A few days ago, I took the younger three boys (7, 6, 4) to a shofar workshop.  If I had realized what it was going to be, I would have taken ds11 as well, but I thought it wouldn’t be suitable for him.

This wonderful workshop began with songs and dancing.  This was followed with an explanation about the shofar and why a horn is used.  He brought several musical instruments and demonstrated how they each could make a sound similar to a shofar – why couldn’t they be used?  After explaining this, he showed the group a number of different kinds of animal horns and antlers.

Then he demonstrated how to make a shofar from the horn of an animal (I don’t remember if he said it was a goat?), describing the process and showing the power tools that are used.  He even showed how he takes out the hardened cartilage inside the horn in one big chunk!

This was so interesting and well-done, and I found it fascinating.  He managed to keep a group of about 100 kids interested for over an hour, which was pretty impressive.  I thought it was over, when he told the kids to line up and began distributing horns for each child to make their own shofar!  Each child was given the horn along with a piece of sandpaper, and sanded his horn down.  Then they each had a hole drilled in the mouthpiece and – voila- they each had their own shofar!  Really informative, interesting and fun!

Then on Friday afternoon, I took the same boys to the old age home for a pre-Rosh Hashana visit.  Dd17 had once taken the boys with her and they found it awkward, since they didn’t know anyone there.  This time we joined three other families and that made what is initially uncomfortable less so.  The children gave out greeting cards that had been prepared the day before (preceding the shofar making workshop) to each senior they saw, wishing them a “Shana tova”, a good new year.  Ds7 was a little nervous about this but did it; ds6 and ds4 stuck close to me holding my hands.  Ds6 did give out a couple of cards.

Then a couple of the fathers sang a Shabbos song and danced with the kids.  After that, we went to the second floor and did the same thing.  On that floor the residents were in worse physical condition than the first floor, and I directed the kids away from a couple of sights that I thought would be too much for them.  I don’t think that next time I would go on this floor with them.  The residents are less present and while I’m sure they appreciated it, the residents on the first floor were much more appreciative, smiling and one woman telling us as we left, “Come back every week!”

It was tough to get out on Friday afternoon when I still had so much to do, but I wanted the kids to have a sense that before Rosh Hashana we can think about what we can do for others, not just ourselves and I was really glad to have done this.  I told the organizer to let me know when they plan to go again, that we’d like to participate when they go again.  Perhaps with time it will become more comfortable to go with just our family.

Then later this afternoon ds11 and ds7 went out for what has become an annual family tradition since moving here – pomegranate picking!  They came home loaded down and tomorrow I’ll sit them down and let them deseed as many as they have the patience for.  🙂  A favourite salad that I serve at every meal on Rosh Hashana is pomegranate salad, so we can’t have too many!

Avivah

This year I discovered a wonderful new resource online that we’re already enjoying!  This resource is online leining (reading with traditional chant) of the weekly Torah portion.

http://www.abaalkoreh.com/

http://www.yutorah.org/Laining

Here’s how I use this: I have the kids ages 7 – 12 (those who are competent Hebrew readers) sit on the couch with a chumash and they each follow along with the text as they listen to it being read aloud.  In this way they hear the parsha while strengthening their Hebrew reading skills, at the same time developing familiarity and comfort not only with Torah portion but with following along.  This is good preparation for being in services on Shabbos mornings when this is read.

My intention is for them to do this each week, so that when we get to Shabbos they’ve each listened to/read the entire parsha.

Avivah

As of this week, all the local schools are now in session.  Today I was musing to myself about how very contented with life I felt, with homeschooling particularly.   Suddenly I feel like I’m reclaiming the quality of my life again, and it’s just the first week!

