[Gemara D'Jessica]

Homeschooling has been going great. Asher and I have been having a lot of fun. Asher has been learning a lot. And I even found a way to include Kovi! [Pictures of what we done since my last post about homeschooling will be after my little “announcement” here.] I have been reading this book  and I really like it. The things that the author says make sense to me and it’s basically the exact homeschooling “schedule” that I was looking for. [As gung ho as I was/am about homeschooling, the idea of actually figuring out what to teach and when kind of terrified me. But this book lays it out quite nicely while leave wiggle room to add in your own tidbits and/or let the child choose things that are more interesting to them.] It takes a very classical approach to knowledge, while teaching it in a very sensible manner. Who would have thought that it makes more sense to teach history in chronological order than to start with the Civil War? [Seriously, I learned about the Civil War every single year from 7th grade and on and all I can remember is that the North won.] 

To get to the point, I have decided to revamp our schedule (again) based on what I have read in this book. I was worried that I may be cramming a bit too many subjects for a kid that isn’t quite 3 and turns out, I probably was. For the preschool age the book suggests a lot of reading to the child, a lot of talking with the child, pointing out words, numbers, etc and teaching the child the very basics of writing (drawing circles together and having them connect two dots by drawing a line).

On top of simplifying the “lesson plan” I’m also doing monthly/bi-weekly[when there’s a holiday] themes. This month is the solar system. Next month with be “under the sea” (mostly because I was able to find a lot of stuff at the dollar store to fit this theme…). The month after that will be a focus on Israel (and for the first week or so there will be a big focus on the seven species and Tu B’Shvat. We’ll probably do a lot of cooking with the seven species (counting how many dates we have or how many cups of barley we need for a recipe, etc). If anyone else has any hands-on ideas or child-friendly books on the subject, let me know! 

Oh! And how did I get Kovi involved? Sensory tubs! I had heard about these from several different blogs. It’s basically a tub with a bunch of random things in it. I made one for Kovi and one for Asher and I’ll switch up what goes in them each month. Here are their tubs this month.

Asher’s is space themed to go along with this month’s theme. There are little astronauts, black aquarium rocks (since it’s dark up there…), “moon rocks”, a spoon and measuring cup to do some digging/moving, spaceship, etc. 

And Kovi’s had a tight ball of yarn, loose ball of yarn, hard plastic spoon, measuring cups, scraps of fabric, large metal spoon and a little tub. 

I wasn’t sure the tubs would “work”, but both boys actually seemed to enjoy explore all these new “toys”. 

Here are some pictures from the past few weeks…

“B’ day:

“bear”Asher made a Bee with playdough. I was impressed.Then I Braided his hair.

Thanksgiving decorations: 

 collecting leavesDecided to wear a leaf on his head before attaching it to the string for the hanging leaf decoration. 

Hand/feet turkeys. The smaller one is Kovi’s, the larger is Asher’s. 

This past week:

 Cut out the letters of Asher’s Hebrew name, had him color them in and then glued it to a piece of cardboard. Just realized we never went back and colored on the cardboard after the letters had dried… Made  a necklace with Asher’s name. I was really surprised at how easily Asher was able to slip the beads onto the string!

 The final product :-)