Homeschool – Page 10 – Jewish and Homeschooling in an Amazing World

Vacationing in the Boonies

For one whole week we spent a wonderful time up in a cabin, on the top of a mountain, on 350 acres. It was one of the best weeks we have ever had. Grandpa came with us as well. It was a nice cabin, with several acres of mowed grass around it, many more acres of unmowed grass – the size of a landing strip for a plane, which, on occasion does land there, and hundreds of acres of just forest. I think the only thing we would try to do different is to take more opportunity to explore the gorgeous forest and not wait until the second last day.

Since the cabin was a long ways away from any electric lines, the owners decided it would be to their economic advantage to install solar panels and have a backup generator instead of having to pay for the electric line ($40,000 vs. $80,000!) That was to our advantage for several times we got to fly our new kite. Unfortunately, only one new kite was able to be flown for there was not enough wind for the other two, but we had a lot of fun sharing. When you get the kite up several hundred feet, you just need to sit there holding the string, the kite flies by itself for there is a lot of wind up there.

Monday we went exploring in the van. We found out this week that one cannot always trust a map. We had two different (both detailed with contour lines, etc.) maps, and they both showed a road going into a state forest. However, when we arrived at the state forest, no road! The GPS on the phone said there was no road, and the road sign said it was a dead end. We know from experience that GPS’s are not always reliable either, and normally we just use them to see where we are. We decided to take the only other possible road, which turned to the side. We thought that might be the state forest for there was gate there and sometimes state forests and parks have gates. We opened the gate and drove on. Well, the road was not conducive to vans, but we drove on. At one point we decided to turn around for it did not really look like a state forest road and then got stuck! After walking around we noticed a house not too far in front of us and figured we were not on a state road, but how to get out? Lots of man power, and B”H we had as many people as we did for even one less person and I don’t think we would have made it. Lesson learned: Trust road signs.

As we were making our way back home, trying hard to stay on the real road, we come across signs that state it was a real road, but that the bridge was closed 1000 feet ahead. Grandpa wanted us to stop, for the bridge was closed – read the sign! So, we did, and most of us got out and walked the 1000 or so feet…… only to come to another sign, for cars coming the opposite direction that said….. bridge closed 1000 feet…. Uh, well, we just walked right on through and there was nothing wrong with the road. Lesson learned: Can’t always trust the road signs!

Tuesday we went touring the Amish region. It was interesting to see that people really do live a life almost identical to life 100 years ago. We saw the horse and buggies (though that is nothing new for us where we live, but still neat to see it anyways,) wheat that was cut and stacked in the fields – 7 bundles to a stack, men plowing, men cutting up wood into boards and all the wood craft and quilt shops. We stopped in a wooden toy shop and a couple of boys bought something there.

Wednesday was a trip on a steam engine! TOOT TOOT! Look at all that black smoke coming out of the top! It was a nice, relaxing time for me. 3 boys wanted to sit with Grandpa, and that left me with just 1 and it was the perfect time of day for on the way back that 1 boy just wanted to lay there almost falling asleep. 🙂

Thursday we did some geocaching. We found most of them. We actually did a bit of geocaching the entire week, but this afternoon was dedicated mostly to it. We also learned that not all state forest roads are maintained. We came across one that had a fallen tree in the middle of it. All 5 big boys went out to try to move it. Unfortunately it was just too long, however, DH being adventurous as he was, decided we took enough of the top away that he could drive around it, over the mud hole, and that is just what he did. However, he was smart enough to know that we had to find a different route out of the park 🙂

Friday it rained, and the boys ate popcorn and watched a few National Geographic DVD’s about pirates! Challah and cinnamon buns filled the air Erev Shabbos, as well as the lack of electricity (B”H the oven was gas and still worked!) To their credit, the owner showed up within minutes and got the generator started (it was supposed to start automatically when the solar energy ran out but didn’t.) DH spent time doing orienteering work with the boys. They learned how to read the map, and the contour lines on a map, along with other compassing work.

The rain was a nice welcome, for Shabbos was nice and cool. We had all the windows open (like we had all week), but we did not need to have any fans going, so Shabbos morning we woke up to the sounds of birds…and quiet. It was so peaceful! We made our first trek into the 300+ acres of forest and saw butterflies and moths and bumblebees and even a snake! DH and I walked around the whole grassed area. It was pretty cool to be at one end and look back at the cabin – yellow flowers all over the grass, I just about ran right through pretending to be Laura Ingalls in the show from Little House on the Prairie. 🙂

Sunday morning, the sun got up early, and so did I. I spent most of the morning packing up. We decided to walk down a path to a road and since Grandpa did not want to walk with us, he got to pick us up. Such a beautiful trek – about half of the walk was done solely on property we rented, and most of the rest was in what seemed an “alley” between properties. GPS was great this time!

