the ups and downs

We had our siyum in Cupz and Cake. When I got up, both boys were dressed, and sitting quietly on the couch, reading, ready to go. The breakfast went well, till we got to the decadent desserts, which made everyone a bit too hyper and proved to be a bit too rich to finish.

8 yo wrote Rosh HaShana cards. He wrote on one card the whole "Leshana Tova..." in Hebrew, out of his own free will. When it came time to address the envelopes, it took him four tries to get it right. I am not talking perfection, I am talking that the post office would actually deliver the letter: on the right side, with the right amount of lines, legible, in the middle of the envelope. He did two today, I wonder if he will do more tomorrow or later. I wonder how many adults would give up after the first try. Or, maybe, not try at all.

6 yo cracked his first chapter book. It was Captain Underpants. I cringe. I cannot believe this book is in our house. I cannot believe that out of all other great books we have (Magic Tree House, abridged classics, etc), THIS is what he is interested in reading. But I think that it is written lightly, with 6 yo boy humor, and he occasionally stops to tell me a joke. He is comprehending and talking about what he is reading. Just before I am ready to shrug my shoulders, I see that he put it down and switched over to Artscroll's Children's Book of Yonah. Now I have no objections, and he is equally engaged.

8 yo cannot figure out a basic addition problem in math. I am at my wits' end. We finished the review of basic addition/subtraction. He understands everything he has to do, but he has no sense that the answer to "something minus seven is three" cannot be "four". I pull out an abacus to show him what it means. He tells me that he is embarrassed, but I do not see comprehension. I doubt myself. I doubt my approach to math. I wonder whether he just does not have number sense, whether all the math he does happens mindlessly, mechanically. I am worried that he will end up like most Americans, with so many years of math schooling, and no conception of what it all means. But then he sits down and designs a perfect paper airplane, with smooth, straight, far flight, and perfect balance. Then he tells me that he wants to learn how to design computer ads. Then he knows exactly who Neil Armstrong was. Then he spends the afternoon reading his history book. Then I see that there is nothing to despair over.

6yo screams about mental math problems. He has to count till seven, I know he knows how to count till seven. He believes that he can't. He threw his pencil, he got his pencil, he is writhing on the floor. I am calm. I am not calm any more. I tell him to go outside and cool off. He throws his pencil again. I tell him he lost his dessert. He finishes his mental problems. He melts down over trying to draw fish to illustrate one of the problems. The fish look like circles with squiggly tails. I can tell that he gave up on the fish. He eerily knows exactly how to illustrate all the problems, only they all have abstract circles in different groupings. I think of my husband, who claims that he cannot draw. I think about my father, he claimed the same thing. I think how yesterday 6 yo declared his 2 yo sister to be a great artist, based on her expressive doodles. I think how 2 yo has no problem doodling anything she wants, and then declaring that this is a house, and this is a person, and there is some green over there, all stripey.

After all the schoolwork is done, 6 yo enters the kitchen:
"Mommy, you are making me do all this work which wastes time!"
"What is it that you want to do?"
"I want to have time to play!"

After this, he proceeded to read Captain Underpants.

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 

Chazak chazak venitchazek!

Today we finished Vayeira with 8 yo. That was not trivial, as it was 7 pesukim, but he wanted to do it. We even squeezed in one relevant Rashi. He drew Rivkah's family tree out of his own free will. He also surprised me by knowing what a concubine is. He asked about Pey separating two pesukim. For his final wrap-up project, I told him to make a poster or a book of the 10 trials of Avraham. I told him that there are different opinions as to what those trials were, so he can make his own list. He went right to it, the prospect of siyum at Krispy Kreme leading the way. I am not sure why Krispy Kreme produces such intense feelings of happiness, but in our house, with this particular child, it works like a magic pill.

6 yo asked when he will start on chumash. I will have to think about this one. Ideally, I would like to wait another year at least. The pros are: he will finish some Lashon HaTorah and be more familiar with the language structure, making it easier to break words apart. He will also accumulate more vocabulary, so there will be more familiar words in every pasuk. He will also (hopefully) mature some, and will be less likely to hurl a notebook or a chumash across the room when frustrated. Also, his writing skills will improve, so he will be able to write down new words and translations. The cons: he is excited about it now, and might not be so excited when the skills will catch up. He might get an idea that chumash is something to do much later, when he is much older, and he will feel that he is still not old enough to do it. I have to think about all these factors...and I also have to consider how much time I can spend with each kid doing chumash. I find it to be an intense one-on-one experience. So far, I managed to wing it without too much prep, but that will not always be so. I much rather wait for chumash to be about learning the pesukim and the meaning instead of fighting about it. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of days when chumash does not go well, 8 yo does not want to do it, and it is a heavy experience that we just do. However, I fell that overall, we have more pleasant experiences than negative ones, and he does get excited about discovering new twists in the story, translations leaping out, asking Rashi's questions and drawing his connections.

100th post!

When I tentatively decided to blog about our homeschooling journey, I had no idea how long I will keep at it. I did not know if it will flop. I did not know whether it will be helpful or informative. I did not know whether it will provide for me a much-needed breathing space, vent board or reflective time.

What I took away from blogging was all of the above and much more.

100th post feels like a good occasion to reflect on where we have been and to set direction on where we are going. I started out, scared to teach my own 2nd grader, unsure of how it will work out, feeling that I need to do better than what he was getting in school. I felt that he was constantly told what to do and not to do, shunted from one thing to another, hurried along, and stifled. He was not miserable, but he was unhappy. I was unhappily parenting him, butting heads over bedtime and lunch and homework and another thing to clean up right now. Most of all, I felt that at the ripe old age of 7, he had no life. He had no time to engage in what was interesting him. He had no time to try out new things. He was not given time to figure things out on his own.