This morning we enjoyed a family breakfast once everyone was dressed and ready to start their day.  Ds11 made eggs for each person while ds7 chopped cucumbers and ds6 chopped tomatoes for a salad (salad for breakfast – very Israeli of me, isn’t it?).  This was so much nicer than rushing to get sandwiches prepared for the day and searching for this one’s shoes and that one’s permission slip and rush, rush, rush.  I often looked around at other parents rushing to take their little children to school in the morning, rushing to pick them up, rushing, rushing, rushing….and I wondered, are other people also thinking that this feels insane, do they wish they had an alternative?

It’s amazing to see the kids’ interest and even excitement about learning shooting up – each morning they tell me what they want to learn about that day and I try to follow through with that.  This has been a wonderful way to segue from the school mindset they were in.  I mentioned in a recent post that I’ve been using amazing programs from Discovery Education that I’m accessing via a trial subscription for educators that are so engaging and informative.  (It’s so good that I just purchased access for the year, there are loads more resources than what I’ve had time for so far – if you’re interested you can get 60% off the direct purchase price by buying through Homeschool Buyer’s Coop, which is free to join.  I don’t invest in many things so you know that I’m excited about this!)   The visual presentations have been a really good hook to get the kids interested in a topic and then we go into more depth.

For example, we watched a kids program about famous people – this particular one was about Galileo.  I followed this up with ds11 and dd12 with learning about his book, Galileo’s Dialogue, and understanding his theory about the universe more fully.  It’s interesting how many famous people suffered terribly for their beliefs and many didn’t enjoy the golden place in history when alive that they had after death.  We then learned about space, the universe, black holes (dd connected this to past reading of a Wrinkle In Time) and lots of other fascinating things, none of which have been topics that I’ve explored much in the past.  When dh took the kids on an evening hike yesterday, ds11 took along the binoculars, since he had learned that the strength of Galileo’s telescope that he built was about the same as a pair of binoculars and he wanted to see what was viewable in the skies at night.  (Of course for years I had a telescope in my garage in the US and no one had any interest in it – probably because I never opened up any topics relating to its use!)

It’s fascinating how so many things tie together, and I love seeing the kids beginning to make connections – this morning ds4 excitedly brought me a book we’d never read before with a page about the first man to fly and an illustration of the early airplane, and said, “We learned about this!”  (He recognized the airplane from our learning about Orville and Wilbur Wright.)

The mother of a former classmate of ds7 called yesterday to find out why he wasn’t in school, and when I said he was homeschooling she caught me by surprise with her immediate response about how she’s always wished she could do that since she thinks it’s the ideal!  This is an atypical response for an Israeli (at least I thought it was), and she told me she did parenting classes in Israel based on Gordon Neufeld’s approach so homeschooling was very much in line with this.  It was nice to find a like-minded mom, and then when I went to the park just an hour later I had another nice conversation with another Israeli mother. After her initial disbelief that I was keeping a four year old home (then I told her I was keeping them all home), she went on to tell me all the problems with schools and why what I was doing was such a good thing.  Far from the negativity I’ve been anticipating.

In the US I had just two negative conversations out of probably hundreds of conversations about homeschooling (notably both of those were newly married young adults without children).  Despite years of positive, even glowing feedback at times, here in Israel I’ve minimized and even avoided discussing our plans to homeschool, thinking that with Israeli society having such an emphasis on the collective group over the individual that my days of pleasant conversations were probably over.  These conversations reminded me of something I often told homeschooling parents, that how you present yourself very much affects the response you get. People may not have experience with it, they may think it’s crazy and they’d never want to do it, but if they have a willingness to hear another person’s perspective, you can have a respectful and positive discussion.

So it’s nice to be back in the proverbial saddle; I’ve had some anxiety regarding this decision but that has been fading away pretty quickly once we got started and were able to once again experience the quality of a homeschooling life.  I’m really grateful.

Avivah

I often mention how  much I love reading with the kids, and the older kids all have daily mandatory reading time of books on my approved list.   I’ve been asked several times for a list of books I recommend, but I’ve never written out a list so I can’t do that!

