Rambam – Jewish and Homeschooling in an Amazing World

My Quiet, Lazy Week

Summer is about here and it feels good! My oldest is having his turn for a vacation with Grandpa right now and it is awfully quiet around here. This was supposed to be the last week of school, but since one boy would still officially have school next week, I decided it was a good time to take the week off. We will finish up school next week. (Ah, the joys of homeschooling and having the flexibility of just taking off!) I have to admit, this week I have been quiet lazy. As in not really doing much lazy. I took the time to clean and organize the house just a little bit. I am getting caught up in the kitchen, I have taken several bags and boxes out to the van to give away, one boy did a very good start in cleaning the garage (it is part of one of his merit badges for Scouts,) and we spent most of the day today cleaning the boys’ room.

Actually, the boys did all the work! I give them full credit and they deserve it. They sure surprised me today. As part of my book removal this week, I bumped into a book that I bought at the library book sale several years ago called, ‘What to Do When Your Mom or Dad Says “Clean Your Room!” ‘ It is a good book for kids and tells them exactly what to do when and how to organize any bedroom no matter how messy it is. The first thing the boys said when I opened the book to read to them is, “Boy, that room [in the book] is messier than ours!” Which was a good thing for then they did not feel so bad and I think it gave them chizuk (encouragement.) They spent at least 4 hours – two in the morning and two after lunch – cleaning their room all by themselves. I think they enjoyed going back to the book to read it and figure out what to do next; after all, it was not Mommy telling them. 😉 It is not perfect, and we forgot to mop the floor, but it sure is acceptable and it looks “nice.” Even the beautiful boy who has trouble cleaning did an amazing job! He was the one who cleaned the garage as well the other day. I did not have to say much, he just went and did it. Obviously it needs more than the hour or so of work he spent on it, but it sure is a wonderful start. I wonder if it is the lack of his older brother around that is helping him this week or perhaps, just perhaps, he might be growing up. Maybe a little bit? Maybe? I won’t hold my breath too much at the moment, but it is good to dream. 😉 The trick is, can they keep their room clean tomorrow?

Mr. Big comes home on Friday, Bli Nedre, and I am sure looking forward to his return. Aside from realizing how much of a help he really is to me, I miss talking to him. I have spent the week sending boys outside and taking the quiet to just let my mind go and think. I have been thinking about decluttering/organizing (though not getting too far, but started,) thinking about how the school year has gone this year and how I want to change things for the next year and trying to think about the summer (well, got started but that is about it.) I do want to do some work over the summer, I find that some sort of schedule works well for us. We have not been doing Rambam for a little while for they are staying where their father is and he has been busy with other learning at the moment. Gum Ze L’Tova; this too is for the best – I have replaced that with Dik Duk (Lashon HaTorah series,) something that I have tried to do for a couple of years but was never able to figure out how to fit it into the schedule.

I have some thoughts on how to improve for next year. I know that I have been trying to do too much with my oldest for Ambleside Online. It is just that everything looked so good that I tried to cram it all in. Unfortunately, it did not work out. So, I will have to thin out the workload for next year just a little bit. That is not too bad for that is the idea anyways; they put a lot into each year to give the parents a nice selection to choose from.

For the summer, I was thinking of finding something for each one of the boys to do that is a little different than what we usually do. For one boy, he would like to write books (but hates to write,) so I have been thinking of The Creative Writer. I am wondering if I can have him spend the summer writing a book and then at the end of the summer we can print it off on Lulu.com. That should definitely make himself proud of himself.

It is almost 10:30 pm but my little one is still up and about and just cannot sleep. Even so, it is still awfully quiet around here. Did I mention the I cannot wait for my oldest to come back home? Just 2 more days! This is the third year now that Grandpa has taken one boy with him on a vacation. It does not seem to matter which boy is gone, the house is quiet without him. It is even more quiet this time for said boy is very talkative with his Mommy and Daddy (Baruch Hashem!!!!) and that is missing along with the bickering with his younger brothers. I am treasuring the quiet but am looking forward to his return.

I had some nice long walks with my DH this week, and that really helped make the week nice and serene. Hainge time to talk alone is something we like to do, but the past many months we have not had that pleasure and it sure has made a big impact over the last week. We have been able to talk about the boys and other needed stuff. It just puts a productive end to the day.

