Scouts – Jewish and Homeschooling in an Amazing World

It’s Summer Vacation… I Guess

It is easy to get into a mode and forget what is really going on or should be going on. This year has been a year of treading water and I kept saying to myself that summer is almost here and we will start fresh next year. I need the summer to organize the house better after moving in. Aside from making the house look a little bit nicer, it will help me with our learning. All our boxes from the move were emptied and contents put somewhere in a frantic few weeks before Pesach, just to check for chometz and get the boxes out of the house, but we did not put things in a proper home. I am not used to “summer” starting a month early. I think about every place I have lived, school has finished mid-late June, not the end of May. Summer for kids has been here for a month now, with one more month to go. I realized that I might as well be finished for the school year, take the next month to “chill” in the 95 degree heat (with lots of ice,) do at least some of the organizing and just let the boys chill out as well. So, that was it. We don’t give out certificates, though we did the first year or two, then it never seemed to work out, so I don’t think about it now. It was just, “Ok boys, school’s finished.” Just like that. I don’t think it even phased them for they were busy camping with Grandpa and what not that they were not doing much of anything anyways.

It feels weird to let the boys hang. Especially this year when I felt that I had to try to cram things in when I could for there were lots of times that we did not do much because of all the moves, it feels strange. I feel rather relieved, which is a nice thing. I don’t feel guilty about them not doing their work. My husband was complaining that he does not think they did much this year. I am the first one to admit that is the case, and even though I have tried to tell him and explain to him multiple times throughout the year, it is hard when he is not here and seeing things for himself. And yes, even when we had a week here or there to just do school, there were multiple occasions when I had a hard time motivating myself and just did not feel like doing anything because of all that was going on in our lives.

I do feel optimistic though. I think this allowed time off is good for now I don’t worry about trying to teach and I have time to try to organize (which we already started last week!) I am not sure how much time I have for organizing for we always seem to be doing something. But I have big plans, both for school and for the house, though not quite sure about what I am doing exactly I’m doing, but I have plans. 🙂 Yesterday the scouts had their first campout. It was really good with all but 2 boys there and several fathers coming. Mr. Little made cupcakes for the fathers (and boys) in honor of Father’s Day. Father’s got first pick at cupcakes for once. They were even able to hang a flag on their portable Ham Radio antenna!

Speaking of radios, last Friday was a Ham Fest (which did not start on Shabbos!) and so we all spent the afternoon roaming around the candy store for Hams. We even had an extra boy tag along with us. Mr. Big surprised us by actually taking his license manual on the camping trip with Grandpa and spend some time going over his manual. When he came home he announce that he wanted to upgrade his license at the Ham Fest. We looked at him and asked if he thought he was going to pass (it costs money to write the tests.) “I don’t know.” He definitely did not sound convincing. We made an agreement with him that we would pay if he thought he had a good chance of passing. He told us that we only needed to pay for one more test and if needed, he would pay for additional testings. Sounded fair enough. When we arrived at the convention center, he took off to write his test while the rest of us went through the candy store. It was a pretty cool place, even if one is not too interested – I do have my license but I am not interested like all the boys are. We even talked to the severe weather watch people and brought home some really nice posters on clouds. (Ham operators often times get certified as spotters so they can help watch for and call in weather warnings, for a big plus of being a Ham is for emergency preparedness.)

After what seemed like forever, we finally got a call on our radios from Mr. Big. He was wanted to know where to find us. Nothing about the test, but that is like him. Mr. Big #2 was the first to comment – even though Mr. Big was still too far away to say hi to. Did he or didn’t he, that was the question. Mr. Big #2 saw a sticker on his brother’s shirt and knew (though we could not read what it said.) As he came closer, sure enough, he had the tell tail signs of someone who passed – the small rectangle piece of paper proving all that hard work paid off! We were surprised! He did a LOT more studying without us knowing than we realized. Great job! Incidentally, that is now the reason why we have a hole in our ceiling; they wanted to put up an antenna in the attic that Mr. Big could now use…

Next week we’re off for a week trip with Grandpa. Not sure when I am organizing, but at least I don’t have to worry about school! 🙂

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

The No-Drive Week

Well, it was not really a very productive week at all. I am not going to say it was not productive, for we did get some stuff done, but not as productive as I thought it should be. Not sure if it was the weather (we have had a lot of rain lately,) or the fact that beautiful boy #3 is spending the week with Grandpa and his cousin, or a mixture of both, or something else. Whatever the case is, it started at the beginning of the week and kept spilling out to the rest of the week. Shabbos is coming and I am so looking forward to it! Shabbos always seems to put a fresh start on things.