Instead of being a perfectionist and not sharing a list because it’s not comprehensive at all, I’ll share about the books that I loaded onto the Kindle for ds11 and dd12 earlier in the week.  All of the books I got were via Project Gutenberg and therefore free in the public domain.  These are mostly older books which is fine because I like the classics because the language isn’t dumbed down and the ideas tend to be more stimulating than contemporary books (I’m obviously generalizing, because pulp fiction has always been around so there are insipid books from a hundred years ago, too). This isn’t an extensive list of books I recommend, just books that I put on the Kindle that night.

There are loads more amazing books that are more current that I get from the library (eg Newberry books, Narnia series, Little House series) I’ll list authors rather than books when it’s a writer who we’ve read more than a few of their books, and I’ll loosely put them in order of difficulty:

• Arthur Scott Bailey – lots of books in this series
• Thorton Burgess – lots of books in this series
• Tom Swift series – lots of books in series
• Margaret Sidney – Pepper series
• Lewis Carrol (Alice in Wonderland)
• Horatio Alger – lots of books in series
• Rudyard Kipling
• Louisa May Alcott
• Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens

Books:

Heidi
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
The Secret Garden
A Little Princess – one of my all time favorites
Understood Betsy – another all time favorite
Pinocchio
Robinson Crusoe
Swiss Family Robinson

As I said, there are loads more books that could be added to this list and it still would be far from complete, but this is a partial answer and gives you an idea of the kind of writing that I like the kids to have exposure to on a regular basis.

Avivah

Recently a friend with nine children visited from the US, and she said to me she remembers my stage of life, which was just a few years ago for her, which is so intense because there’s so much going on for all the different kids all the time.  It’s definitely been busy and I have so many topics I want to write about but I’m not going to pretend it’s going to happen.  It’s not; I just don’t have the time.  So I thought I’d do an update post on miscellaneous things around here.

Ds14 – Ds14 is loving yeshiva.  I told him on Friday night that something I always felt kind of sorry about was that we moved to Israel right around the age that the older kids got to go to sleepaway summer camp for a month.  I know he would have loved it.  He told me that this yeshiva feels like camp to him – a warm family feeling, lots of serious learning, great meals, sports and lots of camaraderie.  He comes home every Thursday night and leaves Sunday morning, so we still get to see him a good amount.  It’s still an adjustment to have him gone; the house really feels different without him.

Two weeks before school began, he was sent math paperwork with a note that it was recommended to prepare the material before getting to school, since they’d be tested and put into levels dependent on the testing.  He literally didn’t have any time until after 11 pm on any given day and couldn’t prepare at all.  He subsequently got a very low score when he did the introductory testing and was put into the lower math class.  That was Thursday.  On Monday the mathteacher didn’t come and rather than have a free period, he asked the teacher of the higher level if he could sit in the class.  The teacher agreed and afterward ds told him he’d been able to understand everything that was taught and asked to join this class.  The teacher refused, citing his low test score, and ds explained that his score was because he didn’t know the material, not for lack of ability to explain the material.  As they were talking ds’s gemara rebbe went by and the math teacher asked him how ds was doing.  He told him he was a good student’ so the math teacher agreed to allow ds a trial period in the higher math class.  Ds applied himself and within three days the math teacher not only was okay with having him there, but was very impressed with his work.  That’s what intrinsic motivation looks like. 🙂

Dd17 – she is currently running a two week camp for children under age 6 and the last day will be tomorrow.  That gives her just one free day before she leaves on Wednesday to Jerusalem to settle in.  Seminary classes begin on Thursday and though we’d love it if she could come home every week, it’s not going to be possible with the requirements of the job she’s taken.  She’s free on Shabbos but needs to be there by Saturday night and we just live too far away for her to make the trip every week.  So she’ll be looking for places to spend Shabbos in the Jerusalem area.  I hope she’ll be able to come home twice a month for Shabbos.  I’m not thinking about her leaving; it’s way too emotional.