On the way out, we stopped off at a Scandinavian festival outside of Jamestown, NY and got pictures of a life size replica of a Viking ship (a small one, more of a fishing boat – not the size of one crossing an ocean). We ending up in Niagra Falls for pizza for supper and finally made our way back home. All in all, we had a good time, and have lots of nice memories! We even got to finish off Grandpa’s visit with a birthday supper for my now 3 year old. Happy Birthday MA!

I was mistaken!

As I was pondering on the last post I did, I bumped into some information on the latest physics find on the Higgs boson particle. I like physics. My minor in university was physics. That thought of physics reminded me about a picture that my husband took of me during our 10th anniversary trip to Wales. We were walking around an old castle and I sat down in the middle of the courtyard, under, yes you guessed it, an apple tree! The funny thing is that as I sat down, waiting for my husband to take the picture, an apple fell down. Yes, Newton’s law of gravity works even in Wales! So, yes, I have sat under an apple tree before and pondered and yes, another picture had to be taken with the said apple, and yes, it was delicious. 😀

On another note, I’m very actively working on next year’s stuff. For some boys, I have basically all the materials, for another, I have decided that I need to do an interim year before he is ready to move up. And for another, I have come to the conclusion that even though he will have just turned 3, he needs to have his “schooling” as well (whatever that means, and most likely it means more Mommy-Son time, reading a story here, playing a puzzle there – and calling it “school”.)

As I look back on the previous year and see what worked and what did not, the main thing that stuck out that REALLY helped was a schedule that was written down. Having it memorized did not cut i; we had to have it in front of us so we could see it. The only problem with that is all the papers! I had printed off a schedule for each of the 3 older boys, and one main one for me, but the boys never knew where their schedule was, and the main one was sometimes very hard to find as well. (I found it today cleaning – lost it the last 2 months of school, but it was right there where we usually kept it!)

I got an idea from a post that I read recently, that I had seen before, but it never clicked really well for it entailed printing out a whole year’s worth of stuff – and hoping I would not lose the binder in the meantime! However, I finally figured out how to make it work.

I just ordered 4 – 11×14 white boards – one for each boy. The idea is that I will write the schedule in permanent marker for each boy on their board and then post them on the living room wall. Then, each boy can check off what they have accomplished as it happens or at the end of the day. On Friday, if there is anything we missed, they can finish it for we do mainly a 4 day weekly schedule. Afterwards, they can erase the board and it is ready for the next week.

I have also realized that I am the kind of person that needs to have everything ready at the beginning of the year. None of this “I’ll print off 2-3 months’ worth of work at a time,” for after the 2-3 months I never seem to find the time to print it off, and we are always trying to work around that, and printing it off is many times cheaper than buying a used book. (Note: We use books that are out of copyright and are usually available for free on the internet.) I have also found out that many times (not always, just many,) I can print 2 pages on one page, double-sided, therefore saving some ink (for the font and pictures are then shrunk) and half the paper! Most of the time I just use our b/w printer, however, if things are easy, I might print a picture or two from the book in color to spice it up a bit and make boys happy. *Note: Make sure you test out a page first before doing a whole book. You don’t want to find after printing it all out that the print is almost too small to be read, even by you.

I am very happy with how things are going. I have had to rearrange some of my thinking a little bit. For example, I know that I will probably have to purchase more ink before the summer is over, but I also know that the new ink will last me the entire year. I also have other ideas on how to rearrange our school cabinet to make things better and easier for all of us. I think these few changes will make the difference for next year. I guess I will just have to wait and see. Next summer I will assess it and go from there.

Imagining an Apple Tree…

Imagine sitting underneath an apple tree, with the limbs and all the green hanging down all around you. Imagine finding a wonderful limb that you could sit on, pretending to go galloping up a mountain and reaching the very top. Or, perhaps you would like to imagine bringing out your dolls and sitting inside your house of limbs with all sorts of interesting shaped rooms.

We never had apple trees when I was growing up. I never went to an apple orchard until shortly after I got married, and then it was only once. I have visited an orchard a few times over the last few years, but never had the luxury to sit underneath one. However, I can imagine how it would be to be a little smaller and enjoying the shade of the trees. I think the next time I go apple picking I will sit down underneath one of the trees and just imagine…

Why is it that I can imagine something that I have never done? It is easy if you have a living book to read from. A living book is a book that is written by a person who is extremely knowledgeable in the topic. Normally these authors love the topic they are writing about and it shows in their writing. The nice thing about AO is that they use living books. I do not know about you, but I have always found textbooks to be very dry and hard to learn from usually. With living books, I learn.

It is easy to learn when the author writes as though they are talking directly to you, in person. I read to my boys (all 5 of them tonight!) about the orchard. We learned that the apple blossom blooms only in May, and learned to wonder how an apple could come from those blossoms, after all, not everyone wonders but it is good to wonder. We learned that the apple blossom has 5 petals and in the center it looks like there are pins in a mini pin cushion! There is what looks like dust on the head of the “pins” and so we are calling them dust boxes right now, until the author tells us the real name. 🙂 Did you know if you took off the petals, you will be left with 5 green “leaves” and little pins with no dust boxes on them! After the petals fall from the flower, a knob grows on the other side, and that, my readers, is the beginning of an apple!

