is planning to finish Nezikin. He also taught me that Avot (Pirkei Avot) is in Nezikin. So far he has done Sanhedrin and Makkot, so it makes sense. He is also fired up (today) to learn Gemara. I said that it is up to his rebbe.

In Chumash we are nearing the end of Vayigash. He is comfortable, flying right through. We normally do five pesukim a day, but today it was genealogy, so he chose to do more. He also noticed that both Reuven and Peretz have a son named Hetzron. "Must have been a popular name!" I never noticed it. I look over Rashi before we start and decide which ones to do. Lately, it has been working out to one-three Rashis per day, although I never refuse a chance to do more, if he asks me a question that Rashi answers.

10 yo finished Level II of Rosetta Stone. We also read our way through a Hebrew paperback, a few paragraphs per day. He did not mind pulling out a dictionary to look up words that he did not know. I supplied him with some words that I did know, but left some important ones foe him to look up. My Hebrew was nowhere near the level where I could read the whole book and understand every single word. I hope to read more of those books this year.

As far as Lashon haTorah, he is in the middle of workbook hey, on tzivui. It is easy, and I am almost stretching it out for him.

In math, we are slugging through Math Mammoth, which obfuscates with its Common Core garbage. An example is the drawn-put and confusing explanation of how to multiply decimals. I think they are pushing for understanding that numbers can be rounded off to whole numbers, and that answer still needs to make sense, but I am getting impatient having to explain yet another nifty (and useless) approach to something that can be shown much more easily either with fractions, or with whole numbers. Just teach the kids to stick in decimal point later!

8 yo finished 1st grade spelling program from k12reader.com. I used it to build up confidence, and he really learned how not to get totally frustrated when he does not know how to spell a word. Now, whenever he writes something, he tries to spell, or asks me to help him instead of refusing like he used to. He also seems to see the patterns to spelling rules. Now he tries to write the word out, and read it, and see if his spelling makes sense. While it seems silly to rejoice that he can spell on the 1st grade level, I feel that we have a major accomplishment here.

He is in the middle of Keyboarding Without Tears. He likes those trophies, and always chooses to do typing first. I wonder whether this constant input of words has helped with his spelling and his writing abilities.

We are doing First Language Lessons slowly. He tends to do them on a more sophisticated level than the book expects, which is fine with me. He finds them easy, and annoying sometimes.

In math, he is on par with Math Mammoth. He is reviewing telling time from analog clocks, and it seems to click much better now than it did before.

The boys keep on reading, a lot. 10 yo took put first volume of Harry Potter out of the library, and read it in two days. Now he felt ready for it. It was always available, and he was aware of its existence, but a part of him was not ready to read it until now. After our vacation, he commented how not reading anything besides Calvin and Hobbes for a few days made him moody.

4 yo does her own thing: lots of coloring, lots of imaginative play, lots of snuggles and reading on the couch. I keep beating myself up for not doing more "academic" things with her, but she seems to be thriving. One thing, though: she keeps on playing "school". She is always going to school, coming back from school, and, in some way or other, involved in school. I have a lot of my own reservations about putting her in school next year, but, due to this persistent theme, I am thinking about it.

1 yo is a walking, talking, eating machine. He still spends a lot of energy on unclear communication, but he is doing all normal toddler things: tearing up the house, making messes, coloring where he shouldn't. He now has his favorite books, and will sit through a whole book.

As an overview, I see how we are slowly getting there.

a really big heart

This morning, I ran out to get some scarves from a private showing. It is Sunday, and my husband was planing on taking the older kids to Gem and Mineral Show while I was planing to nap 1 yo and organize the sunroom.

When I came back, steam was coming out of my husband's ears, and 8 yo was crying. My husband asked him to do chumash. He did not expect to do chumash today, so he totally melted down. It took them an hour to torture their way through three pesukim. I was just shaking my head. At some point, I volunteered to take 10 yo and 4 yo to the show, while the learners would sit and finish up. However, they did complete it, had brunch, and left.

I got to the point in the sun room where I emptied out all the messy cubbies, and then 1 yo woke up. So now there is a pile of mess on the floor of the sun room, but the cubbies look nice and neat. The pile is bad enough for the kids to ask: what happened here?

But that is not what I want to focus on.

The car pulls up. The kids pile out. 8 yo comes in, beaming: "Mommy, I got you a gift!" I turn around and see that he is holding a tiny jewelry pouch. Inside are little earrings. "Mommy, these are mystic quartz. You irradiate quartz and you get mystic quartz. Mommy, do you like them? I got them for you for doing all those nice things that you do for us. It's nice to get you a present once in a while to say thank you. Mommy, we're having pizza for dinner? I love pizza, thank you for making it."

