striking gold

We finished Sefer Breshit with 10 yo. 8 yo finished another perek with my husband.

But this is not what my kids are excited about at the moment. When the schoolwork part of the day was finished, when I'm done yelling at 10 yo for misplacing his spelling words (again), when 8 yo has completed his totally unfair math where "they keep tricking me by asking for area and I am much better at finding perimeter", the kids decided to go outside. It is cold here, not as cold as in the northeast, but the temperature is just above freezing. I was trying to get 1 yo to take his nap, and to finish Shabbos cooking, so I strongly encouraged this outing. I was not sure how long they will last outside, so I suggested gloves. They wanted to go digging. I decided that they will find out for themselves what digging in frozen ground feels like.

We had a tree cut down recently, with a large stump remaining. My husband made a bonfire on top of it this past Sunday, and the kids fed it, and toasted marshmallows. But the stump is still there, and there are old grass clippings and wood shavings all around it. They went digging between the roots, two boys with shovels and one girl, watching and helping. Suddenly, they dash into the house, excited: "We think we found gold!" A large crumbly rock is thrust into my face, with pale yellow veins running through it.

Not from our yard
http://www.zmescience.com/science/geology/theory-earthquake-gold-18032013/

Clap, if you believe in gold mine right in my front yard.

I have learned to stay positive, or non-committal in such situations. They washed the rock off, examined it, and then went Googling to find out how to tell whether they struck gold. I came in the middle of them watching a video telling how to identify gold in quartzite. The rock in the video looked eerily like the rock they found.

Now they want a magnifying glass, to examine those grains and veins closely.

I bet they will not remember much of what we did this morning. I bet they will not remember which exact problems they solved to get area, or which sentence they used for "especially". I bet they will remember the time they struck gold in the front yard.

This is what gives me strength to continue homeschooling. As much as I would like to have a certain balance of academics and tangible achievements, knowing that they have freedom to explore, be passionate, conduct their own research, and draw their own conclusions is more important than my objectives.

accidental find (photoblog)

This is what happens when I have an activity scheduled just for 10yo (homeschool day at Anne Frank exhibit) in a part of town where we usually don't go. I sort of looked at the map and saw two local parks, figuring one of them should have a playground. The younger kids insist on bringing their bikes, so we end up driving to the park with paved trails. We have never been there before, but we had time and were open to new experiences.

watching the ducks 

skipping stones

blue heron

goose feather

watching waterfowl

I always wonder: couldn't we do this if we weren't homeschooling? Couldn't we come here on a Sunday? But do we end up taking half a Sunday just to wander around and discover a new park?

I fret about wasting learning time. Then I see that they are learning and watching and observing and feeling, especially near a peaceful lake on a beautiful day. I see 8 yo calm down and focus. I see him observe. I see him wait patiently.

We all just need free mornings to go out there and explore nearby nature places. We all need rippling lake surface. We all need to be quiet enough to hear the calls of the birds and not to scare them off.  We all need freedom to just go out there, bike, and teach our kids to skip stones.

a great day

Today was such a good day, that it would be a disservice not to share it. There were almost tantrums, and almost meltdowns, and, as I am typing this, my kitchen is a mess and I have not made anything for shabbos, and my husband is dealing with ectopic (translation: reinforcements not arriving any time soon), but the day was lovely.

We did schoolwork in the morning. 9 yo did division with remainders, a story from S'fateinu about Tu BShvat, mishna with his rebbi and chumash. We are reviewing Vayetze, and we are almost done. 7 yo did math (review of addition with regrouping), chumash (Bright Beginnings), spelling ( copy the names of seven types of fruit from Israel both in English and in Hebrew) and S'fateinu.

Then we had friends over for Tu B'Shvat party. The kids made pine cone bird feeders, planted parsley seeds for karpas to use on Pesach, made a few brachot and ate all different fruits. Mostly, they just played, hung out, and had a good time.


After the party was over, 4 yo got out the vacuum cleaner and started cleaning up. She was really trying, and even dragged it from room to room, looking for more things to vacuum. I praised her efforts, even though I knew that I will have to sweep up later. I learned that this sense of doing something useful is more important than critiquing a final result. She will have the rest of her life to learn how to vacuum properly. Now she is learning that vacuuming is fun.











Then the baby went for a nap and I made chocolate chip cookies with 7 yo. He has been asking me for a long time to cook something with him, but every time something came up. Yesterday, when he asked to make a dessert together, I decided to commit firmly. I did not allow other kids join him unless he was interested. Onto the shabbos menu went the cookies. So when it was finally quiet, it was cookie-making time.

