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Showing posts from January, 2014

Even though we’re in Israel… cute drawings!

The kids still do some things that are incomparably cute and that don’t exactly pertain to “aliyah” as such, so don’t belong on my aliyah blog .  One night last week, I happened to find a stack of GZ’s drawings on the floor that he had “supplemented” with detailed cut-outs from a handout of clothing that they gave out in gan, presumably to teach the kids about dressing appropriately for the weather (“short sleeves in summer, long sleeves in winter” is mainly the extent of it here). On the upper left, we see a monster (who’s wearing a “pocket with skin-coloured paint”) slipping something into a mailbox and saying “tee hee.”  And the lower-right shows another fearsome monster who appears to be going for a swim and showing off his summer vest.  None of the monsters apparently had use for a parka or a nice pleated skirt. There were a few more like this… I just thought it was very, very sweet.  And imaginative. And nostalgic, for the days when all he had to do, mainly, was draw and amus

Book Reviews, not Book Reports

Do you do book reports with your kids?  Have you found a great way to help them reflect on what they’ve read?  This step is important because otherwise (if they’re anything like me and my children), they’ll just gobble down the book and move on, without much reflection. (I know, I said I wasn’t going to be posting here much, but right now I have a restless, not-really-sick kid home from school, so I put her to work writing a book review!) First of all, what’s the difference? Okay, I’m not sure exactly what the difference is, except that a review implies that you’re throwing in a little of your own opinion.  “Report” sounds objective, like a dry listing of the book’s features, as if it were a notable geographic feature:  a desert, or an ocean.  You wouldn’t “review” a desert, you would “report” on it.  Okay, actually, with the Internet, people review everything from national parks to public bathrooms and I wouldn’t be surprised if you could find reviews for various of the world’s oc

Hey, y’all, come on over!

If you could interview any kids’ book author or illustrator living today, who would it be? You know I love writing and self-publishing kids’ books… to branch out into this in a bit of a more professional way, I’ve started a new blog dedicated to the art of creating children’s books:  Write Kids’ Books! (I know, great subtle title, huh?) Never fear!  I’m not abandoning MamaLand just yet.  Although most of my posts lately have been on my Adventures in AliyahLand blog , when I start to feel our lives are not overwhelmed by Aliyah with a capital A, and we get back to feeling “normal” (especially if I’m handling any aspect of the kids’ schooling on my own), then I think I’ll head on back here and only use the AliyahLand blog to talk specifics of life in Israel.  I don’t know, exactly.  When it’s not all about Aliyah, I hope to be back. Meanwhile, I’ll pop in here occasionally to say hi when there’s something great on one of my other blogs. So:  back to my original question.  There are