Adventures in Mama-Land

I have been playing with ideas for a slightly more intensive variation on the parsha copywork we’ve been doing all along and come up with a 6-page booklet that I think might work well not only for us, but hopefully for others.  I will explain the ideas behind the different pages and you can decide if all or part of this would be useful to you. The whole booklet is centred around an excerpt from the parsha.  It may or may not be an entire contiguous passuk – I’ve done two so far and one is, while the other isn’t.  One draws in bits and pieces from several pessukim to create a “complete” passage that is more concise than the original text. The idea is to introduce spelling and vocabulary words through the context of the weekly parsha.  The English words are fairly easy, so this won’t make for very intensive spelling practice.  My thinking behind this is that my kid is feeling discouraged in Hebrew, so if throwing in a couple of easy English words will help boost...

Both littles were off in camp last week – multi-sports camp for Gavriel Zev, and gymnastics camp again for Naomi Rivka.  Apparently, another girl offered to teach Naomi Rivka some French, so I suggested she could share a little of the Hebrew she knows. So she sat down and wrote a dictionary! Shalom = hello Aney = me Bayet = house Ema = mom, mommy, mother Nshama = soul Aba = dady, dad, father Naomi = my name Shalom = goodbye Lev = heart, love Lama = why Adom = red At = girl you Ata = boy you Shabis = Saturday I especially liked her little section of prefixes: B = in/with V = and M = from H = the Thank you SOoooo much, Leshon HaTorah and Bright Beginnings !  Dikduk may sound dull, but I am really thrilled that she’s getting such a solid foundation. Oh – in case you don’t know, because I didn’t!  Dikduk = דִּקְדּוּק = ”grammar”, from the same root as bediyook / בְּדִיּוּק, meaning “precisely.”  Another word:  a medayek (or medayekes), in...

* If you’re just here for the free supplement, scroll down to the end for more information.  I want to chat for a while with my regular readers first! Okay, okay, I know I haven’t mentioned Latin on here, even though it is one of the most exciting things to happen in our little homeschool over the last couple of months. To back up just a little:  I have no idea why I caved.  Elisheva was pushing me to teach Naomi a language – my protestations that Hebrew IS a language went unheard.  She does NOT approve of Hebrew as a second language.  She wanted me to do French, but I had seen this program and thought it was super-cute, and I figure Latin is kind of like meta-French.  Once you know Latin, French comes easily… right? Anyway, it was a flimsy reason to adopt an extra school subject, but the Song School Latin curriculum is SUPER light, and we’re really, really enjoying it so far.  I won’t say “loving it,” because my sister Abigail is back, and she kn...

So why the dodecahedron?  Why my obsession with mixing math and Torah?  How about mapwork – why bother showing kids maps of where the weekly parsha took place? Sadly, there is a tremendous need. The big kids went to Jewish schools, and I saw the extent of the secular resources they had to use. There really is nothing else out there that mixes Torah with math, say, or English composition, or copywork, or... anything. :-((( In fact, I’d say the teachers outside of the “Jewish studies” departments rarely put much thought into making their curriculum Jewish at all.  Okay, in the early grades, they can do “apple counting” before Rosh Hashanah, but that’s more of a fall activity than anything else. Two examples that shocked and/or surprised me, and I think they were both math-related (but remember, I am easily shocked): Groundhog day:   a reproduced booklet of activities around the concept of Groundhog Day.  Since becoming religious, I had totally stopped “obser...

A friend asked a couple of months ago, now that I’m so invested in homeschooling – emotionally, philosophically, and yes, even monetarily (just bought more Grade 1 stuff from Rainbow this evening), how I’m going to turn my back on it all and send the kids to school once we make aliyah. I definitely want them to go to school.  For one thing, it’s a bargain compared to Jewish education here.  The other things, the REAL things are:  it’s the best way to learn the language, and it’s the best way to make new friends quickly.  I don’t want to deprive either kid of those things. (Big kids?  They won’t be kids anymore, though, of course, at 19 and 17, they will still have a home with us.  I hope, in addition to the “year in Israel” that they’re planning, that they will both take advantage of whatever ulpan is available to their age group and demographic.  But back to the little kids – who will still be little.) So here’s my thought:  Israeli scho...

PLEASE JOIN US! If you teach your kids at home, please add your blog to comments section below! Other “weekly challenges” that may or may not interest you: Six Word Saturday Menu Plan Monday A bit of a weird week, because our regular City programs aren’t back on yet, and our shul is having special programs to help parents fill in during the “break”!  We’re doing more social stuff during this time, but there is also learning going on.  We finally managed to get out to Playground Paradise with friends.  Every time we go, Naomi makes me promise we’ll get back there soon… and we never do.  I like it because unlike Woodie Woodchuck’s, where we used to go, there is no “gambling and rides” component to the entertainment – it’s JUST an indoor playground, run by the City, so it’s relatively inexpensive compared to some of the fancier places.  The downside is that it’s a shlep – oh, and not much fun for big kids who only love the gambling and videog...

It seems like I’m constantly buying homeschool stuff!  I promise, that is NOT the case (but here’s last month’s order , if you’re interested!).  I have been keeping a running wish list at Rainbow Resource , and this is the night I finally sit down and put it all together.  (I also promise that whatever I spend a drop in the bucket compared to sending two kids to school!!) Math Stuff – my favourite, always so fun to touch & play!   003103 - Beginning Fractions Book – small cheap set of fraction circles 014565 - Cuisenaire 50-centimeter Rod Track – meant to order this last time, but it was too late, so I made my own 018742 - Student Number Lines w/wipe-off crayon/marker – cheap & helpful (I hope) 031012 - Small Geometric Solids (2 Sets of 8) – the last ones I ordered are multi-coloured and both sets have different colours, which confused Gavriel Zev and made him match them TOTALLY wrong!  :-o  (luckily, these aren’t expensiv...