He leaves the room, and I am speechless and choked up. I am putting on these little studs. My husbands shakes his head: "Where did you get a kid like that?" Then he tells me how 8 yo got a grab bag of stones for 4 yo since she does not have her own money, and he was considering getting me another set of earrings, but that was outside of his price range. 10 yo was upset; he got nothing because he is saving his money. However, he used golden wire and wrapped it around a black polished stone (8 yo's gift to him as a consolation), and presented me with that pendant.

Before they left for the show, when the kids were outside and out of ear shot, I was complaining bitterly to my husband how I cannot take 8 yo's angry outbursts any more, how his hysterics and dramatics leave me drained; how I feel like a hostage to his emotions. Now I feel like the luckiest mom on the face of this earth: I have a sweet, caring kid. Maybe he will not master chumash, maybe he will not be quick with his numbers, but his heart is so firmly in the right place, that I have a thing or two to learn from him.

snippets of unschooling

10 yo insisted that we start on Vaigash, even though he did not finish reviewing Miketz. I read the first perek and casually told him that we will not be doing a lot of Rashis, as they seem to contradict p'shat. In p'shat, Yehudah is begging Yosef for mercy, in midrash (which he was aware of), Yehuda is powerful and threatening. I thought 10 would rejoice, but he insisted on doing those Rashis inside; he was intrigued by what was that hidden drash. We finished the first perek.

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Tonight, at dinner, 4 yo asked me what's six plus three. I mindlessly told her to try to figure it out. She declared that she wants to do math, now. I asked her what she wants to use for counting, assuming it will be blocks, beads, or books (her recent choice). She chose her fingers. I was in the middle of washing dishes when I realized that she was counting out six, on two hands. Then she added three, and then she added them all together, all on her own. She was very satisfied with nine, and that was the end of math for tonight.

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I got a video out of the library on math tricks and card tricks. 8 yo picked it to be watched tonight. I thought it would be more about math strategies than card tricks, but I was wrong. The last trick, called "The Mail," he did not get. It is actually a pretty silly trick, so I asked him whether he wanted me to show it to him. He was agreeable, so we practiced it two times, and he finally got it that there is no trick, just an assumption. The real show of confidence and understanding would be him performing it for others.

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1 yo pulls a step stool up to the kitchen sink, climbs on it, and says: "Wash!" He is finally talking, although there is still a lot of gibberish. However, he is clearly learning the ways of a Jewish home.

gearing up to a change

I'm slowly going through the sunroom, planning out the next school year. I have really fallen off the planning-ahead wagon, and I am desperate to get back on. I want to have achievable goals for what I am trying to accomplish with 10 yo.

I want to work on his grammar and writing. I am not worried about spelling as I think that will catch up with writing. I want to make sure that he gets math concepts. I want to finish Rosetta Stone. I want to focus a bit more on Hebrew grammar. I want to challenge him in geography and science. I want to increase the amount of daily pesukim in Chumash to five and finish Breishit, maybe even do a chunk of Shemot and move away from using nekudot in Rashi.

What I am realizing, sadly, is that how many of these goals are achievable, but I have not been pursuing them because they required my focus. The whole past year, all my focus has been on 8 yo and the baby, probably in that order. All the projects, ideas, objectives that I set out were thoroughly diverted. Many were not undertaken because I knew that 8 yo would never go along with them. Many were not undertaken because trying to get 8 yo to do any of his work could take any length of time. I was terrorized not knowing whether I will just need to sit down with him for 5 minutes and complete something, or whether he will throw an epic tantrum, follow me around, have tearful conversations full of hugs and then, hours later, we will be done. He would be reenergized and I was completely emotionally and physically exhausted.

While I still feel not very settled and calm about sending him to school, I feel much better realizing that now I have freedom to educate my other child in the way that he deserves to be taught. We had a conversation about starting back with Chumash. He was not very happy about the idea, but I insisted. He was grouchy and dramatically threw himself on the couch. I said that we will just find the place where we left off, and we will not do any Rashis today. He found the spot (we did not do Chumash for probably close to two months) and read it like he learned it yesterday. I saw that he was starting to get into his learning, so I left him with a few points dangling. Then we discussed when we will start official school year.

After this whole exchange I thought how normal it was: he voiced his opinion and preference, I stated my preference, he went along with what I suggested, implicitly trusting my judgement and I was careful not to exploit the situation. I got so used to constant explosions from 8 yo that I stopped having normal conversations with 10 yo, shouting commands instead or just giving up.

As I am going through different supplies and teaching aids that I made over the years, I am boxing many of them up. I am saving them for the day when 4 yo gets a bit older. She is easy to reason with, and she is eager to learn and eager to try new things. Perhaps she will appreciate all the different things that I collected, printed out, laminated. I feel a huge gap between what 10 yo knows and what 8 yo knows. I feel sad that despite all my efforts and different plans, I was not able to design a method which satisfied us both. But I am also looking forward to spending enjoyable time learning with my other kids.