[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 :-) 

Day 2 went so-so. We got off to a very late start because all morning was dedicated to unpacking and cleaning with the help of my mother. After lunch we went down to the basement where the new, ginormous map is and we found Cleveland and then our country for the week: China. I don’t know much about China and I did so little research that I probably just should have chucked the whole idea of teaching geography this week, but I really wanted to make some Chinese food for Shabbat this week.* After finding China on the map and seeing how far away from Cleveland it is I had Asher put on a makeshift kimono. 

After wearing the kimono I had run out of ideas and Asher didn’t seem up for much more anyway so we called it a day.

On Wednesday - day 3 - I took Asher to a local Jewish day school that is having a little play group for the under 3 crowd until the end of December. It was cute. We built this tower type thing with these connectable animals, sang songs during “circle time” and had a snack. When we got home there was more unpacking and cleaning to do so I figured the morning socialization was good enough.

Day 4 we went to our homeschool co-op. Did a very cool project for the parsha, learned that camels do not, in fact, carry water in their humps. They carry fat in there. And made some challah. That was actually his second challah, as he had helped me make challah earlier that morning. 

Day 5 was The Little Gym day. I’ve been taking Asher there for about a year and a half now and we both love it. When we got home we had lunch and then Asher got to spend the afternoon with his favorite Auntie. 

The first (real) week of homeschooling went pretty well. Kept it really laid back - after all, he’s not quite 3, so I don’t believe that he needs any kind of true schooling yet anyway - and it made for a very smooth week. Looking forward to next week! 

* Menu for Chinese Shabbat was veggie lo mein, egg rolls and Chinese cabbage salad.

Last week I tried out my hand in homeschooling Asher. It didn’t go all the great. The first day didn’t go badly, the second day Asher wasn’t interested AT ALL - probably because I used the same activity (drawing) just with a different subject. After that I got sick and didn’t feel up to actively teaching and “school” kind of ceased to exist. But today we were back and I have to say, it went exactly as I was hoping it would. 

I asked around for some different age appropriate activities to teach the alphabet and one woman on twitter suggested that I use something very hands-on like shaving cream to teach Asher. I grabbed the top of a plastic crate and a bottle of shaving cream, went into the basement with Asher during Kovi’s nap and sprayed the top with shaving cream. Asher loved it! I showed him how to draw an “A” and an aleph and he wrote down his attempts, then we just played with the shaving cream. Every once in a while I would draw another A and another aleph and he would copy. It was so laid back and by the end of it his A was actually starting to look closer to an A than it had before. It felt more like we were playing than that I was teaching and he was learning. 

We got washed up and Asher said he wanted to draw. I should know by now that “draw” is just a code word for “take the caps off of all of the markers and put them on my fingers”. After that we played an impromptu game of soccer. When the game died down Asher was hungry for lunch.

I cut him up an apple (it starts with A!), - that he had picked out when we went grocery shopping yesterday - gave him a handful of almonds (also starts with A!) and a yogurt (doesn’t start with A, but he likes it). 

After lunch we had some separate down time. Kovi woke up from his nap during this time so after I nursed and changed him we all went outside. I told Asher that he could dig up some of the אֲדָמָה (“ground” in Hebrew - it starts with an aleph!). One of my friends mentioned that she noticed I hadn’t included science in our “curriculum”. I still can’t believe I forgot that and I used this opportunity to teach Asher a bit of science.

I grabbed various things (leaves, twigs, acorns, etc)  and asked Asher if he thought that these things would keep going up once I threw them or if they would fall down onto the adama (ground). The first couple of times that I asked he thought that they would continue going up, but he quickly caught on and realized that things always fall back down to the ground. I explained to him that that is gravity. Now, whether he really understands the word “gravity” is a question, but there is no doubt in my mind that he understands that when things are thrown in the air, they fall back down to the ground. 

After the science lesson it was free play time. Asher practiced his forward rolls, ran around the yard, pretended to take a nap, climbed in through the window of his play house, etc etc etc. After that we went inside, made some delicious focaccia  and just hung out until Corey got home from work. 

Today was about as close to perfect as I could have ever imagined. The only thing that I would change is to have Kovi in a more active roll, but he is only 6 months old… 

The first day went pretty smoothly. We focused on the letters A and aleph. And the shapes circle and square. The “A” Asher did great with.  He’s been trying really hard to write an A for the past couple of weeks because he knows it’s the first letter of his name and he’s getting really close. He knows it’s a triangular shape and usually ends up writing a modified triangle instead of an A. It’s progress though!

We talked about different things that start with the letter A like ants.  He decided to color the ant’s eyes blue to match his own. He also colored in a picture of an apple with a red marker because, according to Asher, red is his favorite kind of apple. Then we moved on to a picture of an astronaut and he colored the astronaut’s shoes blue to match his own shoes.

I made the mistake of trying to cram A and aleph into the same chunk of time. Kovi was napping and I got ambitious. Asher lost interest pretty early on, but he did color on the pictures a little bit. I’ll leave them out so that he can look at and/or draw on the more whenever he pleases so it wasn’t a complete loss. 

