back to school?

Today we did so much, that it is possible to say we started the school year.

By the time I got up, 9 yo was dressed and davened. He took out recycling as an extra chore, for a fee. He is still getting the logistics of it, but I am glad that he is doing it. The rest of the kids had breakfast and got dressed. I did chumash with 9 yo first. We finished Breishit, and he was happy. He remembered Rashis from yesterday, but did not ask any questions on frankly bizarre pesukim at the very end of Breishit. He finished the family tree of Adam and asked, when are we going to Six Flags for a siyum? Hearing this, 7 yo got upset. I showed him that we were on 12th pasuk of Lech Lecha, and had to finish the perek at 20th. I asked him, how many more pesukim do we have? He used fingers and toes to figure out that it's 8. He is also getting the idea of gemmatria. Once he saw the amount, he wanted to do extra, so today we reviewed and did the last pasuk of the first aliyah. She asked about the word sheni written in his workbook, and I explained what that meant. I had to remind him about sh'va na and nach as he was reading.

9 yo started mishnayot this week with a local rabbi. They started on Succah, we'll see how it goes. We are aiming for three times a week for the next month. He is reading nicely, and tonight when I reviewed it with him, translating quite well, too. He explained a few things to me.

Yesterday we went to a sand workshop with homeschool co-op. There they asked everyone to make a name tag.  I called up the boys to make their own. 9 yo took care of it, while 7 yo hesitated in writing his own name. 3 yo looked up at me and said that she cannot write her name, and I assured her that I will write it for her. 7 yo could not complete the task until I wrote his name and he copied it with great frustration. I was panicking: the whole idea of unschooling is that when the need arises, the skill is taught, yet here was a clear need, but no desire to learn. Moreover, he definitely should be able to write his name! So while 9 yo was learning mishna, I called 7 yo over and said that I will teach him to write his name, for future use. He asked whether it will include last name (ours is long). I sad, yes. He promptly threw a fit, said he cannot do it, does not need it, I can't make him, etc. He left to his room. I was plenty busy with the other kids, especially since 3 yo wanted help with aleph-bet book and I was holding a fussy baby. Five minutes later he came to show more frustration. I was nervous about disturbing 9 yo and his rebbe. Finally, I told 7 yo that he can either write his name, or any word that he likes; I will write it for him to copy. He asked about when his Handwriting Without Tears will arrive (he asked for it the other week, only he was crying and called it Handwriting With Tears). He is convinced that it will fix all his troubles with writing. I sad that we can track the package after he writes something, since the book will not be teaching him how tow write his name. Then he said he wants to write something easy, like the word "easy". I jumped on it. He had such hard time forming letters even when the model was right above... I am not so sure whether unschooling writing will work for this kid. Handwriting With Minimal Tears is supposed to arrive tomorrow, we'll see how that goes.

A bit later I showed the boys the math texts I got for the upcoming year, so that they will be familiar with what we'll be using. I ordered Math Mammoth for 9 yo (per his request) and Spectrum Math for 7 yo. I asked 7 yo when we would like to get started on math and he said, tomorrow. A bit later I showed 9 yo all of his math and asked him the same question. He said, never. I said that it is not an appropriate response. He said, fine, I will do some pages today. I sort of sat next to him and sort of held 3 yo on my lap. He was slogging his way through division problems. They were not hard, but I wondered to myself why they would start the text with division as opposed to some review of last year's material, or place value, or some warm-ups. At some point he got frustrated, and his multiplication was shaky, especially of the higher numbers. I ended up writing in some answers for him, he solved the problems in his head. This was taking waaay longer than I anticipated. 3 yo was restless and 7 yo started his song  that nobody pays any attention to him or spends any time with him. I said, you could be doing math and getting attention, if you want. He said that he will open his book and see what's in there. Here is the cool part: he decided to do the first two pages! They were easy, and he did it boom, boom, boom, except when he was asked to spell out 13 and 8. He froze there, and no offers of writing them down and copying worked. Meanwhile, 9 yo finished his math. As we were closing his binder, I noticed that he was in the middle of a paper stack. Then it hit me: instead of doing the first lesson, he did the first lesson of the second workbook! No wonder it was hard, and did not feel like warm-up! The good news is, maybe we do not need to spend so much time on the first section. Math Mammoth is very thorough, which is another way to say "boring"...