We did get somewhere this week in our efforts to finish up the remaining schoolwork. We have used Khan Academy for math this year, and instead of using it like one would use a normal textbook or school work, where you learn a topic, do a certain amount of questions and then move on to the next, I decided to use a different approach this year. The way Khan Academy is set up is that one can learn a topic through the videos and then do sets of exercises pertaining to what was learned. Obviously, there are many ways to use the system, but if one wanted to use it for a curriculum then they would watch the videos and do the related exercises. The exercises come in sets of 8. There is the option of looking at hints for the particular problem in question (which is nice!) if needed. If a correct answer is gotten on the first try, 3 leaves are given. Fewer leaves are awarded if the correct answer was entered in on a second (or third, or fourth) try and/or if hints were used. At the end of the set, the program looks at the speed at which the answers were entered and how many correct on the first try and gives you a green progress bar. When the computer has determined that you are proficient in the particular topic, it gives you a blue bar across the page and lets you know you are ready to move on.

Two of the boys have, for the most part, learned their multiplication facts. I would make them go over the questions without letting them look at a table. Sometimes it would take several weeks before they would be proficient, but eventually they would get their blue bars and move on. One of the older boys does not know his multiplication table very well. He has been stuck on multiplication for several months. He would get questions right, but because of his speed, he would have to do it over again, and again, and again. He was getting frustrated about having to do the same thing for so long – and when he would get the questions right the first time! Finally, he mastered the multiplication, and went on to division.

At the beginning of the week, he went and got a copy of the multiplication table and started to crank out the correct answers quite quickly. Unlike his brothers, he actually understood how to do long division so much faster than his brothers. I decided to let him be. I could work on his math facts in the summer. In the meantime, he was a little happier to sit down and do his work, not to mention that one time when I looked at his work, I was able to point out an error just by doing the entire question in my head, ie. without writing anything down. I then suggested a game – I would do the entire question in my head (ie. mental math), and he would work out the problem on paper. We would then compare answers – if the answers were right, he would enter the answer on the computer. Let’s just say that we both had fun with math! By the next day, I had forgotten the fun that we had, but luckily the boy didn’t. “Mom, let’s do that game again!” is what he said to me when I sat him down. It took me a minute to remember what he was talking about, but let’s just say that he did enough rounds to earn his blue bar (which finished math class for the day!)

A few things I learned – I have to be more creative and really think about the purposes of different learning (ie perhaps looking at the multiplication table is fine for division…..) and I learned how to overcome MY fear of mental math! Yes, me, the one who enjoys math is the same one who freezes up when someone asks me to do mental math. I feel very confident on forgoing my stage fright when doing long division in my head now when asked. I too can still learn! 🙂

We did take advantage of the dry, sunny weather earlier this week and had a nice picnic supper at the park next door. All boys earned awards at the cub scout awards night – even my boy scout! (He finally received his religious award that he earned while a cub scout! 🙂 ) The two cub scouts in the family earned their Arrow of Light as well as their religious award. One cub ready to become a boy scout in 1 week. My, oh my, they are getting big.

The missing boy has been missed by everyone, but the plane just took off from his connecting flight – Sorry Sis, thanks for being around just in case the flight did not take off, but you won’t get to see your nephew this Shabbos! Two more hours and our home will feel complete again. 😀

Wishing you all a wonderful Shabbos!

To An Absolutely Amazing Weekend!

Yael – here is the post you were waiting for! The conference has come and gone, but where to start? As the rain is pouring outside, and the boys are getting ready for bed so they can get ready for more tomorrow, I have a few minutes to write. What started out as a short trip and back to the conference, turned into something more. Oh, so much more!

My husband called me up and informed that he had a vacation day that he had to use or loose. We decided that driving 6 hours from Motzei Shabbos until Sunday morning at 9am was too much in the summer time, so we decided to use it on Friday and drive to our friends’ house in Virginia to spend Shabbos. That way the trip into Baltimore would be short and we would actually be awake. My husband had Monday off for Memorial Day and we were going to find something nice and educational for the boys that day and then drive home. That was the plan!