Dd12 – two days ago she told me wants to go back to school.  I told her I need to be convinced it’s in her best interest and she needs to put together a presentation to show me how my concerns will be met.  I’d love to tell myself school is the best thing for her since it will make my life easier in some ways, but I don’t believe it is and think it’s selfish of me to let her go to school and miss the many opportunities of homeschooling in just about every area of life that will have a long term impact on the person she becomes.

Yesterday she was out walking with friends and discovered that the word is officially out about her homeschooling, since a few girls she met asked her if the rumor they heard is true.  I’ve kept my intentions very quiet for a number of months and just recently spoken more openly about it, though still only to limited people.  It’s not easy for her to answer questions like this since she’s not feeling delighted about this decision.  I myself don’t really want to talk about it, either – I’d rather spend my time and energy on homeschooling than talking about it.

A couple of days ago I received some educational materials that I ordered back in May, basically a few manipulatives and some flashcards!  This  morning the boys ages 4, 5 and 7 spent the first two hours after waking up playing with pattern blocks (I got another two sets) and backpack bear counters.  We had breakfast, and then watched a Magic School Bus program about sea life, followed by a BBC program about fish.

Thanks to a complimentary summer subscription to Discovery education, I temporarily have access to amazing educational videos (and lots of other stuff but haven’t had time to explore it much) until the end of August.  I’ve decided to maximize this opportunity now as we slowly ease into the ‘school’ year – I’ve never been a fan of one day telling everyone to take out workbooks and start doing school.  It just doesn’t match my beliefs about education or style of learning.

I’ve used videos extremely sparingly over the years, but can see some ways in which we can boost the natural and meaningful learning with them.  I’m amazed at how much the kids have learned in just a week of doing this, and how what they’ve learned extends into other areas – we had some very interesting discussions on Shabbos with contributions from the younger set that were quite intelligent.   Yesterday I took out the box of science and social studies flash cards that I recently bought, and when they looked at the animal cards they could recognize just about everything, even the animals that were uncommon or unusual.  I’ll miss having access to this program when it’s finished – they also have teacher’s lesson plans and lots of other resources connected to each program, so when watching a program about the Artic and Antarctic, I was able to have dd12 and ds11 copy ten questions before the program began into their science notebooks and then answer them as they were watching.  It made them watch more carefully for details.

I had the kids start science notebooks after ds7 asked me when we were going to start school.  Most of his friends went back to school over a week ago, so I had them start notebooks because it feels schooly.  But we’re doing it in a fun way – when we learned about insects, they each drew a sample insect, labeling the different sections of an insect’s body.  Ds11 wrote a list of the qualifications for an insect to be categorized as such; with each topic we learn about he details more specifics than the younger kids, who mostly draw a picture to represent what they learned about.  It’s pretty relaxed and they like seeing their ‘work’.

Now the  kids are having quiet play time while Mozart plays in the background, and then we’ll have lunch and go to the park for outdoor play for a couple of hours later in the day or else take a walk to visit friends.  Somewhere along the way they’ll help me get a meal ready, we’ll read some books, and I told ds5 that they could do Starfall.com (online phonics program) – and by the time the day is over, they’ll have done math, reading, science, physical education and music -all more extensively than if they were in a classroom but without even realizing it!

In the meantime, ds11 is exploring the Kindle I got for him – last night I loaded almost fifty books that all are appropriate for mandatory daily reading (they can read what they want during their free reading time).  I got a Kindle for him and dd12, since we don’t have the kind of access to print books here that I’d like, so this way we don’t have to limit the daily reading that was an integral part of the kids schedules for years.  I looked for an edition that can also play audiobooks out loud, since I have to load them from the library onto my computer and then the kids have to take turns listening to the books that interest them most.  Like this, the older two kids can listen to the books of their choice with headphones and it frees up the computer; I don’t like the kids sitting around the computer even if it’s just to listen to stories.  They also discovered that most books on the Kindle can be read aloud in an automated voice even if we don’t load the specialized audiobooks – not as interesting to listen to as an audiobook, but ds just started listening to Little Men and doesn’t seem to mind the tinny computerized kind of voice.  (He just thanked me for getting this book for him since it’s so interesting!)