I’m off to bed now. Have a good night!

The Rest of the Year

My 4 year old, while we are in the car: “Mommy, I want the Bais Hamikdash song!”

I had absolutely no clue what song he was talking about, but he asked me several times while we were driving. I was going through my brain, trying to figure the song out. My oldest bought a few CD’s recently with his Bar Mitzvah money. It was not the Maccabeats, no, we have had those CD’s for a long time. I had Six13 playing and I quickly flipped through the songs for him. No. Well, perhaps it is Lipa. A brother helped me put Lipa in while I drove and we flipped through those songs. No, the only song he knew from that CD was “Hang Up the Phone.” No. No clue. Poor boy was so distraught. He wanted his Bais Hamkidash song! We had to wait and I asked my oldest if he knew what his little brother was talking about the next time we got into the car. It turns out that it was Cantor Helfgot and Itzchak Perlman! I was driving and the little boy was in the back seat, but the squeals of delight as he heard the violin start playing his song was wonderful. Beautiful song and it lasts 9 minutes and 58 seconds, and my youngest was singing along the entire time.

It’s been hard to get back into the swing of things after our winter vacation. It took a few weeks, but I finally sat down and redid our schedule. I was so proud of myself and I printed it out (took 8 pages), taped it together and attached it to our kitchen wall. As I was in the middle of taping, I noticed… a mistake. Oops. Oh well, it is hard to find all the mistakes until it is in print. We have made (well, really in the middle of the process of making) major and minor changes.

We had some things that had been working for us until recently, and with growing boys, we have made some executive decisions. Firstly, some of the minor changes I made. We have the older boys going through Rambam while watching videos with Rabbi Yehoshua Gordon on Chabad.org. While trying to be efficient with time, okay, it was mostly out of convenience, but don’t tell anyone, I would have all three boys watch the videos together. As long as I was in the room with them, that was fine. However, it is hard to stay in the room when another little boy “needs” to learn his school work. One might think that this is not an issue, until one realizes that once the parent leaves the room, the other boys tend to think that they can be boys.

So, we are working on getting their tablets all set up so that they can all listen to their Rambam videos separately, and wearing headphones (so they can be with me in the same room and I spend some time with my Bais Hamikdash boy) – which leads us to our major change. In order for them to be allowed to use their tablets, we have to make sure that when we sit them down with the tablets, they are likely to actually watch and listen, opposed to finding other things to do instead and I am not noticing. You know, like checking their email, etc. At first we were thinking that we would remove internet access to the tablets, which meant to remove the actual ability of the tablet to find any internet to try to connect to. To do that, you have to hack the tablet and start messing with the actual programming of it. Well, we got all the way to the last step and we “bricked” the tablet – meaning it won’t even turn on to use. Oops. We had to get another tablet. (We got the lower end tablets, and with a higher end tablet we would most likely would have been able to fix it by re-installing the whole system, similar to when one has to wipe out their Windows computer and re-install the Windows system.)

While waiting to decide what we are going to do now, I made the decision that the desktop computer was getting abused and I finally went and removed internet access to that computer – by pulling the plug to their internet router. We have two routers; one with a password, and one that was supposed to be filtered and with no password. (The filter, for some reason, stopped working.) Once the router that did not require a password was unplugged, there can be no access through tablets. That means we can upload videos through a thumb drive and do not have to worry about boys playing around so much (and don’t have to worry about screwing up another tablet!) Yes, we did get drop and spills protection, but that does not include when we root the tablet and mess up the programming end.

It’s been too cold to go out some days. Boys are kvetchy. Tried bribing them in getting work done fast so we can put up bookcases (a wonderful homeschool treat!!!!) Didn’t work. Bookcases came, school work was not done, and couldn’t get them to finish the work so we can put up the bookcases. A few days later and we finally finished screwing in all the screws to the 3rd and final Bais Hamikdash, oops, bookcase. 😉 We are still working on arranging all the books. With 3 new bookcases, you would think there would be some empty shelves. Right now I have 2 that are empty…for now, however, we are not done.

We have rearranged some furniture from our library (where the bookcases are) to the living room. We rather like it and think of keeping it, at least for now, this way. My chair is sitting right next to the bookcase on the hearth (and it’s within reach of my arms!) and instead of having my papers pile up all over the place, I am removing the books from one of the shelves and replace them with a few containers where I can store the papers and whatnot that I use throughout the day. I am hoping that it will make the fireplace area look a lot neater.