In the middle of the day, the kids found pipe cleaners and Styrofoam balls and designed all sorts of things out of them. The balls were poked and produced quite a mess that required vacuuming. The boys fought over who will vacuum it up.

At taekwondo, both boys got their green belts. 9 yo got his gear yesterday, and today was a sparring day, so they got to suit up and fight. During the car ride back, they discussed who got kicked where and whom did they kick. I, personally, could do taekwondo without the sparring part, just the discipline and moves.

Before we left for taekwondo, I made flounder for dinner. When we got home, 9 yo raised a bit of a stink that it's not tilapia, so I put him in charge of making a vegetable to go with dinner. I had to nurse anyway. He chopped up a garden cucumber and then peeled a carrot into strips and mixed it all in a bowl with some Italian dressing. Voila! He felt quite accomplished. The flounder turned out to be a hit despite not being tilapia, not a piece remained.

I am still trying to figure out what makes the boys tick the way they do. When 9 yo was working on that hard math and was getting frustrated with writing stuff down, he told me that as long as he does not need to show any work, he can do anything, "even that thing that Einstein did". I said that in math you cannot just have theory, you need proofs. 9 yo has so much ga'ava ( pride, self-esteem) that he almost always needs to be slightly deflated to reality. 7 yo, on the other hand, has none of that. I need to reassure him that he can do it, he knows it, he is able. I wonder whether 7 yo gets along better with people because no ga'ava gets in the way.

being in charge

It's two o'clock and we are finished. I think, for today, I got a good balance of "things to do" and "things which will get done without stressing anyone out".

6 yo got up at 8:20, he has a cold and needed extra sleep. After leisurely breakfast, he got dressed and unloaded his share of the dishwasher. He even davened with his sister, unsolicited. By the time he got to his davening, it was 10. His agenda had four items: math, Lama, Lashon haTorah and spelling. Yet here, we are, at 2, and he is done, even though he got time to play outside and eat lunch and read.

Yesterday, we had a siyum for Chayei Sorah that 8 yo finished. He got really motivated towards the end, seeing that it is all genealogy and easy reading. Last day, he did about 7 pesukim, just to finish up. For his wrap-up project, we wrote up a family tree of Terach's family. We went all the way back to the end of Noach, found Rivka's blood line, and included Yishmael's children along with all Keturah's sons. I feel like I want to frame it, it is so complex. He also added in Yakov and shvatim. I said that we will add Eisav's and shvatim's kids when we learn them. So we went to Menchie's yesterday, to celebrate. I remarked to my husband how we did a whole parsha in just a few months, and we will probably finish another one by the end of the year. Since we are going at our own pace, it does not seem rushed, just the speed we are moving along at.

Today 6 yo finished his first Lashon haTorah workbook. I will be ordering the second one.

One of the issues I grapple with again and again is how much pressure should be coming from me as opposed to internal motivation of the child. We have been slowly adding more brachot in Shemone Esre with 8 yo. Right now, I let him daven quietly everything till Shemone Esre, and then he says it out loud with me. We are up to Judgement ( din). He read it over in Hebrew and got the basic idea, but I knew that he did not know all the words. He has not been eager to lean the meanings of all the words. Incidentally, Artscroll was having a sale and had a book on Shemone Esre, explaining each bracha. I ordered it and figured that it will help. 8 yo glanced at it, but has not opened it. This morning, I decided to pull it out and show him the bracha and read a little insight. He had no interest, in fact, he said that I am taking away his kavana ( intention). I asked, why? He said that the book is very long and intimidating. I immediately closed the book, bookmarking the page of the bracha and put it away. We ended up talking a bit as to why this bracha comes after the ingathering of exiles and the true justice of G-d. Obviously, while the subject might be interesting to him, the timing is not right. The book  and the bookmark will stay, but I will leave it to his discretion whether to open it or not.

