comic relief

My oldest, upon hearing me debate which browser to install instead of Chrome: "Maybe you should be like Shimshon and get Firefox?"

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My daughter lost her sandal. I picked her up from camp with both sandals on. Sometime between her pick-up, boys' pick-up from camp, pit stop at home for a library card and the library's parking lot, her sandal went missing. She did not leave the car the whole time. I checked in every bag and dug under all the seats: no sandal. That's how she hopped to the library, on one foot. I hope one shoe satisfies "shirt and shoes required".

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My husband overheard 8 yo tell that 4 yo promised never to tell on her brothers.
My husband: "That will not work, she is not required to do that."
8 yo: "She promised."
"I cancel her promise. It was in this week's parsha."
"She promised yesterday. You can't cancel it today, too late!"
"I just heard about it today, so I am cancelling it today."

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The other day I woke up to a detailed budget of what it would cost to keep a dragon:










I am not sure that I am a dragon person.

why nothing gets done

I was planning to do chumash with 9 yo while the baby was taking a nap. So I waited to start till the baby fell asleep. Once he was asleep and we were in the middle, I saw 3 yo looking real sleepy in the chair. I asked her whether she would like to go lie down, but she refused.

I was hoping that we will finish chumash quickly enough for me to take a little nap (baby has been waking up at 5:30), but it took longer, so just as we were completing it, I heard the baby wake up. As I was going to pick him up, I saw that 3 yo did manage to fall asleep in the chair.

I nursed the baby, saying that I will try to transfer 3 yo to her bed afterwards. If she is not soundly asleep, that will not work. But she transferred, only hugged me sleepily and murmured something.

We were supposed to go to the library, since some books are non-renewable and are due today. I wanted to go while the baby was freshly awake, so we would have time to browse. Now I am waiting for 3 yo to wake up, She has been also waking up at 5:30. By the time she wakes up, it will be time for her brother to nap, so I will have a choice: take them all in whichever state they are in, or wait some more.

Meanwhile I am supposed to throw a lasagna together. I was going to do it after the library, but I am not sure now that there will be time for that. As I am putting it together ( no-boil sheet noodles, canned marinara, ten minutes tops), I hear the baby who was sitting starting to kvetch. Do I pick him up? Try to talk to him and finish the lasagna?

The boys are on Nintendo, deep in their own world. At least we finished all the schoolwork that I planned for today, but now I feel a twinge of guilt that they are spending so much time staring at a screen instead of being out and about.

All of you homeschoolers, who have perfectly planned and choreographed days: how does it work?

reading as a way of life

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

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

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

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

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

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

hectic day

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

spontaneous group davening

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

experimenting with inclined planes

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

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

digging for fossils

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

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

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

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

November 12th

Hubby was on call last night, but he came home for breakfast for an hour. All three kids jumped him, literally. We are big on wrestling time with daddy, and 2 yo does not let him leave the house without kisses. I remember, when we just got married  walking by someone's house in Far Rockaway. The father was just walking up the driveway, and, in the window, there were two girls, jumping on the couch and cheering for daddy. I feel happy that this is the ritual my kids developed on their own. Some days, they will run out on the lawn to greet him.

After breakfast, it was time to change a tire on my van. I planned on walking the kids to nearby McDonald's with some schoolwork, and letting them climb on the play structure till it was time to pick up the car. In the ideal world, my husband would take the car and I could just stay home without hustling everyone out of the house early. In the ideal world, there would be a park nearby where the kids could play. In the ideal world, the local eatery would be kosher, or, at least, not so stereotypically treif. But this is the way the cookie crumbles, and I thought it gives kids a nice motivation to finish their work quickly so they could play. As we walk in and settle down at the table, I hear a voice behind me, saying: Shalom, chaverim! Boker tov! (Hello, friends! Good morning!) So much for coming in undetected... I got myself a coffee, so that we were not just using their facilities without them benefiting.  I also learned that they blast music, which made it hard for boys to concentrate. However, despite all that, they were able to do Lashon HaTorah. 8 yo worked on memorizing his multiplication. 6 yo filled out a page of Lama. Then everyone went outside to play.

The tire was done, and, as I am picking up my car, I bumped into a friend. She told me about story time at the library which was starting soon. When the boys were younger, we used to go all the time. We were also in different cities then. Here, I tried it a few times, but it never worked out well: either the librarian quit, or the new librarian kept mispronouncing words from the books she was reading, or it was a month off, or something else. Besides, it is hard to justify dragging all three kids to an activity which is only meant for one. However, I had some books to return, and I thought that the boys could sit and read in the kids' section while I held 2 yo on my lap. So off we went.

What I completely forgot about was that today was Veteran's Day, so the library was closed. We still got to slide all 40+ books down the book drop and the boys informed all other people in the vicinity that the library is closed.

When we got home, I wrote up the list of what was left to do. It included raking leaves and going to farmer's market, neither of which happened due to the rain and sleeping 2 yo. She took a long time settling in and then a long time waking up. Those naps do not last forever, but I am holding on to them, with both hands and all my sanity.

I have an interesting dichotomy within my boys: one could not give a hoot about neatness of his work, while the other is paralyzed by the thought of getting something wrong. I find that I sound like a cray person, telling one kid to fix this and show me better work, and encouraging the other to write down just about anything, and that it's good enough. I wonder whether it is part of "chanoch l'naar al pi darko", teaching each child according to his disposition. I also wonder whether it will make me crazy. I wonder whether I will have enough patience to be really doing it, and not just paying lip service to the idea.

2 yo has been climbing into 6 yo's bed when I tuck him in, but for the past week, it was bothering him. He pulled on his blanket, tried kicking her off and came up with all different strategies why she should not be in his bed. Depending o the night, I could go along with that, after all, it is his bed and he should be able to make rules about who is welcome there and when. Tonight it happened that I was tucking him in and nobody else was in the room. We said Shema and then he wanted to know where is his sister. I said that she is out, and he sounded that he was expecting her to be in his bed. I thought about how he really wants her there, but on his terms, and now that she was not present, he was missing her.

Delilah

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

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

feeling lazy

Too tired for a long post, so here is my lazy version of today:

• davened
• 8 yo happily bangs on the drums and unhappily practices what his teacher assigned
• Pike's nursery to get cages for drooping tomato plants
• boys buy a plant each (with their own money)
• 8 yo buys guaranteed to sprout cactus seeds. Mom is skeptical.
• caged the tomatoes
• boys made a terrarium with their plotted plants
• 2 yo refused to nap
• when reminded to feed the fish, 8 yo said I should be doing it for a change. That did not go over well.
• in a fit of anger, I cleared off boys' desk and put everything in a garbage bag. They still didn't notice.
• drove to Starlab in a local library ( free!)
• signed up for library's summer reading program
• 6 yo proved that he reads fluently
• corralled napless 2 yo while boys were watching stars
• Costco with 3 kids, one of which didn't nap. Let your imagination run wild on that one! 
• 2 yo falls asleep on the drive home
• boys help me unload the car and then sit down to read library books
• I make dinner
• baths/showers
• 6 yo watches a library video about car racing while 8 yo works on end of the perek project. This was my will, not his. I got annoyed with lack of responsibility, and I think finishing chumash dangling from yesterday should be done before TV watching
• for good-night story, 6 yo wants to do shared reading, like we did in the library

OK, put like this, it does sound like a packed day. I am still waiting to see what a lazy summer day will look like.

diving into books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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