Back to Reality

After all the wonderful holidays, we are back in reality. I really felt it on Shabbos even though Yom Tov went directly into Shabbos, when Simchas Torah was gone, so was that special feeling. This week we are back in the real world. It has been quite busy this week, with popcorn selling, popcorn selling and more popcorn selling. I have two boys who are taking Amateur Radio classes; one boy is going for his license, and a second boy is going for an upgrade to be able to use more radio bands.

Even though we have not had that many real school days so far because of the Yomim Tovim, I finally figured out why we always seemed to be missing 15 minutes in the morning, right at the beginning of the day. I am not sure what I was thinking, for I really did give only 15 minutes to something that should take 30. I was able to rearrange the schedules to include that extra 15 minutes, as well as fix some of the other issues that arose as well. That’s the nice thing about being the boss of the schedule. J This week went a lot smoother than previous attempts.

I was thinking about my right-brained son last night. I am sure there are readers that are wondering how things are going, and what I am doing differently in teaching him. The truth is, I have been so pre-occupied with the wonderful Yomim Tovim that I have done nothing. Though I have felt so much more at ease just knowing he is right-brained. I know that there are resources out there that can help me teach him the way he learns best and that knowledge in itself has been quite comforting. What I have done this week is give him a… calculator. (Yikes!) The questions they were asking were using rather large numbers and to do them in my head would take some time, let alone this boy. The questions were about finding the lowest common multiple of two numbers. For those who do not know what that means, it entails doing the multiplication tables for two different numbers until you find a common multiple. The lcm(8,16) is an easy one – 16, but the lcm(25,35) is not as inherent. He understood what was expected of him and instead of having him just guess the correct answer for he felt it was impossible for him to do, I gave him the calculator and off he went. It took a subject that he was not excited about and changed it to one that he actually seemed to enjoy. This was hard for me to do for there is a stigma that giving a calculator is liken to cheating. But, I am not asking him what 6×6 is, I am asking him to go a step further. If one does not know what it means to find the lcm(25,35), using a calculator will not help. The next time math came up in the schedule, he went to grab the calculator, paper and pen and just went about his business. Needless to say, he got many more questions right in such a short time.

We were forced to try another change in different area. I had been having all three boys listening to their Rambam videos together, but unless I am in the room it does not work out very well. I went out Motzei Shabbos to listen to a speaker and my husband and 3 boys were home, all learning with DH learning something different than the boys. I took one boy and gave him a computer and headphones and sat him beside his father in one room, and the other two boys were on another computer in another room. The boy who learned by himself liked it so much that he asked for it again. It worked out really well.

On Friday, our library next door was having one of its quarterly book sales. I usually let each boy choose one book a piece and then I go and find potential school books (i.e. the classics) as well as other free reads they might be interested in and ones that I would approve of (historical fiction usually.) I needed Shakespeare books for two of the boys and noticed several complete books of Shakespeare. I decided to choose 3 of the books – one for each boy. For $1a piece, they were a great used book bargain at the library. I inscribed a short message to each boy and handed them a book. They were all very excited. Yup, they are homeschooled boys. Love my job!

My house is a mess; I was selling popcorn all day with my boys. I keep telling myself that it is almost done – this part of it anyways, though the next part is the easy part. We are pre-selling the popcorn and collecting all the money so all we have to do is go and deliver it and not have to worry about the hassle of trying to collect the money afterwards. However, I did get ALL my dishes washed up after Shabbos last night. Need to remember to look for the good.

I am off to LaLa Land, and as I remember that this past Shabbos my oldest wore his new Shabbos hat, and oh, looked so spiffy in it, I am going to be dreaming of Bar Mitzvah invitations that I have to come up with now. All for the good. J

Gut Moed!

