Adventures in Mama-Land

  So did I mention we’re homeschooling again? At least for the summer.  Does that make me the kind of wannabe / poseur I hate?  Or an earnest parent trying hard to make something work during weird, transitional times… I’m not sure what the answer is, but I thought I’d share a quick update on how things are going this summer with our “homeschooling / summerschooling” plans.  (It was originally going to be quick – sorry!!) It remains to be seen whether we’re going to do this long-term.  But the truth is, it feels very good.  Very, very good. In some areas, we’re picking up exactly where we left off.  But mostly, things slipped a lot during the year.  The only area in which both kids are further ahead (besides Hebrew!) is math. I had a few clear criteria before we started:

Nearly 3 years ago, with great trepidation, I released my first printable that wasn’t free:  a Book of Centuries.  More heavily influenced by Charlotte Mason then than I am now, I wanted my kids to do this instead of a timeline because a) our house is tiny, b) our walls are cluttered, and c) I knew it would take us a looooong time to work on. Have you ever seen what happens to a piece of paper after it’s been clinging to the walls for a matter of years???  In my house, at least, it would be in illegible tatters. Anyway, I found lots of versions around, some free, some paid, but most of them had some sort of religious orientation – which is great; frankly, I wanted a religious orientation.  They just weren’t MY religious orientation.  I wanted a book that would show what Jews were doing around the time that various periods of civilization – the Renaissance, say, or the Industrial Revolution – were taking place.  Oh, yeah, and I wanted, hmm, no, NEEDED to s...

Today, in Story of the World history , we finally came to a chapter I have been giving much thought since I first flipped through the book well over a year ago:  The Beginning of Christianity.  The whole narrative appears in 2 sections:  the birth of Jesus, and the teachings, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.  Because it’s a short chapter, I decided to do it all in one pass, which is very unusual. It’s a busy week, but I wanted to share a few quick thoughts: This is a VERY short chapter, especially compared to earlier chapters about Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Julius Caesar, and heck, Anansi the mischief-making African spider.  There’s more about Christianity later on, but this is really it about Jesus.  I was kind of grateful it was so short – but if I was Christian, I might honestly have reason to feel offended that my entire belief system seemed to have been condensed into four short pages. I took a bit of time at the beginning to explain the vocab...

A few weeks ago, the Canadian Museum of Civilization (in Ottawa) announced that it was going back to BC (before Christ) and AD (anno domini, “the year of our Lord”) for dates on anything “intended for the public,” while continuing its policy of many years to use BCE and CE on documents intended for a more academic readership.  You can read all about it in the National Post here . Rabbi Reuven Bulka, a prominent rabbi in Ottawa, came out with a response that sounds pretty much like something my teenagers usually say:  “no-one cares.”  In fairness, the article says, he “prefers BCE because it is more inclusive, but… can live with the change.”  I can live with it, too, but I’d rather not, and I’m not going to just sit by quietly.  And if you live in Canada, neither should you. I was dismayed to read in the National Post that you're going back to using BC and AD for dates on museum displays and other materials "intended for the public". http://life.nationalpost.co...

Yup, you heard me right.  I don’t hate Chanukah.  I don’t hate Christmas.  I don’t hate Los Posadas, or Kwanzaa, or Diwali, or anything else that people celebrate at this time of year. But I can’t stand the “genericization” of this whole bloody month, as you’ll know if you’ve been reading here for more than about ten minutes (sorry to any long-term readers who’ve heard it all before!). Look, it’s Chanukah right now.  I know that, and I guess – reluctantly – I like it.  And next week, it will be over, and I would ask that you pretty please not continue to acknowledge it or celebrate it in any way until next year at this time.  But no… and it’s particularly poignant in years like this one, where, because of the way the calendars line up, schools and the community around us will continue to “celebrate” Chanukah on our behalf at least until December 25th, if not right on through the entire month. And here’s how they do it: Yay!  A funny animated winte...

Wow!  If you are using Story of the World Volume 1 for Ancient History, or are planning to use it at any point in the future, head on over here and download the FREE lapbook this mama put together over the year that she and her kids studied Volume 1.  It’s on her blog, but in my experience, you shouldn’t wait until you’re ready to use it, because resources come and go in the blog world.  This one is worth the not-much space it will take up on your hard drive. As this is an all-year project, we use the lapbook intermittently.  There is one small, very easy mini-book for each chapter.  They are very professional and fun pieces that the children can put together at least partly on their own.  I do a lot of the cutting and pasting, though, leaving the creative stuff for Naomi, and some backup cutting and pasting by Gavriel Zev.  By “intermittently,” I mean “every once in a while, when we remember.”  So it could be a month, or 6 weeks, or whatever....

We read this week (well, heard in the Jim Weiss audiobook) about Ashurbanipal, the tyrant who enjoyed hunting lions in his spare time.  Secretly, I wanted to make a lamassu (lamassus?), the winged-lion-man-bull guardian creature (see right) which is archetypical of this period of Mesopotamian history.  BUT as you’ll see, I quickly determined that this was WAY beyond either Naomi’s or my sculpting ability, so we stuck with lions. We did this project after Shabbos, which is just a beautiful time, when everybody is fed, rested, refreshed, slightly restless and ready for… well, we’re open to pretty much anything! Two new or newish techniques I decided to teach her through this project.  The first was that these lions were built around an armature – in this case, balls of tinfoil for the body and the head.  We rolled flat “sheets” of clay which we wrapped around the balls of tinfoil.  The other technique was using water to smooth the clay, which isn’t so much a tec...

Yes, we really DID do school this week.  In fact, because we were still in the break between Parks & Rec 9-week sessions, we probably did MORE school than we usually do, and certainly more than we will accomplish next week. However… I mentioned that I’ve been sick and miserable;  I actually woke up voiceless on Tuesday and wasn’t able to speak at all until Friday morning.  So our emphasis this week was on subjects that teach themselves, anything that comes in audiobook form, and anything I could teach in a whisper. A couple of highlights: LATIN!  The kids are both loving our Song School Latin program.  We’re in Week 6, and so far, this program is so light it doesn’t really feel like school.  They both beg to do more than one song a week, but I figure we’ll pace ourselves and it’s great keeping it light and easy.     Here they are singing this week’s song with the help of these puppets.  The puppets are in the back of the book, but ...