We took a lunch break and a Kovi-waking-up-from-his-nap break then went back to “school”. I wanted to teach him two shapes - one of which he already knows - but realized quickly that he still wasn’t in much of a listening mood, so I just let it be after the circle. 

So that was day 1. I’m definitely going to need to do less drawing and something more hands on. He seemed to get bored with the drawing - after all, he does draw on a regular basis anyway, so it wasn’t anything all that exciting for him. Maybe next week we’ll go to the library and find books that start with “B”. Or I’ll bring actual household objects that start with “bet” and do something with that. This is as much of a learning process for him as it is for me.

I feel like Asher and I rarely ever do anything. Sure, we’ll color, read, sing the ABCs and aleph-bet (and a whole array of other songs from “Where is Thumbkin” to anything by Weezer), but I find that lately, by the end of the day, I’m out of ideas and resort to letting Asher sit next to me at the computer while he watches YouTube videos and I “surf the web” while nursing Kovi. Frankly, it’s getting boring and more often than not one or both of us ends up getting frustrated and losing our cool. Makes for a very stressful afternoon and by the time Corey gets home from work we’re both at our wits end.

I have noticed though that on days where I actually have a few activities planned, both Asher and I stay in good spirits nearly the whole day. I have actually been going back and forth in my head over whether to homeschool my children or not. Based on the fact that Asher acts better when we actually have stuff planned, I decided to try out homeschooling him right now. He’s not really school age yet - he’ll be 3 at the end of next month - but I figured I could start having age-appropriate activities to teach him some basic things and try out my hand in homeschooling. 

So here is the tentative schedule. Keep in mind that most activities probably won’t take more than 15-20 minutes, I won’t be doing every activity for every subject every week…every and there will still be a lot of free play and “run around” time… and quiet time where we both stay in separate rooms - hey, I love being a mom, but I need some “me” time during the day so that I can catch up on Dancing With the Stars - er, uh… I mean… uh… read a good book…? Enough with the jibberjabber, here’s the schedule.

[Sunday] Ok, this isn’t actually a “school” day, but I’ve been meaning to do this for some time and am finally going to do it! Sunday is our shopping day, so what I’m going to do is make a short list of foods for Asher to pick out and put in the cart. I’ll have pictures next to the actual word so that he’ll actually know what he’s looking for and maybe it will even help him with spelling.

[Monday] English & Hebrew letters - I’ll print out coloring pages of the letters and of things that start with whatever letters we’re focusing on that day. Read books that start with the letter. Take little trips that have something to do with the letter. 

      shapes & colors -  Other than drawing pictures and pointing out the color and shape of objects, I don’t really have any ideas… but I think that’s enough anyway since he knows most of his colors - though he mixes up the typical color blind ones :-/ - and we have just started working on shapes - so far he has circle down pat.

[Tuesday] geography - Pick a country, state, city, region, whatever and find it on the map - I just bought a big o laminated map and am going to hang it up in the playroom - and find out interesting facts about it. Dress up like you’re from there. Color the flag. And for the Shabbat of that week I’ll make at least one dish (unless there is enough cuisine from that place, in which case I’ll make the whole meal) that is commonly eaten in that place. 

      math - Count - Asher can already count to 13… well, technically to 19, but 13-19 are all “thirteen” to Asher. Color numbers. Read books about numbers. 

     This isn’t a subject, but I found out that every Tuesday, kids under 18 get free admission to the Great Lakes Science Center. We won’t be going every Tuesday, but maybe once a month or once every other month. Right now they have a NASA exhibit and Asher has been really interested in the moon lately, so I’m thinking of taking him there soon. Plus, I hear they have an awesome section for the under 7 crowd. 

[Wednesday] Parsha - I have links to a bunch of different websites and blogs that have great craft ideas for each Parsha, so I’ll probably do that with him. Was also thinking of maybe getting a kids’ parsha book…? 

  seasonal/holiday - Will do crafts related to the time of year. For example, it’s fall now, so we’ll probably go outside, get some leaves, acorns and buckeyes (yup, we have all three in our backyard! I love living in a house…) and do some sort of craft with them. 

[Thursday] Homeschool co-op - Asher and I are actually part of a homeschool co-op with some other families in the neighborhood. Unfortunately because of holidays, illness and napping babies, we have only actually attended “school” once. Hopefully we’ll actually be able to start going on a regular basis one of these days. 

        Baking challah and helping with Shabbat cooking - Asher helped me make challah this week and it went surprisingly well. I put all the ingredients into their various measuring containers and Asher poured them into the “bowl” of the bread maker. He also helped me to make dessert. And if I hadn’t forgotten to buy one ingredient, he would have also helped me to make hummus this week. 

[Friday] The Little Gym - Love love LOVE this place. Asher’s been going to it for a year and I cannot speak highly enough of it. 

So yeah, there’s the list. I’m really excited to start this. I think it will be a really great experience for both me and Asher.