Gut Moed everyone! It has been beautiful over here. The boys have all been able to sleep in the sukkah several nights now, and it looks like they will be able to continue to sleep in it through Yom Tov. Unfortunately, I have not been able to sleep in it for one reason: There is no bed or space for a bed for me! It would have been nice, the fresh air is always so refreshing to wake up too. Perhaps next year. Just one note of caution: Do NOT place a pillow anywhere near a heater that is turned on. You just might find the pillow slipped off the bed and is laying on top of the heater creating a fire. Not a good thing. Just saying. Baruch Hashem, the boy who found it turned the heater off and it just melted the pillow. Life lesson learned – keep heaters FAR away from anything in the sukkah. I told the boys this morning that Hashem was really kind to us for it was just a pillow that melted and had to be thrown out. He was giving us a second chance and we need to learn from it. I do not think we really need the heater at night anyways, not with all the sleeping bags and blankets they use.

The first days were wonderful. Busy, but wonderful. We had guests for many of the meals and went out for a couple. It was decided that instead of finishing up the second sefer of Rambam this weekend, they were going to skip to the sefer on Sukkos. It definitely has been a lot of fun learning about the halachos of the holiday during the holiday. It was also exciting when we took our old lulav from last year we were able to open it up and understand what the Rambam was talking about. For those that have not looked, if you take a look at the lulav (palm branch), each part of the leaf is actually doubled over and is twice as wide as it looks. Quite interesting. Science learning as part of halacha. 🙂 They even learned that you can have a sukkah on a boat. So, we took them to a sukkah on a boat this year. With chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, building of cookie sukkahs and boys only (with Daddy) pool time, it was a good day and lots of fun.

We usually just do Judaics during Chol Hamoed (the middle days of Sukkos and Pesach/Passover), for it is really still like a Yom Tov, though the boys are sifting through their lego pile now to find all the pieces for Lego Club at Currclick.com. The Lego Club is a free monthly club that the boys can sign up for. They did it a few times at the end of the previous school year, but we have not done it in a few months. Not sure what we are going to do (if anything else) tomorrow, perhaps we will go apple picking. We’ll see.

In the meantime, one boy is making lunch, one boy is cleaning the living room, and one is cleaning the table. Then, I need to go grocery shopping and get a menu ready for the last days! I am going to miss all the Yomim Tovim. There are no more Yomim Tovim until Pesach (not including Chanukah and Purim, which are not real Yomim Tovim for they happened after the Torah). I once heard that all these Yomim Tovim now are supposed to give us the spiritual light to tie us through the dark of the winter months when we get re-jew-venated with Pesach and then Shavuos. I have to remember to add pretzels and fruit rollups to make edible Torahs for Simchas Torah – both ingredients that I do not usually purchase, but I do occasionally make exceptions. 🙂

Wishing everyone a happy and energizing Shemini Atzeres and Simchas Torah!

Almost Ready

mishneh torah I have not been able to write for a while for we have one computer in the repair shop, one with a broken screen, and the other is being used quite heavily by a boy who has been doing school work now for about 4 weeks, even though school has not officially started yet.

I firstly want to wish my boys (including Daddy) a hearty Mazal Tov on completing the first sefer in Rambam’s Mishne Torah – Sefer Madda (4 books including the introduction)! For a very special treat, for their siyum, we took them 3 hours to Toronto to eat in a kosher restaurant, daven in shul and drive 3 hours back. Our pocket book is $200 lighter, but it was definitely worth it! For the past month (almost to the day,) the boys have all been doing 2 chapters of Mishne Torah every day, except Shabbos where they usually do just one, but that might be able to change once the days get a little shorter on Shabbos day. They enjoy listening to (and watching) Rabbi Gordon from Chabad.org. He explains everything very nicely and tells lots of jokes to keep everyone’s interest. We had originally planned on doing 3 chapters a day during the school year, but, that is not going to work out. Two boys would have time in the their schedule for a third, but my oldest is now in the next level of Ambleside Online – the House of Education (HOE, years 7-12) and his course load has doubled I think from the previous years! So, two it is. Two chapters of Rambam and 2 mishnayos from the Mishna Yomit program, along with davening and parsha, and that is about all there is room for right now.

The last few weeks I have been feeling not in the mood to do anything. Normally, my summers are filled with stuff in the morning with the boys and then I send them out to play by themselves (or in the basement) or to read. I would have the time to do things like cleaning, purging the cellar, getting ready for next year and just doing absoluely nothing. This summer has been so different. Yes, the three older boys went to camp for a week, but that left me to clean up the house for Grandpa, and at the same be the sole playmate for the youngest. After camp we had our boys start their Rambam, twice a day, as well as mishnayos with the oldest doing other work such as laining, math, SAT vocabulary and SAT math. You would think I would have some time to myself still, but I was the playmate during Rambam and mishnayos.