What I need to say here is that this new plan was thought of and decided within an hour or two late on Thursday afternoon – meaning I had just a few hours to pack for a departure of early Friday morning! Not to mention we had scouts and challah baking that night as well. Somehow everything got packed and we had a very nice drive to Virginia. We arrived at our destination on time and were pretty pleased with ourselves…that is until our friends’ daughter asked if we could just move our van over just a bit. The van would not start. I thought perhaps it was the battery in our key (it is one of those fob keys,) and our friend had replacement batteries. Nope. We thought ahead and had purchased AAA. I honestly thought it was the key – the battery was replaced about a year ago, lights came on, etc. Just the car did not turn on when I turned the key. AAA sent out a locksmith. He could not figure out the problem, and with Shabbos just minutes away, we had to let him go. (Fob keys are usually only able to be made at the dealership…)

Shabbos was wonderful! To wonderful friends, to meeting new friends, to boys having lots of fun! It was really nice. But then reality kicked in and that key issue just did not go away during Shabbos. Tried calling AAA again, but the locksmith I talked too said they could not give me a new key until several days after the weekend. 😐 Never mind, it’s too late, time for bed, I cannot think. Sunday morning – what to do? How to get to the conference? Never fear – friends are here! After convincing us that they really did intend to drive into Baltimore that day, we had our ride. So, we were a little late, that was fine, we made it late in the morning, but we made it! Baruch Hashem. What were we to do afterwards? Once step at a time, worrying would come later. Boys were sent to be babysitters or to be babysat, and the parents were free! My oldest was one of the boys watching the other sort of older boys. He was shocked that about 28 bottles of juice was finished up by 15 boys (including the teenagers) in 4 hours. Those are boys for you! You put it out, it will be gone! 🙂 Baruch Hashem!

It was wonderful. So many people, so many vendors! It was so nice to be amongst so many fellow homeschoolers. It really felt like one big family with everyone out there to help other people out. It was a place where one could just walk up to anyone else and ask questions or help give answers. There were many wonderful speakers, an amazing binder full of chizuk to everyone, and yes, enough food to fill everyone’s tummy. I think the big thing that I got out of it all was the connections. Over the last year or so I have met many people online, and this weekend was a time where I seemed to have met many of those people in person! It was so nice to put a face to a name and to connect in person. I am really a quiet person, but since I have “known” these people already, when we finally met, it was not a new friend feeling and I enjoyed every bit of it! I wish we had more time to chat with everyone, even with our friends we have met several times before, there was just so much to do and so many people to talk too that we did not get to chat with any one person.

When the conference was about ready to end, our dear friend was just finishing up her trip and was there to pick us up. She drove us to the airport so we could pick up our rental van that AAA is supposed to pay for (we purchased the highest AAA membership – 200 miles towing and up to $1500 in a car rental OR food and lodging on a trip interruption.) After taking forever to pick up the van, driving back, waiting several hours for a tow truck, we were finally ready to drive all the way back to Baltimore to our prepaid hotel. We had the man tow our truck 189 miles towards home to the car dealership. At after midnight, we were ready for bed. We were NOT going to set any alarm for the next morning.

Monday was a nice lazy start. After getting up late, driving next door to Target to get a carseat that we left at the conference and food to eat, we were ready to find a place to eat our food. It was really lunch time. We ended up going out to eat instead! The perks of being in such a huge Jewish population – we just drove up and down the street and saw restaurant upon restaurant that was available to eat at. After filling up our bellies, we decided that we should do some learning, and we headed on over to Fort McHenry for an amazing adventure!

It was a beautiful day to be outside. We walked around and found ourselves near some canons and a Park Ranger. After standing there admiring the canons for a few minutes, the Park Ranger started giving the crowd some information about the canons. One of them was an original that was found in France, and the others were replicas. He was funny, entertaining, and educational all in one. Apparently it took over 20 people per canon to man it. He started taking children and positioning them in different places, at the same time, telling them what their job was. The canon was “shot” 3 times in total. It was wonderful! We also took a tour of the Star Fort and saw the barracks, prison and other rooms. Back in the main building, we watched a movie about the battle at the fort in September 1814. It was an awesome film! Even though we all knew the outcome, we were kept in “suspense” anxious to find out the ending. It was also wonderful that we saw the canons and how they worked first before seeing the movie, we understood more of what was going on and it was more meaningful to us. I will not give away the ending – it was a wonderful surprise! The whole movie was only about 10-15 minutes long and so worth every minute of it. I would recommend 1.5-2 hours for a nice visit and tour.

After too long of a visit to the gift store, we were on our way to find our car. We arrived in Lewisburg, PA just after suppertime – that breakfast we bought in the morning sure came in handy! We went into our motel room (and I think we were the only guests there!) ate supper, did mishnayos and finally went into bed. We were exhausted from the weekend, and it was not over. Up early again to get to the dealer about the time they opened. Long story short – it was something under the dashboard that went out and it would take a day or so to fix, so on our way home we went. Made it back to do the afternoon classes in Room613 and send Daddy to work a full day.