Yirmiyahu – has been overtired and wanting to be held lots for the last week or two.  I finally realized that I needed to actively take some steps to help him get more sleep since he’s getting used to people holding him until he falls asleep.  He has lots of loving siblings who don’t like to let him cry and will pick him up as soon as he whimpers, and as wonderful as this sounds, it was getting in the way of a normal sleeping schedule.  Yesterday I put him in when he was tired, not overtired, let him cry for a few minutes in his crib and he slept soundly for two hours.  Later he again took a normal nap, then slept a normal amount in the nighttime.  Today he’s again napping appropriate amounts and not getting to that extremely exhausted stage  Wow.  So nice to have him well-rested and cheerful again, and sleeping instead of having an increasingly drawn face and red eyes.  And it’s nice to have the quiet time when he’s napping to do something else.  Now I have to keep his siblings out of the room when he’s sleeping so he doesn’t get prematurely woken up – since we moved the bedrooms around a couple of weeks ago, this has become much more challenging since their room is next to his.

I discovered yesterday that Yirmiyahu knows how to crawl forward when he’s motivated.  He hid that quite well from us!  He prefers sitting or standing and resists being put on his stomach.  I realized he finds the hard floor tiling uncomfortable and that’s a big part of why he moves into a sitting position immediately when put down so last week I brought a foam mattress into the living room for him to play on.  Much better.

Me – I’m beginning to plan our homeschooling schedule for the coming year.  I was somewhat resistant to thinking about this since I felt some apprehensions about homeschooling the coming year.  It’s going to be an intense and labor intensive year for me with all the older kids gone, and in many ways will be like homeschooling for the first time with some added challenges we’ve never had before.  There is going to be a real acclimatization process going on for everyone and I’m going to need to be very available physically and emotionally for this to be a positive experience for us all.   Since I’ve been through an intense two years with the last six months being extremely intense, I didn’t feel like I had any fresh energy and motivation.

I finally accepted that it’s okay to not feel fully enthusiastic about homeschooling right now.  Doing the right thing doesn’t always feel good but just discomfort doesn’t mean it’s the wrong thing.  Funny how once I gave myself permission to say there are things I’m not looking forward to, I started looking forward to homeschooling again!  I’m also acting in line with one of my personal mottos, “Just do it!”  I know that when I think too much I can get caught up in negative thoughts or fears, but when I take action that clears away and my energy shifts to a good place.  So easing into the relaxed kind of homeschooling schedule I described above has been nice for me as well since it’s helped me do something and enjoy being with the kids rather than think about doing something!

Avivah

I find it challenging on Tisha B’Av to create a home environment that is in tune with the somber spirit of the day. In synagogue it’s easier but at home, with children needing to be taken care of and fed, it’s easy to lose sight of the messages of the day. For this reason, I find it helpful to watch suitable videos with the kids to help us soak in a message that is in line with the spirit of the day. Last year and the year before I shared several links which are still relevant for this year; today I’m sharing the video presentation that I watched together with our older children this afternoon that we enjoyed.

Tisha B’Av: Reigniting our Connection to Yerushalayim 2013

We watched this while ds11 was at the park with ds7, ds5 and ds4.  I have another presentation that I’m planning to watch with them when they get back. I’m guessing it won’t be suitable for ds4 and ds5 is a question mark, but I’ll show it to all of them and see.  Rabbi Fischel Schachter is an entertaining speaker who always has a good message, and as a rebbe for teenage boys and also as someone who often speaks at camps, he knows how to target his message to the younger set.  Here’s the link for this talk.

Torahanytime.com has a great lineup of speakers who are sharing about different aspects of Tisha B’Av.

May this year be the last that Tisha B’Av is a day of national mourning, and may it be turned into a day of celebration next year!

Avivah