I found myself trying to hide away at every opportunity but never really getting the break I was feeling I needed for I still had to be on top of the oldest boy doing all his school work. If I go and hide, there was bickering to remind me of my real job. I am not sure why I could not get some boys to go out more, perhaps it was just that their learnings were staggered just so that it was breaking up the day in not so good of a way and I just never had the time to sit and think about how to make it better, I was just running around like a headless chicken. Despite that, I finally managed to put together a schedule for four boys next year. It was not the easiest thing to do! I think I have just about all the work printed out to start school. I just have to print of maps of various times for their weekly map work.

However, a few days ago I found myself bored, actually bored. Yes, there was cleaning and laundry to do, but that was all. I already had cleaned one bathroom and did some laundry. So, I took advantage of the fact that I was not really needed and I went outside for a walk to enjoy the warm, sunny weather. It is good to occasionally be bored; it gives me the drive to do something afterwards!

I have been asked by several people how things are going with my right-brained child. Well, honestly, I have not done anything with him. I have looked at a few things and I think I will be doing Brain Gym type of stuff – mainly exercises that involve alternating right over left, for example, using the right elbow to touch the left knee. Figure 8’s in the air/traced on paper are also great. I think the idea is for me to come up with about 8-10 exercises that I can alternate to make the 5 minute time exciting. But, one thing at a time. I have the schedule done and books in order. Clean up of the house will hopefully happen a bit this weekend while boys are out, for they will be busy selling… P-O-P-C-O-R-N!!!!! Yes, it is that time again! Wow, life is just never dull, Baruch Hashem. May we go from strength to strength. My Cub Scout wanna-be has his popcorn selling shpeel down pat!

As I finish up and hope my boys will be done their Rosh Hashanah sheets before the holiday starts, I sincerely wish everyone a most wonderful Shanah Tovah. May you all be inscribed in the Books of Life, Health, Happiness and Success.

Kesiva v’Chasima Tovah!

Summer Has Started!

After the third and final birthday party for a very lucky 4 year old, the last couple of days I actually felt it was a summer day for me – I actually got to sit down without having to rush and do some prep for the school year. (The watermelon was carved into the shape of a jeep, along with windshield wiper blades and side mirrors! A brother loved the birthday boy!) The best part of the school year is having all those books come pouring into the mailbox. Most of our books are purchased from Amazon.com and most of them are used so they come from varioius sellers. We have had several shipments arrive at our house over the past week and still have a few more to go.

I am very excited about one of the books that came; How To Read a Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. Yes, I know it sounds like a funny name, but it is very accurate. I have decided to start the pre-reading of new school books by reading that book first. I have read the first 5 chapters so far. It is a very good book which describes how to effectively and systematically skim through a book to learn the main points, as well as how to read it when you decide to actually read it so that you get the most out of the book. I figured this would be a great start so that I could pre-read all the books that come in over the next week or so for I need. I will not have time once school starts to read, or more appropriately perhaps, I will not want to read anything else once school starts except what I will be reading to boys during school time. I highly recommend this book.

It has been gorgeous outside so I threw the boys outside as much as possible. That gave me some nice quiet time to sit, do nothing, and then feel like I needed to and wanted to do something, so I read the book on how to read a book. 🙂 I even took some time to sit outside and enjoy. I had the branch of one of our flowering trees just a few inches from where I was sitting and it was very peaceful to watch the bees buzzing and getting the pollen all over their bodies.

Our summer schedule has not really gone on as I thought it would. I am not too worried about it for hey, it’s summer time! I am a bit more carefree about what is done or not done. I really would like to get more of certain things done that are not being done, but I will not sweat it. Rambam twice a day, along with

mishnayos. Afterall, Torah learning is for every day and it is good to get into the swing of things with some things so when we start school, it is just adding the rest, not doing it all at once – rather less overwhelming for me anyways that way. I also get to see how it is and how I can/need to incorporate time for the newly 4 year old and his all important school work. 🙂 It might be better than I imagined for most days for since all 3 older boys are in the kitchen listening to and following along with the videos for Rambam, and each video is around 40-45 minutes long, I found myself sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor, along with washing some dishes and cleaning of the kitchen. Mr. 4 year old was off playing by himself for one entire Rambam (yeah!) I cannot expect him to do that three times a day, but once a day would be nice and very helpful.