It is now Wednesday morning. Clothes from the trip have been washed and dried. Counters have been cleaned and food for the rest of the week bought. In about an hour we are off again to drive back to Lewisburg to pick up the car and get one of the two keys we have rekeyed. We are now down to only one key. New keys cost $225. That’s a fob key for you. Tomorrow, Thursday, I make challah, have scouts and go shopping for the boy scouts. Why? Because Friday is the beginning of the boy scout campout and us two parents are the adults. I am so not interested in camping at the moment, but we cannot disappoint those beautiful boys! It should be fun, really. Monday. I think my extended weekend will be over then. Bonus? I don’t have to make any food for Shabbos (except for challah which I volunteered,)- the Boy Scouts are doing the food making, cleaning, and most importantly, the tent raising and lowering!

Reviewing the Past Year

Today is the 54th day of the omer, which is 7 weeks and 5 days! Yes, that is what my boys are in to. Actually, I think they forgot to mention that today so please, do not tell them! 😉 The last couple of years they have increased the counting by about week and I think they have petered off with their counting now. Hope you all had a great Shavuos. We did. The weather was gorgeous and the three older boys even went to shul and stayed up all night. I had two boys who were awake until 6:30 the following evening. They ended up crashing (in the rooms that had a light blaring all night) and not waking up until the morning. Cheesecake was delicious and so were both of our homemade ice cream flavours – vanilla and chocolate mint. Tomorrow starts school though, the home stretch! We have started davening outside again a few weeks ago. Not every day yet, but several times a week.

The last 5 weeks of school always seems to be the hardest to complete. I know I said the same thing last year, but yes, it is still true. I am not sure why. I thought perhaps this year would be different for Pesach came early and we were able to get back onto a routine almost immediately, and usually I cannot get back into a routine after Pesach. I am thinking it is just that time of year.

Boys are finishing up books and with just a few weeks left; I do not really want to start them on something new. For my oldest, I have just told him to do something that is left so he gets certain subjects done twice in a week. For the middle two boys I have taken the past 2 weeks or so and worked on their Weeblos scout awards. Number 2 boys is aging out of Cub Scouts and we are working hard on finishing up the famed Arrow of Light that he can carry over to the Boy Scouts uniform. Actually, I am having Number 3 boy (who has one year left in Cub Scouts) finish it up as well. That way I do not have to worry about his stuff next year. They have just finished their second (and final) Jewish award for Cub Scouts and we will be handing in their completed forms this week.

Number 4 boy, well, just as we are finishing up the school year, he is just getting revved up – “Mommy, when is MY schooling?” and “What can I do?” No longer is playing with his blocks, cars or legos good enough to occupy him for the day! He is growing up. Baruch Hashem. The only problem is that I am not really ready for him yet and was not planning on it until the fall. When he came to see me in bed this morning (today is Sunday), I asked him what he wanted to do today. His response? “Do my school work!” He bugged me this morning until we got it done.

I think this past year went fairly well considering Daddy’s accident turned everything around for a long time, and even then, we all learned a lot and still got most of our schooling done that needed to get done. The one thing that did not go as planned is math. Other than not getting to it when Daddy was home recovering, I had a different math goal this year than I had in the past. Instead of just giving them the work and after the work was done to move on, I made the boys all get proficient in an area before we moved on. Not only does this mean they have to do many questions sometimes in one area, they have spend a month on one section perfecting it. We did have plans for the oldest boy to be ready for algebra this past December, but he is still not finished his math. We did not have a realistic goal in mind. I am glad I did what I did though. I am hoping that in the next month or so he will be done and he will be ready to start on algebra in the summer. As far as scheduling goes, next year is going to different, I know that already. Room613 is going to change around when classes are, being done mostly in the morning, which gives us the afternoon to do our secular studies or other things we would like to do. That means that Number 4 will get all my attention in the morning! I am just worried what to do with him in the afternoons. Still have some time to think about that one.

I have had several people ask me what I plan on doing in the summer. We do take off most of the summer, for we all need it, however, even though I am a laid back person, I notice that if we do not have any sort of schedule at all during the summer, then I feel the day was just wasted away. So, how to combine both a vacation but yet some sort of schedule to make us all happy is the question. Last year I did a very small schedule in the morning – davening, parsha and then 1 hour of math and typing skills. After that, everyone was free to do what they choose to do. With only 1.75-2 hours of work in the morning, it was just enough to feel like we accomplished something and enough time in the day to feel like we all had free time. I am thinking of adding a few minutes of dik duk a couple times a week and alternating it with something else – the stuff that we cannot seem to get done during the year.