Along the same lines, some days it takes 6 yo hours and hours to finish one or two pages of work. Sometimes he is distracted. Sometimes he does not feel like working. Sometimes I wish he would just get up and say that he will do it later. But most times, I discover that the reason is quite different. Usually it is some assignment, way later on the list, that he is dreading, so he starts stalling early. Usually the dread has nothing to do with difficulty, but with his perception of work. For example, we were supposed to complete a page of questions and answers about Lama. He read the story fluently and translated without a hitch, so I knew that he knew the vocabulary. When we opened to the page, he dissolved into a tantrum. Once he was able to talk ( half an hour later), he said that they expect him to write everything perfectly. Ok, the lines are small (this is a second grade workbook and he is not a comfortable writer), but never did I ask him for perfection. I offered to split the writing, and he agreed. Then I suggested using a ruled piece of paper for the answers, so he would not be constricted by small lines. That was also fine. Then we hit a wall. The practice was for the verb "open", and the choices were "poteach/potachat/potchim/potchot". As long as the picture had a boy, the questions "mi poteach" was fine, but as soon as the picture was that of a girl, he could not understand what they want from him, and why is the question still in masculine. All of my explanation that the questioner does not know the gender or the amount of people performing the action fell on deaf ears. He could not deal with it, and dissolved into tears. I closed the book for the day.

Today we went back to the same page (after skipping a day). He was ready to accept the explanation and polished it off very quickly, writing in half the answers (on small lines) and giving me the other half orally for me to write in.

What would happen to this kid in a classroom? Which teacher would have the patience to recognize that the tantrums have nothing to do with misbehavior but with the pain of reality not conforming to expectations? How often do we, grown-ups, completely lose it when reality bites? When that person takes too long to make a left turn and then we have to wait for the next light? When somebody makes a promise and then does not keep it? When we want it to be Sunday, but it is Monday?

I wonder whether I really should let 6 yo be, instead of enforcing more and more schoolwork. This is not about ability, but this is about sanity, both for him and for me.

10 tests of Avraham

I thought that asking 10 yo come up with his own list of 10 tests of Avraham would be a nice wrap-up of the parsha, and would force him to go back and review without me having much input. Well, while the research and the thought process was quite independent, the project was not. He asked if he can use printer paper--we usually recycle our project paper by using the other side of already printed pages or junk mail. I said, yes, figuring that he is motivated to produce neat project. His first step was to fold all the pages in half, like a book and then staple them like this:

In his defense, we have a mini-stapler which does not reach across a folded page, and it is a creative solution. My perfectionist side cringes deep inside. I always liked to use a ruler to draw a faint line, then trace the letters in pencil, then go over with the marker, then erase all pencil marks... This child is obviously more into substance than beauty.

Next, he started illustrating the tests. I told him they have to be in the chronological order, and that he has to list a source for each. He deadpanned that some are from the midrash, so there is no pasuk. Fair enough. However, he was recreating his list from memory, and by fourth page he realized that he skipped one. Now he was looking for the list he wrote yesterday. He could not find it. I reminded how putting everything away in its proper place helps. he still could not find it. I told him to check his notebook. Sure enough, he wrote the list inside, just did not remember. Now he had to fix his anachronistic test. He took a piece of paper and taped it over the wrong page. The feel of the book was no longer neat, but it did satisfy basic requirements. 

Next came listing the pesukim. He did find all the pesukim that he was illustrating, but, after writing out the first one, he settled for an abbreviation: pasuk's number, perek's number, parsha's number, sefer's number. This way, Akeidat Yitzhak became tet-cav bet-dalet-aleph. I am sure there is a job in cryptography waiting for him somewhere.

