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...

the art of bread making

Quick accomplishments, by the kid:

• 2yo can recognize "Publix", both the logo and the word. She pointed it out on her body wash, a bag of flour, seltzer. (Now you know where I prefer to shop!) I gave her Chobani yogurt yesterday. While eating it, she told me that it has her name on it. She meant that it has Ch, just like the beginning of her name. She can also orally continue patterns: red, blue, red, blue, etc. She spent a lot of time making "birthday cake" with geoboard. And she is working hard on memorizing a few of her favorite books.
• 6yo finally got the hang of tying his shoelaces. We tried last year, but it was an exercise in frustration. This time, the first time I showed him, he was able to tie them. His math is going smoothly, he wants more greater than/less than problems. He got his first notch in tae kwon do. He reads books to 2 yo, when he's in the mood. He is riding his bike.
• 8yo wrote another ambitious plan for today, with 20-plus points. By late afternoon, he accomplished six. He wrote Chumash and math first, and those went well. Right now, he is reading his way through Yahadus textbook, based on Rambam's Sefer haMitzvot. He informed me that he reached his first mitzvah derabanan. 

I called boys to unload the dishwasher and set up the table for dinner. When they were not coming fast enough, I discovered that they were actually cleaning up a Pokemon game. They used to leave things like that for some hazy later, which never happened. We also ended up having most of our dinner meal in Hebrew. I didn't know how to say "string beans", but the kids knew orez (rice), dag (fish), mitz (juice), mayim (water). They also thought it was great fun, and kind of started it themselves.

I keep reminding myself to take deep breaths and to look at the big picture. There is such a drive to get something accomplished NOW, that sometimes it is hard to realize that skills take a long time. I keep looking at all the things that were such a struggle for 6 yo last year, and now they are going much smoother. A child is like a loaf of bread: you cannot hurry up the dough to rise, nor you can bake it super-quickly. To get a good result, everything needs to take time.

map expert

This morning, 8 yo crawls out of bed and announces that he wants to write his own schedule. I let him, curious to see what will make the cut. Here is what he came up with:

1. Spelling
2. cursive
3. recess #1
4. geography
5. Yahadus
6. lunch-recess
7. lunch
8. 1st class dismissed

At this point, I jumped in and showed what I had planned for today. He was mad, but added the following:

9. 2nd class starts

10. math

11 Lashon Hatorah
12. Pokemon
13. 2nd class dismissed
14. recess

I noted the lack of chumash, he said that he will do it at the very end. I suggested doing it first, but he wanted to do it last.

For once, I was prepared for geography. I printed out a fill-in-the-blank map from enchantedlearning.com. I told him to get started from memory and then look up the rest. This is what he filled in from memory:

filled in map of Africa

I cannot even check this, I don't know if they are all correct! This is what comes when you spend hours poring over the map, playing your version of Risk, playing world domination of Pokemons vs. Harpies, and just having fun with geography.

I am seriously thinking about letting them be.

Everything else went well, too, and he even did Chumash before Lashon HaTorah.

choices

8yo's threat of the day: you know what happened to American colonies when they did not have any choices!

The boys had a wonderful sleepover at grandma's house. 2 yo enjoyed being the only child. I took her to the zoo, by herself. She told me which animals she wanted to see and, for once, her wishes were honored. She even bravely patted the goats. In the evening, she kept alternating between asking my husband and I to do things for her: bathe her, carry her to bed, put on pajamas, clip her nails, tuck her in.

In the morning, I ran some errands with her and then picked up the boys. My MIL sent a plate of Russian donuts (sirniki), which made a delicious lunch. After lunch I tried to get boys to do some schoolwork before we had to leave to tae kwon do. That's when the trouble started.

I decided to stick with the blocks approach, so I wrote few things down. 6 yo picked history of China. I read the next chapter from Story of the World. 8 yo came over to listen. We pulled out a map to see where the early Chinese lived: between Yellow and Yangzee rivers. 6 yo identified China on an unmarked map and found approximately the area of the rivers. Then I discovered that the boys stuck a bunch of flags on the map, and on the wrong countries, so now they were resticking them into correct places.

They saw a video on the list, and asked for it. It was this: Yogati veLoMatzati. I thought for a while that they need some reinforcement that hard work always pays off, and it introduces them to a saying from the Gemara at the same time. (And I thank Chabad profusely for producing something so appealing and so important.) They watched it, 8 yo said that it is not making him feel any better, but I saw that it made him think. I am trying to figure out how to download the song so that we can listen to it in the car.