Now, reading from a living book is wonderful, but it is no match for seeing it in person. We do not have an apple tree in our yard, and since it is July, we would not have any blossoms on it anyways. However, we do have rose bushes. What do rose bushes and apple trees have in common? (Well, I read ahead so I know!) Let me tell you what I did after supper. I took all the boys out to our rose bushes (the one we went to is an Alberta Rose bush variety. Now are you getting the idea?) Our roses have just finished flowering and the flowers are in the process of falling off. Yes, the blossoms look similar. We did not see the dust boxes on these roses for the flowers were shriveling up to die, but perhaps I’ll still find a flower in bloom tomorrow if I look on one of the other plants. I did take my youngest over to the lilies that were blooming and see the dust boxes on them. I even got him to use just one finger to touch the pin heads instead of pinching them with finger and thumb. We both loved looking at the yellow dust on our fingers!

We each had the thrill of pulling off the petals and seeing the 5 “leaves” and the pins with no dust boxes. Now, we looked underneath the flower, and voila! There we saw the knob! Looking further around the bush shows knobs that were ripe and ready to pick and eat. Wow! It is amazing how much the rose bush and the apple tree have in common. The nice thing about the rose bush is that we were able to see all facets of the plant growing at the same time, unlike the apple tree. (By the way, the rose fruit is called Rose Hip and is edible!)

We were very lucky today. We cannot always finish a nice learning with actual testing of the reading, and I took full advantage of it. Sometimes we can do part testing – for example, I first took my youngest to the lilies and that would have been wonderful in itself without being able to see the rest that we were talking about.

I believe it is very important that children – and adults alike – get to make these wonderful connections. It brings all the things we learn to life and ingrains it inside of us – just like when we took the boys to see handmade replicas of Columbus’ two ships the Nina and the Pinta this past weekend!

The awe and warm fuzzy feeling that even I felt tonight as I went and picked the petals and saw the inside with the pins with no dust boxes is something I will most likely remember. Even though this was a rose bush, I remember seeing pictures of apple blossoms and it was just as wonderful with the rose bush as if it was an apple tree. If I am ever able to visit a blooming apple tree, you will be certain that I will put my finger gently on the pins with the dust boxes!

First Week of Summer

All week we have davened outside in our backyard. I do not know why I never did that before. It is so beautiful, sunny, warm, who would NOT want to be outside? I told the boys to get their siddurs and go outside for we were going to daven. On Friday morning, one boy asked if we were going to daven outside. I had forgotten that is what we had been doing but it took me just a moment to say yes. I am so glad we did! It felt so good to be outside, and bonus was that my almost 3-year-old-going-on-50 was able to run around outside leaving me free to actually daven with the older boys as well!

Well, I thought I would be off to a good start by making a schedule of our summer. There are things we do not get to do during the school year that I am planning to do this summer. So, yes, I did do a schedule and a beautiful boy did enter it into Excel and yes, we did save it! So, why have we done nothing on the list except for davening -and even that ended up being done late, and later each day this week?

I think I figured it out this morning. For four days the boys went to Twilight Camp. It is a Cub Scout camp in the evenings (5:30-8:30 pm). They had so much fun running around, climbing, playing games, learning all sorts of fun things, that by the time we got home and into bed they were sleeping before they hit their pillows! They were so worn out that they did not wake up until after 9 am, so our mornings did not start until almost lunch time. But, they had fun, lots of fun, and my oldest who is too old for Cub Scouts and is in Boy Scouts went as a staff member and had lots of fun as well. That’s what it’s all about. 🙂

So, yes, I have a schedule for summer, and today I was excited to try starting again. One boy went on the plane by himself to see Grandpa and have a blast these next few days. Lunch when we got home yesterday was silent. You could hear a pin drop. Even though I don’t miss the kibbitzing when all three older boys are home, I do miss him.

Today, I had all intentions of starting our summer schedule. I really did. I even got up before my husband got up (and that is telling everything!) I got my husband off to work, had to wake boys up for they were still sleeping, and then I got to work. Sweeping, mopping, washing, and cleaning. By 10:04 I had all sorts of stuff done and was feeling pretty good and we were almost ready to go daven. Davening again happened outside. It was beautiful. I just didn’t feel like doing any school work, I came inside, made some more tea, and then told my son I was going for a nap. After the nap, we had lunch outside and I spent the next hour or so reading to the boys.

I resigned to the idea that I’m taking a break and doing something that I actually want to do, not just need to do. So, cleaning and organizing is going to be our schedule for the week. I know I won’t get it all done, but the goal is that I will be a long ways over. I’m confident that it will get done. Schoolwork can wait until next week.

I think I’m going to end here, I am having a hard time thinking for now my almost 3 year old who is now out of diapers (yeah!) now knows that the water we drink turns to pee after he asked me why he needed to have more water, and as I am trying to type, I’m trying to answer his question on why people need gas that comes from our tummy.