The real kicker came when he realized that he needs to illustrate the brit mila (circumcision). He threw his hands up in the air and said: What is it that I am supposed to draw? Avraham's (private parts)? His brother suggested drawing Avraham in a diaper; they have been to their share of circumcisions. 8 yo responded that Avraham was too old to be in a diaper. I held my breath, wondering what he will come up with. This is the result:

Very frum and proper, as you can see.

This reminded of an old joke: a guy needs to have his shoes fixed, so he sees a boot painted on the storefront and walks in. The owner says: I am not a shoemaker, I am a mohel. The guys asks, then why is there a shoe hanging on the sign? The owner responds, and what was I supposed to paint on the sign?

Now that the project is complete, I am looking at it and thinking: did it accomplish the goal I had in mind? Did he work independently? Yes. Did he review the perakim? Yes. Did he think back about these two parshiyot? Yes. So, despite it not being museum-quality, it fulfilled all educational objectives. And it was quite creative and resourceful.

I will end by directing you to this TED talk, on the subject of schools and creativity (thanks to my friend for bringing it to my attention):

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html 

lots of hours

After some deliberation, I decided to make today more of a regular school day and then tomorrow and Wednesday can be dedicated to Purim prep.

The boys davened one at a time, with 2 yo stuffing a bear sleeping bag with dominoes in the meanwhile. Give kids limited toys and unlimited time, and they will come up with more creative ways to use them than you can imagine.

Then it was time to pick schoolwork. 7 yo picked writing. For today, I asked him to write his own myth. He has been reading a lot of them, discussing them with my husband, reading about ancient Greece, so I thought that should give him an opportunity to combine his knowledge with creativity. He went for it and spent a long time writing, over an hour. He pulled out Mythlopedia, for source material, and then he kept commenting how he's mixing up myths. His Medusa was turning everyone to ice and lived in Australia. His Hercules was product of Poseidon and Hera and was imprisoned in Egypt. I got impatient a couple times and was ready to interrupt him and ask him to move onto the next activity, but he kept on writing. Fortunately, a friend of mine shared a blog entry that she saw, which reminded me that only by putting in this many uninterrupted hours in whatever he's interested in, will I see quality results. So I let him be. When he finished, he wanted to type it up. That we'll save for tomorrow.

In the meanwhile, 5 yo did handwriting ( letter y), math (we rolled a large foam die and added up numbers on its sides), reading (he asked me to read The Dot, about a child who thinks she cannot draw, so all she does is a big dot) and Purim handout from chinuch.org He read the handout and wrote in most answers, so we got more handwriting/reading practice.

By this point, 5 yo was almost done with his planned activities, while 7 yo still had quite a list to go. He started off on his Purim booklet, which was fill in the blank of the Megillah. He ended up working on that till completion.

Then we had lunch. 7 yo picked Megillah and was involved. We finished second perek. I'm using Artscroll Youth Megillah, so there are definite "edited out" spots. I decided not to explain more than he asks, just that Esther was in a bad position whether Achashverosh picked her or not. He also thought it was nuts that Achashverosh gathered up girls the second time. And, of course, he wanted to know why Bigtan and Teresh were plotting against the king. It's that siyum at the end that he really was after.

Then he did math, which involved measuring weight and volume. I do not have a metric scale ( gasp), so I had hard time explaining grams and kilograms. I'm a bit worried that he will think the relationship between them is similar to pounds and ounces. Volume involved cups and quarts. I pulled out measuring cups and let him pour water at the sink and measure away, while 5 yo did ktiva and Yesh Lanu Lama.

7 yo was not happy when 5 yo finished all his work and he still had a few things left to do. 5 yo asked to watch TV, I said yes, but then he decided to wait for his brother. 7 yo had to do those Purim sentences, this time to copy them in Hebrew. He decided that he does not want to organize them by pesukim first, then put them in order and then copy. I said, fine, do it whichever way, but you do need to copy them. He thrashed around for a bit. 5 yo went downstairs to watch TV, which did motivate 7 yo to start working. This time he did organize the cards first. When he was copying them, he paraphrased a few to make them shorter. Mother necessity, where would we be...