One boy is finally learning what it means to be busy. We have him busy. We are trying very hard to get him ready to take the SAT’s – and no, he is NOT that old yet that he is taking it for university, he is taking it while enrolled in grade 7 so as to see how well he does and perhaps help him get some scholarships for education camps, etc. He has his Rambam and mishnayos, 2 sets of math, SAT math book as well as SAT vocabulary words to work on, and not to mention his laining and the reading of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.

A 4 year has been begging me to let him make his ‘experiment.” What he wants to do is use salt, water, sugar and flour and let it sit. I guess that is one way to learn. I instructed his oldest brother to make sure he makes a VERY SMALL concoction, and to oversee everything and make sure there is no mess. Good thing we used only food items – he wanted to test it before he let it sit! The little things that make them happy. 🙂

As I am listening to DH playing the organ for me, he really is saying it’s bedtime and I need to go. ‘Night!

We’re All Back!

Firstly, I just want to start off by mentioning a correction to the previous post. Room613.net is also geared towards teenagers, it was just my impression that it was not (not sure how I came to that impression.) That said, we are still continuing on with our Judaics for the coming year that we have mapped out. Secondly, when you start tea time, expect to continue the tradition. 🙂 Cucumbers, watermelon and small bite sized pieces of brownies are all good, along with tea (or hot lemon water in our case.) 🙂 We have not been able to do it the last two weeks, but today boys were complaining, “We did not have tea time today!”

The last two weeks have been almost entirely away from home. We went to the same cabin on the 350+ acres that we went to last year. Other than the 90+ degree weather with no A/C, it was pretty good, but I do not think we will be going there next year. (And the best thing to do on a really hot Tisha B’Av with no A/C is to drive in the car that has AC all the way back home for an hour to drop off camp stuff!) If nothing else, I found out today, after I had to take my van into the shop to get fixed, that the porcupines that live by the cabin not only eat away at the balcony and the support beams underneath it, they like to eat away at wires under cars… The mechanic asked if I keep my car in the garage, no, outside. In the back? No, in the front. Apparently, rodents like to chew on wires under vehicles, but not usually when the vehicle is kept outside, in the front, on the driveway. I asked about porcupines; we not only heard them on the porch, but actually saw one underneath eating away at the support beams. Yes, porcupines + vehicles in fields = lots of damage and money to fix the damage. He could not give me even a rough estimate when he called for he was not finished taking everything apart to see the entire damage. He will be putting some cover over my wires to help prevent this from happening again. Since we only have one vehicle, I am carless for a while. The bonus to all of this is that we get to walk to the store or any other place we need to go and that means good exercise for all of us! There is a silver lining in everything. 😉

The first Shabbos at the cabin was rather quiet – just one little boy to entertain. Sunday morning we all got up to drive 4 hours to fetch the really missed brothers from camp. It was good to have everyone back home. I really missed them. I think the lone brother missed them the most. It is not easy to want to play with someone and only Mommy is around and Mommy sometimes cannot play. Boy, it sure is good to have brothers!

Aside from that, the train, Corning Museum of Glass, blueberry picking and horseback riding were some of the main activities with horseback riding coming in tops for everyone (and blueberry picking a close second)! The youngest was too small to ride a regular horse so he got to have a pony ride around the farm. He then was lucky enough to be able to brush down and wash the pony. Both the pony and the little boy really enjoyed it. Oh, and I cannot forget about the birthday party #2 – afterall, it is not everyday that Grandpa comes down to visit! He was one lucky boy – a visit with Saba one day, and Grandpa the next, two birthday parties (and presents to match from each grandfather), and not to mention that this weekend there will, IY”H, be a THIRD party (for the same boy) for he was insistent that his friend comes over for a party, and since neither of the previous parties were at home, I promised him we will have one with his friend. Baruch Hashem my boys are very happy with simple things – a simple cake and a card and a small present is all that is needed to make someone happy, oh, and the occasional friend.