And anyways, the brownies are done, and I’m going to get my 8 year old who went to bed (but is up reading his new 800 page Mark Twain collection I got him yesterday) so he can have some too. After all, it’s summer!

Galileo and the Magic Numbers and Testing

“Well, we’ll have to work on that Greek grammar. Now, how about mathematics?”

“Mathematics? You mean arithmetic? I can add and subtract numbers.”

“Do you know Pythagorean number magic?”

Galileo shook his head. He about witches magic and black magic, but number magic –? That was a new kind of magic.
Borghini went to the cupboard and returned with a handful of little white pebbles.

“Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher who lived over two thousand years ago. He loved numbers. For him, the whole universe could be explained by mathematics. He thought numbers could describe beauty, music, and even the acts of gods and men. Your father is a musician, is he not?”

“Yes, Master, and a fine one.”

“So I am told. Then you will understand what I mean when I say that Pythagoras invented the first numbered musical scale.”

“He must have been a very great man, indeed, to have done that.”

Master Jacopo knelt on the floor and motioned Galileo to do the same. Galileo’s eyes widened. This was a strange way for a teacher to act! Most of his friends had told him dreadful stories of their teachers. They all insisted upon strict discipline and were very formal and strict. Yet this teacher was asking him to sit on the floor to play games! Galileo sat, legs crossed like a Saracen.

“Now, this is the magic,” said Borghini. He placed one pebble on the floor.

———-

That was a passage from the new book I read this week – “Galileo and the Magic Numbers” by Sidney Rosen.

I’ve spent a week trying to write this post. Mainly for I was not sure what to write, and partly because I kept getting interrupted. I’m just going to blame the interruptions 😉 . However, after a flood of emails coming through on one of my homeschooling lists, I’m going to take what I liked about the above book and tie it into testing.

Galileo was not homeschooled per say, but he was privately tutored for a couple of years, meaning he was taught one-on-one, which is, basically homeschooling. The above passage describes how out-of-the-box Galileo’s teacher was in his teachings and how it impacted Galileo. Galileo ended up going to a monastery to learn for a few years, and then to university. He spent most of his life learning, teaching or in some what associated with a university. For the longest of time (shall I dare say until the past 50 years or so???) each teacher, each school, each chain of thought taught their students differently. It seemed to work just fine. We have benefited greatly from people such as Copernicus, Aristotle, Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Samuel Morse, the Wright brothers, Thomas Edison, Graham Bell and Alexander Fleming (discoverer of penicillin) just to name a few. I have not read all these biographies yet, but of the ones I have read about, the education was all very different, and sometimes the person just could not get into learning the way it was taught and seemed like a “bad” student. In the end, we see that each of these people all learned in various ways and contributed greatly to our lives today.

This brings me to standardized testing. There is a big push to have standardized testing in the public schools. Public schools in each state are given the curriculum to use for each grade. They are told what to teach. At the end, students take tests to see how much they have learned. It is easy then for each state to compile a “standard” test for each grade, for every child across the state learns the same thing for each grade.

A homeschool student does not necessarily learn what they learn in public/private schools at the same time these students learn the material. Is that wrong or bad? Most would agree that not a problem.

I have 4 beautiful boys. For each child, I have to teach them very differently, and at different ages I have to teach them differently as well. One child can read to himself or a brother in the same room that I am reading out loud to another boy. Others need to be in a totally different room when I am talking out loud for it is distracting. Some boys can do math in the same room with me when I am busy with another boy, and yet, I have a boy who needs absolute silence and my 100% undivided attention when he does his math – not that I do any of the work for him, he just needs me to sit next to him and make him feel important by sitting there absorbed in only him.

The question arises then, what do we do with the standardized tests that some states require? What do they mean? A mother posted that her son was taking a grade 3 standardized test. Someone else was the proctor, and the test was spread over multiple days. The child “finished early” the first day, and did not complete the test, and at the same time, the proctor told her that he put D’s as most of the answers. The mother realized that she never prepared her son for taking multiple choice tests and went over with him how to take them and some tips. The rest of the tests he finished, and chose various letters for answers, but when the test scores came back in, he scored in the lowest 2%. The mother was obviously very upset and concerned about the results. The question is, what do they really mean?

Most of the responses stated that in general, the scores are not a reflection of your son’s intelligence, but rather his ability to take a standardized test. Up to this point, he hadn’t had any exposure to multiple choice tests and the testing strategies that go along with those tests.

One response was, “I always tell them before we go to testing…I already know how well they are doing in school. We only take these to fulfill the law. These tests will NOT ask a single question about the Bible, good character, Shakespeare, any composer or artist, science that we are currently studying (I don’t follow the public school rotation), geography, famous people or history. So these tests will not test you on about 75% of our schooling.

I had a child ask me about the science questions once (after the above discussion) and I offered to look up what subject they would be testing him on that year. His eyes got HUGE and he accused me of offering to cheat on the test! I explained that schools know ahead of time what topics will be on the test and that teachers spend the entire year teaching students exactly what will be on the test that year. He was shocked that test scores were so low if that was true!”