Then I asked boys to pick the next item off their list while I cleaned up the next mess 2 yo made. 8 yo threw a fit. He said that there is nothing on the list he wants to do, why does 6 yo get to do history and he only gets boring things. He will not do anything. I cannot make him. He said he does not have good choices and then used the line about colonies (I do not have to worry whether he knows and understands history!) By this point my patience was running paper-thin. I told both boys to get started on math. 6 yo got his binder and got to work. Overall, I find that they do not find throwing fits at the same time advantageous. One of them wants to remain on mommy's good side, and he decided that it's his turn. 8 yo sulked and kicked and slammed things. I said, very calmly now, that tae kwon do is at 3:30 and if the work is not done by then, we are not going. I also said that if this kind of behavior will continue, he can come, but he will have to sit out.

He calmed down enough to do his work. I went to battle 2 yo down for her nap: she does not like when I leave the room, so no matter how many cuddles I give her, as soon as she senses that I am going, she does a death grip on my neck and starts yelling. I usually have to leave and shut the door. Attachment parents, call the police! She calms down after a few minutes and takes a nap, but it does leave me even more on edge.

I looked more closely at the work that 8yo is struggling with and printed out 1st grade basic addition review. I hope that he will refresh his facts, feel good about completing so many pages, and will be able to continue. There is a dichotomy between how quickly he grasps the concepts and how slowly he commits to memory anything that requires effort. Back to " I tried and I did not succeed..."

6yo asked to take a nap, he complained that he is tired. I tucked him in. He popped out fifteen minutes later: "Mommy, I have a Torah question: what if the people did not understand what Noach was saying and that's why they did not get on the ark?" Quiet and solitude produce deep thoughts.

He was happy to finish his work (reviewing Lama). He speedily read and translated one page, crumpled about doing the second, agreed to do it only if he reads everything first and translates later, speedily read the second and translated it without asking for help. We finished 12th chapter. He seems to remember his reading and vocabulary. I am hoping that this is a confidence-builder here.

8 yo finished math and started on journaling; more dinosaurs and prehistoric creature facts. He said that he got to the second chapter. I stopped him to do spelling and chumash. He said he hates them both. Then he showed me how he spelled "were" correctly in his journal, I mentioned again "I tried, and I succeeded" and he said he likes spelling. He liked spelling even more after he got all his review words right. Then he did not like spelling so much when some of the new words came out wrong. The emotions change like clouds in the sky.

Then we tried squeezing in Chumash before tae kwon do and that was a complete disaster. He did not remember the words from last time, then he turned accusatory, that I am making him do all this hard work. Ugh... the fun things parents farm out to teachers.

We barely made it to tae kwon do. 6 yo decided to sit out today, and I was so frazzled that I did not pursue the reasons why. 8 yo did great, got another notch on his belt, for achieving kicks, and was shining like a new penny. When we got back, he completed the chumash, unloaded the dishwasher, and went to play Pokemon cards with his brother.

Looking at the day now, with hindsight, I think the boys probably did not get enough sleep and that's the reason behind crankiness/sleepiness. Kick myself for the umpteenth time: no productive school takes place on such days. I made a bad choice trying to pursue my new theory, and 8 yo made a bad choice by not listening to me. Nobody won.

blocks of time

From the past week, one pattern became clear, at least with 8 yo: whichever subject he's involved in, he wants to be doing it for a longer period of time than I have allocated. If he is doing handwriting, he wants to do a few pages, not just one. If he is writing in his journal, he wants to write till he's done, not for traditional 15 minutes ( he probably needs those 15 minutes just to compose his thoughts and get creative juices flowing). If he's doing math, he needs however long it will take. If he's reading history, he wants to finish the book... well, that would take a whole day.

So I am thinking about switching him to more of a block schedule. Instead of assigning 6-8 different areas to do each day, I am planning on assigning 2-3, but letting him do a week's worth in that time. For now, it will be my responsibility to make sure that over the course of the week, we touched on a variety of skills, but my ultimate goal is for him to monitor his own progress.

And progress takes a long time.

Skill acquisition takes a long time. Learning something new takes a long time. Adjusting into a new routine, getting used to schoolwork, integrating informal learning with formal learning-- all of these require time and patience, both from me and from the kids.

I am also strongly thinking about following their lead, their interests and their strengths for now. They have the best concentration when they are engaged in what they want to be doing, and they feel good about themselves when they succeed in those areas. They do not need my chiding or cheerleading, they are their own worst critics and enthusiasts.