Now, I have had all three kids at home, continuously, for almost 7 months (except for one week of camp and one week of Israel). Today, looking at all of them, I can say that I feel that I made the right decision to homeschool all three.

By the child:

• 8yo expresses many more emotions than he used to, including the negative ones. The beauty of it is that now we can talk about them, and he is learning how to deal with them. Consequently, even though he is more likely to get angry, he is also more likely to express affection. He is pursuing independent geography and history study, since these are the subjects that interest him. He helps around the house much more, and is taking on more and more responsibility. His horizons widened beyond his former circle of classmates.
• 6 yo gets a ton of time to play his imagination games, run off his energy, and not be confined to a desk. He works in spurts, but now he can see the results of his work. He can still be very intense, but I know that his intensity is equally channeled to the good and to the bad. He is very kind, supportive and protective of his siblings. He will get all necessary skills at the right time, on his schedule. He takes his chores and responsibilities very seriously.
• 2 yo is quite verbal, due to constant chatter with her brothers. While I do not formally teach her anything, she is very curious and picks up material which was not even meant for her. She asks a lot of "whys" and listens to the answers. She plays pretend and gets along with kids of all ages. She picked up some Hebrew words, some English letters and some numbers. She knows Al Netilat Yadaim by heart, the first paragraph of bentching, and some Shema. She knows her colors. She taught herself to cut and loves to color, doodle, and glue. She is into everything that her brothers are into. 

What I am giving them all is time and place to grow at their own rates, make mistakes in a forgiving environment, awaken their interests and passions, figure out their strengths and weaknesses. Homeschooling allows a child to discover themselves, and for the parent to see the many sides of their child. I do not think that my kids are brilliant, or disabled, or very different from an average child. I do not think that I am a parent who is somehow exceptional in any way. The only difference is that I try to hyperventilate about this grand experiment that I am performing quietly, that my kids would not be aware.

Therefore, for my goals, I plan on focusing what works:

• focusing on crucial skills and not on knowledge
• offering choices whenever possible ( the ones I can live with)
• not sweating the small stuff
• letting go of expectations
• encouraging personal interests
• allowing independence
• building in lots of time
• looking at the big picture

Here is to the next 100 posts and to another successful year!

dinner is served

the meal

For a long time, I have been trying to get kids more into the kitchen and food prep. They help occasionally, they mix and pour, they set the table and clean up, they unload the dishwasher, but, somehow, this was not adding up to a coherent whole, namely, what it takes to prepare a meal. After 8 yo wrote out his ambitious cooking goal, and after one time too many when he refused to eat leftovers, I decided to take more drastic measures. On Sunday, as I was planning the menu for the week, I told 8 yo that he's responsible for Thursday's dinner. I asked him what he wanted to make. He said, hot dogs, hamburgers, latkes and baby carrots. I wrote it all in on the fridge. I find in general that having a week's menu posted cuts down on unpleasant surprises, both for the kids and me. I made sure that we had all necessary basics, but I did not defrost ground meat, just made sure that it is here. Sure enough, around 5, I told 8 yo that I am getting hungry and I am expecting his meal. He went to check the menu. He grabbed the hot dogs, but then he did not know where to open the package. He pulled out one of his children's cookbooks and looked up latkes recipe, with apple sauce. As soon as 6 yo heard about apple sauce, he went to the pantry, found two cups, and proceeded to offer it to 2 yo. Now I had three hungry kids clamoring for two apple sauce cups. Bottom line, 6 yo and 2 yo got them. 8 yo was in the throes of grating potatoes using food processor. I made him read all the steps and measurements, and to find all the ingredients. He decided that since he did not get any apple sauce, he will make his own, granted that the recipe is right there, in the cookbook.

carrot arrangement

 Overall, he did make the whole meal. 6 yo set the table. 8 yo arranged baby carrots in a fancy way, but I found out that he does not know where we keep our fleishig bowls. ( In the cupboard, of course, but he never paid attention where that would be). He peeled the apples for apple sauce, then mashed them with a fork. It was pretty good!

mashing the apple sauce

I am hoping to keep this cooking business going. The lesson of planning ahead, collecting the ingredients, dealing with cranky and hungry people, and savoring the final result is just too important.

Oh, and I hope to hear fewer complaints about leftovers.

Whats wrong with this picture? Answers.

 1. Look at that poor chicken. Look at its drumsticks. They are coming out of its shoulders. There are no wings! Who stole the wings? Who can bear to eat the mutant chicken? If you say that's the bottom, then that chicken must have been a cripple, hopping on its rear end, with legs sticking up straight into the air.




2. This is supposed to be a depiction of two witnesses observing the new moon, for the declaration of the new month. Well, I am sorry to say, but their testimony will be discounted , as that is the old (waning) moon. The new moon always faces the other way. There are very set phases of the moon, and one can tell where in the lunar month we are based on the phase. I guess that the illustrator did not actually look heavenward every month when he was saying kiddush levana. As an aside, my father OBM taught me to tell old and new moon apart. Old moon looks like letter C, as in the image. For Russian speakers, staraia starts with the same letter. New moon is the reverse, the curve of P, rojdennaia, in Russian.







If you have any more incorrect illustrations, I would love to see them.

What's wrong with this picture?

I am all for illustrated children's books, and I do understand the concept of artistic liberty, but the point of illustration is to depict reality. In the past couple weeks, here are two illustrations that jumped out at me as being drawn from fancy, without checking for accuracy.

From kids' siddur, Shabbos table

From Parsha book, sighting of the new moon

Can you tell what's wrong with these pictures?

Sadly, I think I will have more to add to this category...