This boy really did everything by himself. He read the recipe, collected the necessary ingredients, found measuring cups and spoons and followed the steps. I did not help unless I was asked, and that happened rarely. I helped with the flour, but mostly I kept my mouth shut and just watched. He cracked the eggs. I did not say anything when one of them missed the mixing bowl. He cheerfully cleaned it up and got another. He figured out that three teaspoons make a tablespoon. He molded the first batch, called the beater for licking, and I just marveled at how much he knows about cooking. My 9 yo is still not sure where I keep everything in the kitchen, but this kid knows his way around.

When I saw him reading later on, I gently reminded about Read to Succeed, and how he might want to keep track. He dissolved on the spot: I do not want to go to Six Flags, I cannot read for 6 hours, I cannot write this all down... I calmly suggested keeping track of how long he is reading now, and just write down this little bit. It turned out that he read for 40 minutes (I let him do the calculations), and he had no issues writing this down.

For dinner I had a crockpot stew with quinoa and kale chips. These tend to be touch-and-go, but everyone found some part of dinner that they liked.

After everyone got into pajamas, I sent 7 yo and 4 yo downstairs to clean up the basement. I heard the vacuum cleaner go on, and when they came up, they said it looked good. I reviewed mishna with 9 yo.  Then I put the baby down for the night.

They boys asked to sew. 9 yo saw a design for kimono in one of his history-comes-alive books, so he has been after me to make one. I suggested that he starts with making a doll-sized one, but he was not having it. This time I said that we will start with sewing on a button. It's a skill worth having even if he kimono ambitions do not actualize. I found old shirts of mine and I was planning to cut them into scraps for each kid, when they called the sleeves. I cut the sleeves off and then the boys said that they will sew on the buttons as eyes. Everyone was able to thread their needle. I had to make the knots for them. I showed each one how to sew on a button, and how to make a stem under it. They both sewed on two, and then sewed the ends of the sleeve shut. 7 yo, while sewing said that this is what he wants to learn how to do: to sew and to cook. I have a budding "husband of the year." But the real secret is that my husband sews and cooks, so my boys do not see it as woman's work. 4 yo picked out her buttons, and I sewed them onto her sleeve. It was idyllic, almost out of scene: kids sitting around the table, busily sewing...

When they finished, they showed off their sleeve puppets. All of a sudden they turned into sleeve eels.

Next thing I know, they are night caps.

Occupation?

At some point we all have to fill out some forms: name, address, phone number, followed by occupation and employer. Ever since I started staying at home, this question bugged me. The easiest answer--homemaker-- rubs me the wrong way. I immediately picture a shapely lady in a button-down dress with a frilly apron, a duster in one hand and a perfect perm being held up with another.

No, that is definitely not me.

Homeschooler? That sounds like I am the one who is being taught.

Homeschool teacher? A bit too pretentious, and this conjures a blackboard, American flag, and a whopping three kids lined up behind desks.

So who am I? And, more importantly, what do I occupy myself with?

When my oldest was just a few weeks old, my mother came to visit. I was in the midst of graduate school in biology, or, more correctly, in the midst of quitting graduate school. I knew even before I had my baby that being gone for twelve hour stretches was not what I was aspiring to do, even if my research was going well, even if I was a very good student, and even if I could find a way to balance motherhood, lab work, stipend for an income and random babysitters. My mother was very disturbed by this. I remember a conversation where she was pushing me to define myself, sort of in the way that those forms want you to describe yourself in one word. She said that she is a doctor, and my grandfather was a veteran. I, fresh from yet another nursing and diaper change, and a whole new mommy brain, which felt like being stuck in honey after high-flying intellectualism of scientific papers, said that I am a mother. My mother laughed, and said that it's something you do on the side, and the kids grow up and they do not need you and you need to be something else.

Almost nine years into motherhood, I beg to differ. It is easy to dismiss motherhood as yet another pursuit, but it is impossible for it not to redefine you in such fundamental ways, that both of your ears are left ringing. On the other hand, those professions and occupations come and go. My mother became a doctor because of a certain degree of family pressure, and while she found what she likes, I often think about how many other things she could have been pursuing, were she not so rigidly defined by being a doctor. My grandfather was an organizer of veterans from WWII, but, I am sure, he would have been much happier if the war never happened, and there were no veterans to organize. Would his life be incomplete without them?

What am I? I was a foreign student, and that defined me for a bit. I was also a very good student. I was type A, always driven, always organized. I still approach any sort of testing or personal learning that way. But life threw enough curve balls already, that I learned to mellow out, let go, and not always strive for an A when B would be just fine, and NOBODY is grading anyway!

I am a life-long learner; just as I audited physical chemistry in college, so I took a graphic design course, and so I read midwifery books, and so I started my Nach Yomi and so I keep on learning alongside my kids. I am also not shy to try something new, push a different button, move out of my comfort zone.

I have been working on my character traits, because there are six eyes constantly learning from me, especially when I am at my worst. When you are home with your kids all the time, you cannot blame others for the way they are turning out. So personal growth is on my agenda.