Other responses were:

“ITBS [a kind of standardized test] is a norm refrenced test. Norm-referenced tests compare a person’s score against the scores of a group of people who have already taken the same exam. The score will be a rating rather than a percentage of correct answers.”

(I am under the impression that most standardized tests are also norm-referenced tests.)

” I also think that we are on a separate path from kids in school. At some point, perhaps college, our paths need to merge, so our children need to test well by the SAT, but not necessarily when they are young.”

I think the above quote says it all — we all learn differently, at different paces, but the idea is that it all should come together at the end – not the beginning or even in the middle.

So what about these tests? Some of us still have to give our children tests occasionally to fulfill state requirements, we cannot get around that. I have given my boys the full battery CAT (10 tests on reading, vocabulary, language, math, science and social studies.) These tests were given for our benefit only, not state requirements. The results of the tests varied. One child aced the tests. On the other hand, I had one child who was a late reader and did poorly on most of the tests for grade 1 and 2 for he could not read the material. After the test was finished and packaged up I asked him the same questions orally and he knew the answers very well, however, the test results came back very poor for obvious reasons.

Most people seem to think that for homeschooled students these standardized tests are more for the practice of taking multiple choice tests than seeing how much the student really knows or learned for we are many times teaching different things or things at different times. If that is true, are they a waste of time? I would not call them a waste. If nothing else, they are good practice for later. Almost all kids who go to college will have to take the SAT or other such multiple choice tests and we want to make sure our children are on the same playing level as others for tests. For language and math, the tests seem to be a little bit more relevant, but for my late reader that is not true either. However, other than I know my husband will disagree with me, I would not worry too much about the results if you can figure out other ways to check your child’s knowledge (discussions are great!). If a parent is concerned, try giving tests more often so the child gets used to that form of testing.

Ambleside Online – Why I’m so excited!

Over the years, we have had various kinds of curricula. We started off with Calvert, an all-in-one curriculum that even includes crayons, pencils and erasers! It is a standard school curriculum which includes the teacher’s guide, answers, and wonderful support from real teachers. After using it for 3 years, I realized that other than it is quite expensive (it was costing me about $700 a year per child, but over 93% cheaper than private schools,) it was not working out for one of my children so I had to look for something else.

Money was a huge issue, as well as the fact that I was trying to teach and look after several younger children at the same time and I decided I was going to try to see if I could combine and overlap some of the teaching with the boys to help me out. I spent a long time looking into Unit Studies. Unit Studies take a topic and combine different subjects into one unit so you are teaching many subjects at once.

We have a yearly budget for school, which includes any camp, and two years ago, while our boys were at a much needed (for me!) camp, I spent several days searching the internet for unit studies that I wanted to do for the coming year. With sending 3 boys to camp for 2 weeks each, my budget for schooling for the year was almost nothing, so I had to search for free stuff. The problem was that I was not finding free units for the topics I wanted to teach. The second last day of camp I was at my wit’s end. I just did not know what to do. Our schooling was suppose to start in 4 days and I had no clue what I was going to teach! For some reason I clicked on a link that was a curriculum. I did not want a curriculum, but I clicked anyways. What did I have to loose? I already exhausted all possible sites for what I was looking for anyways, and I needed a change of pace. I started reading. It was Ambleside Online, a Charlotte Mason curriculum. A free curriculum, nice, but not for me (not that I knew anything about it!) As I read all about the curriculum, I found myself liking and agreeing with what I was reading. I emailed my husband some of what I read for I really liked it – not that I was going to do it, but it was really good stuff. I kept reading. And reading. And reading. By the end of the day I knew what I was going to do that year – with only 2 days to prepare (Shabbos was in the middle,) I was going to jump right into it anyways and figure it out.

Charlote Mason lived in England in the late 1800’s early 1900’s. Ms. Mason was a teacher for many years and spend a lot of time trying to improve her teaching ideas and skills. In a nutshell, she voted for short lessons, which equal to short school days so there is time for personal interests and hobbies (very important.) However, she was an advocate for a strong education with knowledge in a wide range of topics and felt that children were capable of more than we tend to think of them as being capable of. She was an advocate for living books – books written by authors who were knowledgeable and passionate about the topic. At the same time, religion was very important and incorporated God into secular learning. She was a huge advocate of sending kids outside for as long as possible with part free time and part guided time. Middos (character traits) are very important. And, don’t start children too early. Let them grow, let them learn about nature, let them understand how a flower grows and how a squirrel lives. Let them learn how to observe nature and then they can learn. With four children, and with being religious, the idea of having time to teach all of them, give them a good strong educational background AND do it with Hashem in mind all the time, Wow!

The Charlotte Mason version that we use is an online version. The advisory has tried to find as many of the books that fit the teaching style as possible that are out of copyright and available for free online. This helps cut down the cost.