There is one week where the three older boys are going to the Jewish contingency of the Boy Scout camp. Grandpa will be coming about that time and will have a few days with just Number 4 before we all go on a trip with him. This is what all that popcorn selling has done for them! 😀

Well, we finished off the afternoon with a spontaneous trip to the famous Lilac Festival. I love lilacs, they are one of my favorite flowers, if not the favorite and the smell of the flowers are just amazing. We have one outside in our front yard that bloomed amazingly this year. I wanted to walk around more, but because we were not planning on it, we just happened to be there for we found a nice shtender on the side of the road for taking, my Mr. 3 year old almost 4 year old kept telling me that his feet hurt and he did not want to walk anymore. Yes, it was nap time, I did not have to look at the clock to know that.

Next weekend is the conference! We are so excited and hyped to go and meet everyone. I hear there are going to be about 300 people there – almost triple what it was last year! Hope everyone has a wonderful week and hope to see many of you next weekend!

Popcorn, Yomim Tovim, Yomim Tovim and More Yomim Tovim!

Rosh Hashanah has come, Yom Kippur will be here in less than 24 hours. I have been trying to think of something to write, but nothing popped into mind.

Baruch Hashem we have been busy. Our annual Scout popcorn fundraiser is in full swing now, with $4000 worth of popcorn already bought – and that does not include the chocolate flavors that we could not purchase this round (the chocolate melts too easily we are told.) I am told the popcorn is much better than last year and not to mention it is in tins again. (All popcorn is OU-D, with the plain unpopped kernels OU-Parve – anyone interested? 😉 )

This is the best and worst time of the year. The best time for the boys to work on their socialization skills and go door-to-door and talk to all sorts of people – from young to old, from cranky to nice, from English speakers to non-English speakers. They also get lots of exercise for they do a lot of walking! It is the worst time for Daddy and Mommy have to go and take them all over, not just once, but twice when we have to deliver to the wonderful places that bought. But soon it will be over and we are hoping that the older two will have earned enough to go to one week of Jewish Scout camp in the summer (the number 3 boy has one more year before he can go!)

We sure hit our new year off to a good start with missing the first 1.5 days of Room613! Several boys thought they read there will be no classes the ENTIRE week, not just for Rosh Hashanah. But after talking to my sister and a friend on the second day after Rosh Hashanah, I found out they were wrong. Lesson learned: Read my emails more closely… It was not a total loss, I tried to add more secular work into the 2 days that would have been missed because of Rosh Hashanah.

We did not delve into Yom Kippur last week too much, probably should have, though I had other unrelated things on my mind. Sometimes I find it hard to balance personal learning and introspection with teaching the boys and helping them out with the same things. We did talk about some of the basic prayers and their meanings. I also found some nice Kol Nidre songs on Youtube to help get us in the mood. One thing I told the boys is that they should read the davening in English – especially the Al Chets. Since all the davening we do is for us, not Hashem, how are we supposed to put ourselves in the correct frame of mind if we do not even know what we are saying?

This week we worked on Yonah and the Whale. I found some nice one page versions for preschoolers and a cute song for the little one, as well as a translation of the Vilna Gaon’s work on sefer Yonah. That is set for high school, however, my older boys are getting some of it. They just had chapter 1 on chinuch.org, however, I was able to find the full English version at the Daf Yomi Review website. We are not going to finish what we have, but that is fine, that leaves more to learn another time. My youngest wanted stuff to color today, but the computer we use for printing was being used, so I will hopefully print out a copy of Yonah and the whale for him to color tomorrow while we sing our song or I’m working with the older boys.

Sukkos is right around the corner, and it is always tough to do Sukkos learning with very few days – I feel I should spend several days on Yom Kippur, and not just rush through it to start Sukkos material, but then I feel Sukkos gets jipped! I did buy nice 8.5 x 11 charts from Torah U’Mesorah on Sukkos many years ago. I do not always go over them with the boys, but I think it is time to do them again. When the older boys were younger, I did manage to do several projects such as a styrofoam esrog and foam/feathered lulav, however, lately we have been focusing on getting the sukkah all up and set that we do not do very many crafts for we are also still doing school work. We are fortunate for the front entrance to the house has three walls already and all we need to do is add schach on top. We have most of the schach (about 70 individual bamboo sticks), but it is not quite enough, and we always have to figure out where to find more! I think I will need to come up with one nice decoration they can each do, the previous ones are getting old. Oh, and I think I have one more styrofoam ball the youngest can paint as well as some green foam. I think an older brother might like to spend some quality time with his youngest bro. 🙂

I am going to finish up, drink more liquid, and try to finish getting myself ready for tomorrow night. Wishing everyone a Gemar Chasima Tovah and an easy fast!