I can make a dinner in 15 minutes, if need be. I can get the kids out the door in 15 minutes, too. And I can watch your kid if you give me a 15 minute notice. I can also have a friend over, for tea, for a talk, just to drop in. My house will not be spotless, but whatever needs to be picked up (to my standards) will get done in 15 minutes.

I can read a book to one child while nursing another. I can resolve conflicts, chauffeur, grocery-shop with kids in tow, sneak in math, teach aleph-bet, answer questions about foramen ovale and why is Shaul after Dovid (chasing, that is, not chronologically). I can wipe tushies in the middle of the night, chase away bad dreams and soothe a child back to sleep. I can teach how to ride a bike and fly a kite, how to read and multiply, how to apply for a library card and write an apology letter.

Is there a name for all of this? Moreover, as I am filling out yet another form, is there space for all of this?

Most of this falls into the category of conscious motherhood. Yet I strongly doubt that writing "mother" as occupation, and "being my own boss" as employer is what those forms are after.

What defines you? What occupies you? And how flexible are you willing to be with your self-definition when the circumstances change?

too much Pokemon

My kids got into Pokemon this summer. Really got into it: the cards, the lingo, the games, the stats, the videos. I assumed it is a fad and will pass. But this fad has been fed by 8 yo getting Pokemon cards as a reward for good davening in his groups on Shabbos. I also got the wind that the other boys are not so into Pokemon, so has quite a good time picking.

I have been waiting for this to go away. I gave it months and months. I let them play some games and watch some videos. I let them keep their cards and washed quite a few of them in their pockets. But the love of Pokemon is not diminishing. Moreover, it is all they talk about and play. At least it seems like that. It is consuming a large amount of their time and energy.

I have two choices. The first is to ban Pokemon outright. I tried it the first time around, about 3 years ago. I said that no Pokemon talk will take place at the table and they can talk Pokemon with their friends and not with me. It worked, but the primary reason was that 8 yo was not a fluent reader, and 6 yo could not read at all, so there was no feeding into it. They also did not have stacks and stacks of cards. This time around it will not work.

The second choice is that of quail (slav). When the Jewish people wandered in the dessert, they had mann: a perfect food. But all the wanted was quail, the real meat. The lesson of the quail was that it covered the ground one day, and there were giant heaps of it. It was more that anyone could eat, or wanted to eat. It was coming out of their noses. Afterwards, the people did not ask for quail again.

So I am thinking: oversaturation. I will get some library Pokemon books, I will make them spend a whole day doing just Pokemon games and Pokemon movies. I know that they will reach a point where nobody will want to deal with those Pokemons. My limit setting has been backfiring, so no limit might be just the cure for this malaise.

I am planning this Pokemon marathon for one day next week. Stay tuned...

the gift of time

Do you know the biggest problem teachers face in their classroom? Classroom management. This means that a teacher has to figure out how to meaningfully engage x amount of students for x amount of time while transmitting x amount of information. The teacher usually has just one shot to transmit this information, and so, all different techniques are devised so that the transmission is optimal. The teacher is told not to talk till he has everyone's attention, be very precise in his message, be well-prepared and know his material cold, focus on lecturing while saving the questions for later, lest the students get distracted. And at the end, there is a quiz/test/homework to see what has been retained.

All of this makes perfect sense... if you are dealing with ideal scenario. But what if the students just came in from recess where they beat another team at kickball and all they can think about is the next game? What if there is a fire drill in the middle of the class and the lesson time is curtailed? What if the teacher gets asked a question to which he does not have an answer, or, as he is explaining the material, he himself realizes that something does not make sense? Finally, what if everything went smoothly on the surface, but the test/quiz/homework does not produce high results?

It just hit me on Friday, and it's surprising that it took me this long, after all my teaching/homeschooling experiences. I was teaching parsha to the boys. I was using the easel to illustrate. Both boys were here and engaged, asking questions. 8 yo got a binder and drew his own illustrations. Both boys called out the Ten Commandments. Then we got on the subject of zachor/shamor. (Briefly: there is a discrepancy between what it says in the Ten Commandments in Shemot and in Devarim, one place says to remember Shabbos, another to keep it.) 6 yo immediately piped in: "zachor veshamor bedibur echad" from Lecha Dodi. He has been going to shul with my husband on Friday nights and listening. I asked him if he knew what it meant and he did not. I told the boys that it's funny that they know the answer without knowing the question. I explained that Hashem said both words at the same time and tried to get boys to both say one each, to make it sound like it. 6 yo got frustrated and left, kicking. He laid down on the floor in the adjacent room. I kept on teaching parsha to 8 yo as if nothing happened.

During Friday night dinner, we ask parsha questions. Usually 8 yo knows everything, and 6 yo sometimes participates, sometimes does not. This week, he was on the roll. He knew a lot, named 9 of the Ten Commandments, answered about Shema, etc. Obviously even though he was not in the same room, doing his own thing, he was listening. He was learning. 