They have also set up a schedule for each year – broken down by week. This makes it very flexible. Some children need to break readings down into multiple sections read over several days, and it gives the option of putting everything into a 4 day week instead of 5. This is what we do. I arrange almost everything into 4 days, and Fridays are left for other stuff (yes, cooking and cleaning is part of it, but that really is school for that is real life skills.) I do not feel forced to use everything on the list. Obviously, I replace the Bible with Torah study, Christian history with our Jewish history and hymns with davening and Shabbos songs. However, I do not have to worry about reading that the world is millions of years old when I do not believe that. The setup is just a nice guideline being flexible if I need to replace a book and letting me choose when to teach. There are a few books that I have left out of teaching for they are too Christian based, but all in all, that is not an issue and we enjoy being able to easily see Hashem in all our learning.

The big difference that one will see when they go through the FAQ’s is that especially for the younger years, there is no writing except the copywork! None! What is done instead is oral narrations. The parent or teacher (if in a school) reads from the different books, then asks for an oral narration from the child(ren). After the narration, the parent or teacher then uses that for discussions. Why oral narrations? Talking is easier than writing, and if you cannot tell me what you read, then you do not understand and how can you write about it? Starting in year 4, after the child has the idea of how to listen and read and understand, then they start with 1-2 written narrations. The readings get very intense – starting in year 4 we add Plutarch’s Lives and Shakespeare (yes, the real thing – however, it did not work out for us too well, but I think it was mostly me and the scheduling mainly….) Younger children have short attention span so the lessons need to be short – 10-15 minutes. Older children about 30-45 minutes. No longer. Also, learn not to repeat (unless the child does not understand) for they need to learn to listen the first time, after all, their boss is not going to tell them twice to do a job!

The first year was a little strange. It took a while before I got the hang of what I was suppose to be doing with the narrations. This past year I had a much better idea and the discussions came a lot easier for me. I will be entering year 3 with AO and am very excited. I just placed the order for the year’s books – $160 for my oldest (the younger ones already have the books!). Well, that is everything except math. That will come at the end of the summer. My oldest is going to be reading about all sorts of exciting stuff this year such as classical mechanics, relativity (yes, in year 6!!!), reading the Hobbit and the Animal Farm and all about the Greeks and Romans. He has read the unabridged classics such as Robinson Crusoe and Oliver Twist, with more to come! Oh, and Understood Betsy and The Little Duke are NOT to be missed!

I have my reading list for the summer set out for me, I can’t wait! I think I will enjoy the books more than they will!

End of the Year – Trying to finish it off!

Shavuos is behind us. It was a beautiful 3 day holiday. Sunny, hot and humid, however, even so, it was beautiful! We enjoyed every minute of it, and like always, I’m sad when the holiday is over. 3 days of everyone home, Daddy was home, nice friends, and even some nice food. 🙂

However, it finally hit me. I’m having a hard time finishing up the rest of the year. This year was better than most, some years it is really bad. It is not that I do not want to teach, it just happens that near the end of the year things do not go quite as smoothly as they usually do. I am not sure how it happens for we have a schedule. However, for whatever reason, things seem to break down near the end of the year. Right now we have about 2-3 weeks of school left, but oftentimes things go wild 2 months before the end of the year.

I think part of my problem is that I’m thinking ahead. It is about this time of year that I get really excited about the next year – all the ideas and changes and thoughts and wonderful things we are going to be doing, I just want to sit down and organize it all now. Don’t get me wrong, we had a wonderful year, at least from my perspective, however I just get excited about the fresh start each year. The last two years have been wonderfully amazing, and I can see how next year can be even better.

The new secular program we have been doing has been wonderful for us. We have been doing a Charlotte Mason program – Ambleside Online. There are several versions of Ms. Mason’s curriculum, and the version I have is an online version. The perk to it being online is that most of what we use is available online, and they have made it very convenient and put links for all the available books.

There are two main reasons why I really love this program.

The first reason is that it is God based. One could use it without religion if one desired as there are other reasons to use the curriculum even without religion, and one could very easily change it from a Christian based curriculum to a Jewish based curriculum like I did. All I really need to do is remove the books that are not for me (i.e. Bible, Christian history) and replace them with what I want (i.e. Torah and Jewish history). I have found the books that remain make it easier for me to include God in our entire schooling, not just in the “Jewish” part of it. In our science when we are talking about volcanoes and earthquakes and the book mentions the “One Who create all but we are not going to know but you know Who it is” (and yes, this particular book words it this way, it is cute and I really like the book) to learning about Joan of Arc and we see the miracle of how the small French army wins over the larger English army, and how when they finally crowned the real King of France, we see how God runs the world and how the French coronation is actually very similar to how the Jewish kings were crowned.

The second reason I fell in love with the Charlotte Mason approach is because she focused on SHORT lessons. The younger years (through year 3) have 10-15 minute lessons. That is all! Why? The child cannot sit for longer than that without getting bored and distracted. Do not let the child get bored for you want to keep their interest. Older children can focus more so the older years have 30-45 minute lessons depending on the section/day.