The Corning Museum of Glass was very interesting to go see. We have not been there before. The first section with glass art was not my cup of tea, but I really enjoyed going into the history section. They had the history of glass making, from the early times until the present, with all sorts of interesting facts and artifacts. We even got to see some glass making demonstrations such as the hot glass show and the flameworking.

Well, we got to pick up our sefarim yesterday! 3 sets of Rambam’s Mishneh Torah (English and Hebrew.) I spent several hours on Monday trying to clean out a small book case that we had, figuring it had 3 shelves and each set would fit on 2. I would just need to get one more book case. I was almost correct. Yes, each set fits on 2 shelves, however, the bottom shelf is too short to put any books on. Never fear, I have ideas! In the meantime, the living room is a mess. Boys have taken all the books out of the boxes and have been labeling all of their 93 books. Wow. I did not realize how many books we really were getting until just now. I was just of thinking it as 31*3 and those in themselves are not that big, but to do the actual math problem, wow, multiplication is powerful! We were good and even started our learning today! One video from Rabbi Gordon from Chabad.org was listened too.

I cannot forget that we finally brought the organ inside! It was not as hard as I thought it would be. We used our Radio wagon, put some plywood on top, and used two 2×4’s and slid them under the organ with the other end of the boards on the wagon to make a ramp. We then pushed the organ up the ramp. We all held on while one boy very, VERY carefully and slowly pulled the wagon all away around from the garage to the front door. The tricky part came when we had to transfer the organ from the wagon up the 2 steps into the house. With some creative thinking and cooperation, we got it into the house. Since it is mine, only I was allowed to clean it all up. Boys wanted to help but I refused. I told them to vacuum the carpet. 😉 Everyone anxiously awaited the moment when they could touch and then play the new instrument. I have not played the organ in almost 17 years – it is amazing how even though I play the piano a little here and there, my organ playing is terrible! It was hard reading all those staves again! I had to go way, way back to the really early days and the very easy music to get back in the swing of reading everything again. “Mommy, how can your feet play all the right notes and you are not even looking?” I smiled and proudly told my son, “I started on the organ!” That was one thing I was pleasantly surprised about; my feet still knew where to go after all these years. They were even more surprised to find out that their Dad used to play the organ as well.

I have also spent the last two days finding the books I need for my oldest. With Ambleside Online, almost everything is non-consumable, so since I have books from my oldest, the younger children have their books as well. Finally, I put all the books in the Amazon shopping card, as well as two printer inks, and pressed the order button. Among the books ordered were organ books (it is not easy to find beginning organ books now!). All four boys are so excited and want me to give them organ lessons. I told them I do not have time to teach them both the piano AND the organ. 4 for the organ it is. Though they are not happy that I am not teaching them yet. I appeased them when they saw I was ordering music books first. Unfortunately, unlike the electronic piano that I have, you cannot put headphones into the organ! At least there is the volume control, it helps. A little. 😉

Anyways, I am saying sweet dreams to everyone and I am off to bed to dream about the fact that I am now officially also an organ teacher. 🙂

My Vacation

I have been so excited for this week to come! It is one week in the entire year that I have for me; the older boys are off at camp and I get this week to myself! And then on Shabbos it hit me. My almost 4 year old will be home with just me. Me and no brothers to keep him busy. Just me. He has been so looking forward to Mommy time. Don’t get me wrong, that is a very nice thing except that I realized that Mommy time is going to take up his entire waking hours. You see, with 3 older brothers who are home all day, who needs to learn to play by himself? Ok, so I do not have much of just me time and I can’t go out for a walk or a bike ride by myself for no one is there to look after a 3 year old and I can’t go out to the store to get the things we need when we are out when he is sleeping, but yeah, there are still lots of wonderful things about having just the one boy around.

The older boys left yesterday morning to go to scout camp. Daddy took them. I was supposed to go along except a little 3 year old was sick and throwing up. This put a crink into the day if only because of one thing – my boys do not get sick! Baruch Hashem, and let it stay that way. A loving Daddy bought some ginger ale before leaving for with our only vehicle gone and with a sick boy, it does not make for a day to be able to even walk to the neighborhood 7-11 to get some. We made it. After a nice needed nap he was allowed to do what sick boys get to do to keep them occupied so they can rest in bed and not be as antsy – nice educational videos. Baruch Hashem he feels good as new today. He is even learning to sleep in a big room all by himself.