By the time he finished, 5 yo woke up, so we went to a new bakery for siyum. The boys chose frozen yogurt, which was half off. I got myself a cup of tea. The boys declared that place to be fancy. Afterwards, it was gymnastics, followed by a library run, mostly to return DVDs and pick up items on hold. I told boys, one book out only. 7 yo went to the computer with the catalog, he wanted another Mythlopedia book. Mysteriously, they were shown to be in library, but were not on the shelves. We even got the librarians involved. Meanwhile, 2 yo made friends and was busy climbing onto library benches, giggling loudly. I just grabbed her and ran. So much for a quick in-and-out visit.

One of the hold items was Beethoven's Wig 4. It is classical music with witty words sang to it, usually introducing the composer and the nature of the piece, too. Unfortunately, now I cannot listen to those pieces without singing the words in my head.

Starbucks siyum

Got up late, for us. It was after 7.  By 9, we were all dressed and breakfasted. They boys davened. 5 yo started with Rosetta Stone: nothing like a little competition for the computer with your older brother to serve as motivation. 7 yo read history from Story of the World. I know that it is meant to be read to a child, but he's nicely reading it by himself. I printed out a map of the Middle East and we marked off Fertile Crescent, Lower and Upper Egypt ( he really liked that they are upside down), Babylonia and Assyria. He also colored in the seas of the region.

Then he went to do Rosetta Stone while 5 yo did Yesh Lanu Lama ( body parts) and ketiva. Today he told me which words to write in which blanks, but the body parts he labeled by himself. I had to restrain him from starting on the next letter.

7 yo came up to do megillah. We finished first perek. He read each pasuk in Hebrew from Artscroll Youth Megilah and then we translated together. He remarked how Achashverosh's law sounded dumb, something that people already knew. Then he asked for a small siyum. I suggested walking to Starbucks; I needed shredded cheese from local kosher grocery. The weather was gorgeous today, so it was a nice little outing. At Starbucks, 5 yo turned around and thanked me for taking them out. Those little spontaneous moments of appreciation make my heart melt.

On the way back, a ladybug landed on my glasses. 7 yo took it off and tried carrying it home, but it bit him and flew away. 5 yo found some beetles on the sidewalk. We stopped by our frost-bitten magnolia and noted how new leaves were forming, even though all blooms were brown and shriveled.

I put up noodles for lunch, and boys did math. 7 yo practiced multiplication of 4s, 5s and 6s. 5 yo worked on even-odd and comparing numbers. 7 yo was checking 5 yo's work; free reinforcement. While the noodles were still boiling, 5 yo brought out weaving board to make a trivet. He started on one a while back, but could not get the weaving part. This time, after making a woven place mat in homeschooling coop, he succeeded. He only put in one loop, but he got the hang and the coordination of alternating under-over.

During lunch, 7 yo suddenly asked why do we remove chametz( leaven) from our houses and not, say, logs for Pesach. I tried answering as quickly as I could, but I wish I would have saved it for a more in-depth, calmer discussion.

Then I read Bill Nye book about germs to both boys. 5 yo read to me The Shape of Me. Then 7 yo did sentences from the megillah, this time I asked him to put them in order of the story. He resisted a bit, but did it in the end. I asked whether he wants to write them down in order now and he said no. We agreed to do it tomorrow. Looks like another overscheduled Friday coming up.

Then 7 yo did a description of a photo from National Geographic. he got 4-5 sentences. I explained that a good description allows people to imagine what the picture is like without seeing it. I also tried introducing a more formal voice, but it might be a bit too hard for him.

5 yo finished handwriting and then I decided to try spelling. I used Spelling Power, just started at the lowest level. I was nicely surprised that he willingly followed along, and got all words right except for that. He wrote dat. Might be my darn Russian accent confusing him...

5 yo reminded me to check on our beans, I put it on the schedule, but completely forgot. Some have molded, but some are growing roots and one even put out leaves. We also checked on the ones in paper towel, there we got nice fat roots and fuzzy root hairs.

Looking forward to taking everyone out to Botanical Gardens this afternoon.