There has been many times where I would stop reading right at the climax of a story. Yes, I was a meany!!! Oh, did they beg and plead with me to read more, but after I secretly read the ending I then, with a sneaky look on my face, closed the book shut and tell them next week! The suspense was almost unbearable for them! They are then so excited to come back next week to hear what happened. It is a great way to keep the interest of an otherwise not so interesting book as well. Oh, and yes, the next day they tried hard to tell me they did not read that book yet for the week. 😉

Another bonus to short lessons is that it is great for those of us who are teaching a dual curriculum. You can actually teach all the subjects, in depth, AND teach another full curriculum! And not only that, if there are multiple children you are teaching, hey, there is time enough for all of them, what more could I ask for? God in all facets of life, and time to teach all my children.

It has been two years and I am very happy. I still have not been able to include all I would like to include into our schedule, however, slow and steady wins the race they say. We have done better this second year, and I am very confident that I will be able to do better this coming year. Now, to try to focus for a few short weeks so we can get done!

2012 Conference Videos Are Here!

Chodesh Tov!

For those that were waiting, the 2012 Torah Home Education Conference videos are now available to purchase. 😀

They can be purchased off of Mind Bites. There was a wide range of topics, from Financial Literacy in Your Homeschooling, to teaching Bar/Bas Mitzvah and Beyond, to Technology in the Home (**I like this one, hint hint 😉 **) They can all be purchased individually for $2.97 with each talk being about 40 minutes long. You can also purchase the entire series for $19.80 by clicking on the link for “Series” with over 7 hours of enjoyable listening time! The audio and video quality of the talks I have watched or sampled have been very good.

I was hoping to post this last night, however, there was just so much to do, and I did not feel that I even got half of it done! Not that I didn’t do anything, it was just that life happens sometimes, and with children life happens often ;), as well as regular stuff to deal with. I think the only thing on the list that I got done (and one could argue it was the most important thing to do last night,) was calling to say hi to my 91 year old grandfather, who not only answered the phone before the answering machine (he screens his calls from telemarketers), told me he was happy to hear about the conference and the fact that we learned a lot from it, asked me a lot of questions about our homeschooling and was very impressed with that and other things – all within the course of the 10min 52sec phone call – which might actually be a record for him!

One big bonus of homeschooling is that I have learned to be more organized. Don’t get me wrong, I still have a LOOONG way to go, but I am sure a lot further along than I was when we started! I have learned that I need to prepare my Yom Tov meals several days in advance so I know what I need in the house, and not the night before. Now I am happy that I was only able to do a partial shopping on Sunday, for that means I can actually make things that I would like to have because there is still money left for the week to buy stuff! There is positive in everything.

I’m going to finish up today, short and sweet. Tuesdays are a short day, which will allow me to finish up my Shavuos plans. Right now I know that we’re eating pizza and ice cream at shul on Sunday, and IY”H we will be making homemade ice cream, yum! I guess that is the important part, right? 😉 Wishing everyone a wonderful Yom Tov (and Shabbos) this weekend!

Growing Pains

I will start off by asking for people to daven for Reuven Dovid ben Miriam. (***updated name***) He got hit in the throat with a baseball and had to undergo surgery. Baruch Hashem he is alive but will have a stint in his throat for 6-8 weeks, not being able to talk. He will have a tracheotomy tube to breathe through until stint is removed. Afterwards, they will attempt to do reconstruction surgery and hopefully will be able to talk again.

It was a busy day today. Much has happened, and not with my children, but as I walked back into the house this evening, with my mind all full of different thoughts from the day, I took just a second to let what I saw and felt sink in. The 2 year old was standing at the kitchen counter on one of our folding chairs, singing and bouncing, just asking for the chair to collapse. It was nothing unusual, he loves to do that, however tonight it struck me different than usual, not sure why. Perhaps it was a combination of the day – making a shiva call, going hiking with the family, finding out my friend’s husband got severely hurt in a very unusual accident, to other things – some planned, some unplanned, but it seems that on these days the little things get looked at differently.

I was thinking how amazingly different each of our boys are. One boy tells me to watch out for it is going to be crazy in the house when they are all teenagers and a short while later comes over and “catches” me and tells me he caught me and that he is suspicious I am a double agent for the wrong country. Another thinks he is as big as his older brothers and of course everything is “ME DO IT!” while at the same time needing to know exactly what ingredients are in his pineapple pieces or his zucchini bread. We have one whose creative juices are constantly running away with him and he can create everything out of nothing but once he is finished, all those tiny pieces of paper and such just can’t seem to get picked up, no matter how hard he tries. To another whose computer knowledge has actually surpassed his father’s in some areas and everything that comes out of his mouth starts with “Ubuntu.”

