Adventures in Mama-Land

This is probably our last “normal” school week for a couple of weeks because of Sukkos next week and all our fun exciting Chol HaMoed (holiday) activities.  NOT that it was a normal week… do we ever really have one of those?  Does anybody? Here’s what we’ve been up to this week! We sure DO love chumash!  Elisheva created this picture while she was waiting for Naomi Rivka to go get dressed when we finished up our work for today. Naomi can now read pessukim (verses) 1-4 of Lech Lecha (in case you don’t know what this is… Bereishis/Genesis, Chapter 12; it’s known as “Lech Lecha” after the first two significant Hebrew words; oh, and in case you didn’t know, “chumash” = Torah = pentateuch = five books of Moses). She has mastered 18 of the Bright Beginnings flashcards, and I just added 6 more, bringing us up to 24 words in her “official” Torah vocabulary.  Unofficially, she probably knows quite a few more, but I like doing them systematically with the flashcards. Hmm...

It seems that the best I can say about Limudei Kodesh (Jewish studies) resources is that they’re not completely appalling .  With that in mind, I browsed the shelves in a couple of local bookstores today and came away with the following: A Child’s Bible:  Lessons from the Torah A Child’s Bible:  Lessons from the Prophets and Writings Yesh Lanu Lama , a Hebrew easy-reader The first two are written by Seymour Rossel, the author who wrote Introduction to Jewish History , the book I’ve tentatively bought for Jewish history.  Well, I really did buy it, but I’m tentative because it’s not an extraordinary book.  It’s only, as I said, not completely appalling .  The pictures are very dated, but on the other hand, they’re not badly done, and the text is written – not by a committee – but by a single author who seems passionate about his subject.  I’m hoping, really hoping, that counts for more than up-to-dateness (up-to-date-itude?), especially in b...

We’ve been doing bits and pieces over the summer, but nothing really systematic, and it’s always tough  getting back into the groove when you’re grooving in a whole other language. Slogging through Kriyah v’Od, and it really DOES feel like a slog sometimes.  The way the book substitutes images for words is starting to annoy both of us, because she is regularly grappling with ALL the nekudos (vowels) in our Chumash studies. Kriyah v’Od uses pictures for any word containing a vowel other than shva, chirik, kamatz and patach (basically A & I).  Here is the word “ochelet,” for example.  Because it has “o” and “e” in it, they use a picture instead, cued with the letter alef (meaningless because it’s silent, but perhaps it will help her spelling later on down the line). Still, it was an exciting day, because we got to use the STICKERS!  There are so few sticker activities in the book that it makes me wonder why they even bothered, but I ham it up and do a bi...

After a year of planning and evaluating various options for Year 1, it’s finally done – our super-schmancy, fine-and-dandy Complete Jewish Homeschool Curriculum!  Sort of.  It’s an ambitious list, and I’m scared I won’t be able to do it. Points to keep in mind: I’m flexible.  If something doesn’t work, I drop it – period.  Maybe pick up something else, or maybe drop the subject if it’s not a crucial one.  I am very open to this, though I think everything I’ve chosen for the year is do-able. It LOOKS ambitious, but most of it is just extensions of what we are already doing.  Nothing here will be a big surprise if you’ve been reading this blog all along. Most lessons are VERY short!  Depending on the lesson itself and Naomi Rivka’s co-operation, an average lesson is about 10-20 minutes.  Some subjects in some weeks will really involve ZERO additional minutes; they’re just books included in our regular family reading schedule.  A ...

I ask because I am.  Or rather, a cut-OUT... hmm; a “cutter-outer”?  Whatever you call it, it's true:  I cut out the pages of workbooks, whether they're designed to come out or not. Sometimes, it's so I can save the page in our big binder, and sometimes (as with our JUMP Math text) it's because the book is too thick to write on the reverse side of the bent-backwards pages. Explode the Code isn’t unwieldy, but I have started enjoying the feeling of watching the book get noticeably smaller with each lesson done.  I think it gives Naomi a sense that we’re accomplishing something important; indeed, today was our first day in Book 2!!! Here are the books, all ready for tomorrow’s learning. And ZIP!  A swish of my brand-new exacto-type knife and they’re FREE!  Shiny, nice, easy to use and file afterwards.   Two books I DON’T cut:  Handwriting Without Tears and Kriyah v’Od.     The books open up nicely, and in the case of ...