I realized that in order to teach, I do not need an attentive student. I just need an interested one. I also realized that parsha comes up every year, and whichever points the kids will not pick up this year, they will pick up next. Or they will pick up Chumash and look it up themselves. Or they will hear it in shul when they are older. Or they will pick it up from other conversations. I do not have to squeeze everything in efficiently right now. I have the gift of time.

The gift of time also means that I do not have to know everything. I can answer that I do not know, look it up, and come back to it. I can correct myself. I can tweak my answers. I am allowed to experiment and make mistakes. I am allowed to be human. I am allowed to take a day off from teaching and nothing will happen. We will make it up sometime.

I don't know why all of this did not hit me sooner. Now there is no need to demand excellence, just effort. If there is no effort, then the time is not right. Come back to it when they are interested and things will go smoothly.

-----

I told all of this to my mother, and she told me about my sister, who was taking English language courses back in Moldova. As a middle-schooler, she was deemed too young to sit by herself with college-age kids ( college started at 16, but still), so my mother had to sit with her. This was after a full day of school, so she tended to climb under her desk to play. However, as my mother remarked, whenever a teacher asked her a question, she would pop up to answer, and he let her be and learn like that.

Oh, and she turned out OK. She has a PhD and is working on a post-doc.

Pesach Trivia Questions

I have been thinking quite a bit how to make our seder more interactive for the kids. I have a few ideas, but not sure how many of them I will be implementing and how many of them will go as planned.

I am planning to have a bunch of trivia questions to throw out there whenever the kids will seem bored.

Here is my list ( the last few with asnwers I found online). They skew to the younger side, since I want my 5 yr old to feel that they are "easy-peasy".

1. What are the names of the holiday we are celebrating today?
2. What are the ingredients used to make matzah?
3. What are the names of the grains used to make matzah?
4. What does shmura matzah mean?
5. How long does one have before matzah dough becomes chametz?
6. What are two reasons for eating matzah at the seder?
7. When does one have mitzvah to eat matzah?
8. How many days is Pesach?
9. What happened on Pesach?
10. In which country were Jewish people slaves?
11. How long were they slaves?
12. How many people went down to Egypt?
13. How many people came up from Egypt?
14. Who is not mentioned in the hagaddah, but you cannot tell story of Yetziat Mitzraim without him?
15. How many steps are there at the seder?
16. How many cups are there? Why?
17. Which two korbanot were brought on Erev Pesach?
18. How are we reminded of them?
19. What tefila is said at night ONLY on seder night, but never during the year?
20. What caused Par’o to let the Jews go?
21. Name the makkos.
22. Which makkah is the scariest? ( subjective)
23. What is Shabbat HaGadol?
24. What are you not allowed to do with chametz on Pesach?
25. In which month do we celebrate Pesach?
26. What did Jewish people do in Mitzrayim so that Hashem would skip their houses during the last makkah?
27. Did Jewish people leave Miztraiym rich or poor?
28.  Which “dessert” do we eat tonight?
29. What is charoset?
30. Name Moshe’s brother and sister.
31. Why is Ha Lachma Ania in Aramaic?
32. Who are the four sons?
33. What does Dayeinu mean?
34. When is the right time for the seder?
35. Name the ingredients of Korech.
36. Which tefila is split into two parts during seder?
37. Which way do we recline?
38. Name some halachot of korban Pesach.
39. What kind of meat are we not allowed to eat during the seder?
40. What happened to Mitzrim as they chased Bnei Yisrael?
41. What is the last line in the hagaddah?
42. Where do the pesukim for maggid come from?
43. What happened in Bnei Brak?
44. Find out what Ben Zoma taught.
45. Who fasts right before Pesach and why?
46. Who is the 5th cup for? (Eliyahu)
47. What do we open right near the end of the seder (the door)
48. What do we do while drinking the wine? (lean)
49. Which way do we lean? (left)
50. Why do we eat maror? (bc slavery was bitter)
51. Name a vegetable u can use for karpas?
52. What do we dip karpas in? (salt water)
53. Why salt water? (tears of slaves, bitter)
54. what did the jews do with the blood of the sheep b4 leaving Egypt? (put it on their doorposts)
55. Name the 4 sons? (rasha, chacham, tam, she’eino yodea lisheol)
56. Sing mah nishtana
57. What do we eat with the matzah? (maror and charoset)
58. Name something u can use for maror?
59. How many times do we wash our hands during the seder? (2)
60. How many seders do we have in chutz laaretz? (2)
61. How many seders do Israelis have? (1)
62. Name 3 things that are chametz?
63. What are ways to get rid of chametz? (burn it, throw it out)

If you have any to add, please add! We will all benefit.