These boys all have the same mother and the same father, but yet, each is vastly different from each other. Raising even one child is not easy, as any parent will tell you, however, there is something kind of refreshing to working with each of the children. It takes a lot of work and effort on the part of the parent to not just “raise” a child, but to raise each child in the way that is best for them so that they will grow to their unique potential. Up until this week I would arrange the order of the lessons to what suited me, and for the most part it seemed to work out well. It was not until this week that I realized that it is not always the best for everyone. I found out that in math, one child is better off doing it at the end of the day, the very last thing that I do for then I can sit down beside him for the 15 minutes he needs to finish his work while all the other siblings are out of the room. This child needs me to give him my 100% undivided attention while he works on his problems. Not that I do any of the problems for him, but I am there to help keep him on track. He needs me to ask him what the next question is, he needs me to ask him what he needs to do first, etc. With my attention and the lack of distractions from others, he all of a sudden can finish in a reasonable amount of time!

Perhaps it is the joy a parent gets from watching their children grow, but perhaps it is also the feeling that I too have grown. Raising children is not just about the children. Raising children is also about us, the parents. It is easy to go through the moments where the child is listening and doing what they are supposed to do. The challenge is when it is not so easy. What happens when you all have a wonderful day and it seems ruined by the fact that at 10pm the children are still not in bed for they are just too wild and wired from the excitement and exhaustion? What happens when a child throws a huge tantrum every time they think life is so unfair? What happens if there are other bad middos such as lying or hurting taking place?

All these challenges push us, the parents, to the limits. Often times we might be up at night thinking, other times during the day. There are times where we can find the answer quickly, and sometimes the answer seems to elude us for eons. But we keep on trying. Then, one day we look back and all of a sudden we notice how they have changed. The child who used to touch the wet paint of others’ pictures and not sit still, now is maturing and sits with the adults and participates in conversations (until you have to shoo him away! 🙂 ) The one who threw such wonderful tantrums and got offended so easily, well, all of a sudden I realize that the tantrums have almost disappeared. Children all go through different stages in life. With our help, they usually outgrow their “growing pains.”

But if we would look back at ourselves, we would see that we too have grown. At first, we never imagined that we could cope with certain situations, and now, those situations are a piece of cake! And not only that, we find that while we are dealing with new challenges, we also add more things to our resume that we might never have dreamed of.

So, as I am thinking about how wonderful it is to be a part of our children’s life and to see them grow and mature, I hope this feeling will be able to carry me on to the next challenge, whatever that may be. Hopefully I will remember that with my constant love and devotion that this too will pass and be outgrown and the gorgeous, amazing, unique flower that is emerging will continue to unfold.

Musings on the 4th Torah Ed Homeschool Conference

The day after the conference, we finally made our way back home. We left Motzei Shabbos, spent the night somewhere on the road, and drove in to the conference Sunday morning. We left a little early but with only about 4.5 hours of sleep the night before, we were exhausted, and ended up spending another night on the road.

I was not scheduled to talk until after lunch, and that left me free the entire morning to listen to the wonderful speakers. It was absolutely wonderful. It is hard for me to sit here and write about how I feel, but I can say that I learned something from everyone, some had more relevant information for our particular family than others, but everyone was great.

By the time my turn came, I felt very small, after all, I have only been homeschooling for 7 years, and here I was trying to present material to parents who have been at it much longer than me! After sitting all morning, listening to wonderful parents and their stories , their encouragement and advice, was I going to be able to stand up to them? Would I be able to help and encourage others as well? I hope I did! I asked my wonderful husband how I did, and he smiled and told me it was great, but then added that he is a little biased to begin with. 😉

I think I will write a few things that really touched me personally.

The first speaker was Mrs. Susan Lapin. She is a vetran homeschooler – she started homeschooling before most people in the secular world even heard of the word. One of the first things she mentioned was that yes, her homeschooled children DID get married – and at least one got married to another homeschooled child. For those who are concerned about shidduchim, that is a nice piece of chizuk 🙂 She basically told us how she and her husband got started into homeschooling. Her oldest daughter was “loosing her sparkle.” They did not know what was wrong, but they did know that school was negative for her. If they would keep her at home, then at least it would be a neutral environment, and that is better than negative. They did not know what they were going to do, but they did keep her daughter home that next year and instead of just a neutral environment, it ended up being positive. The next year all children were pulled out.

Mr. Shoshana Zohari was another speaker that I listened too. She was talking about children in middle school, Bar/Bat Mitzvah and beyond. One of the points she talked about was about how she makes being Jewish fun and exciting. Anything they can do to keep the excitement, from singing and dancing and playing on plastic drums while davening to singing with happiness every day at lunch while everyone bentches together. Yes, it is hard to keep the motivation on the parent’s part, but I think if we can keep the goal in mind, it will help encourage us during those hard days.

I just want to mention my thanks to all the people who were involved in making the conference and gave of their time and energy to create such a wonderful, successful event – from the organizing to attending, to the babysitting – which I think is one of the most important parts. It was wonderful to be able to spend time with my husband and not have to worry about the children and know they are taken care of!

For those who were not able to attend, or like me, had to choose between speakers for they doubled up on speakers for most of the day, I understand they will be posting audios of the talks online. When I find out where they are, I will BE”N post the link!