Someone told me to take this time and do something for myself, so I heeded that advice. I started cleaning the house. It is amazing how much I can get done when I am doing all the work – and how clean things actually get! Living room and library were both cleaned to my satisfaction, swept and mopped, except for 1 pile of papers in each room. Not bad. Today was the garage and the cleaning of the kitchen cabinet doors. Oh, and I stumbled upon an amazing thing today – when the boys are not home it is great to clean for I can actually not only leave the room for a moment and expect it to stay the way I left it, I can even go to sleep for several hours and it will still stay the same! It feels pretty good to be able to have a few moments when the house will stay the way I want it.

Today we cleaned the garage in anticipation of our new instrument! I finally got an organ! Bonus – it was free and so was the transportation to my garage where it is now being stored until the bigger boys come home to help me move it into the house. My husband is so excited about it, almost as much as I am. He says I need to find a place for it. I tell him, it will fit in the house and that I have ideas. I have a few weeks until I need to have the answer.

This last week or so my husband and I have been trying to figure out what we should do next year for Judaics. We have spent the last 4 years with Room613.net and it has worked out really well. However, we decided our oldest, who is going to be bar mitzvah in a few short months (how did that happen?) was ready to move on. My husband and I are ones who do not mind thinking outside the box. Hey, the fact that we have been homeschooling for 8 years now proves it! What started out as an exercise in trying to figure out Judaics for one boy, ended up with something for all boys – that’s one bonus in having children close in age. (The other is being able to send them all to the same camp at the same time!) We have spent the last week mulling it over in our minds, bouncing it off the minds of different individuals to get thoughts and reactions and have finally decided we are going to do it. The boys are going to do Rambam’s Mishneh Torah next year. We chose that for it encompasses all aspects of our lives. We do not necessarily follow all that the Rambam says, but he does cover everything from each of the 613 mitzvos to davening, shmita year, maaser and other topics that do not necessarily apply to us today, but we should know about them.

Now, this seems fine until I mention that we are not going to do the 3 year cycle where you do one chapter a day for 3 years before completing – there are 31 sefarim in the set. No, we are doing the 1 year cycle – doing 3 chapters a day and finishing it off in about a year. Yes, I know exactly what that entails and what we are getting ourselves into. Each chapter is going to take, on average, 35-45 minutes to do. And yes, everyone that we have mentioned it to has looked at us as if we were crazy. However, since that is basically all they are going to do for Judaics, it should be more than reasonable. Children in schools spend the entire morning on Judaics, and so are we. Of course the boys are also going to do parsha/Yomim Tovim as well as continue on with their mishnayos. We are not expecting them to learn it inside and out, that will only happen by going through things multiple times. My goal is to get them to go through it. They will pick up according to each of their abilities, which is amazingly more than most of us would imagine. People learn through time. Our minds will take something we have learned or something we are thinking about and put it in the subconscious. The subconscious thinks about it and over time we get new ideas and thoughts about it. Then we can go back and learn more on the topic.

I found these wonderful videos on Chabad.org by Rabbi Gordon. He has a wonderful video for each and every chapter of Rambam’s Mishneh Torah. He reads and translates as well as explains very nicely what is going on. My idea is to listen to 2 of his videos a day with the other chapter being read and then translated by boys. This is to help boys with their personal reading. Two birds with one stone. We would obviously take breaks in between each video and not do it all at once. And, I might even stagger the times throughout the day so that one little then-to-be 4 year old is not left hanging by himself for hours on end and being bored. And yes, this is a very rigorous feat we are going to do. We were told something on Shabbos – if you start this goal, do not quit, do not alter it, do not make the goal easier. Even if you get behind 1 day, 2 days, 3 days or more. Each day is a new day. Start fresh and continue on. The only thing that should change, if needed, is the end date. I liked this.

Today I ordered 3 sets of Mishneh Torah. One for each boy. They will be theirs to keep when they move out. The only condition is that we get to use them when we want/need to, even when they move out. Where we are going to put them, I do not know. As any homeschooling family knows, bookshelves are sacred – second only to the Torah and sefarim which are held on them. I have ideas. I have time before they come in. 😉

In the meantime, I miss my boys, even with the cleaner house.