summer plans

It's been about a month since I posted.  Summer plans have gelled: Elazar is in half-day camp (skipping morning learning) at the camp two blocks away from us.  He can cross both streets himself and get himself to and from camp.  Very exciting for both of us.  Aharon tried out a week in the same camp (full day) and opted to go full time for the whole summer.  This is a big treat for me because he is still somewhat screamy and it has been very quiet and peaceful for me at home.  Jack spends most of his day with our homeschooling neighbors.  All of their upper boys are in camp (walking Aharon back and forth) and their girls, Jack's age and one younger, are in Mommy camp with Jack welcome to join and go on trips.  The house is much neater and I'm not spending all day feeding everyone.

I'm spending all day prepping madly for teaching my new class next year (I teach one class a day at a local girls' high school).  This year it is Vayikra AND Bamidbar in one year.  It's an honors class so I figure I'll be teaching about 4x the material that I've taught the last 3 years.  I have to figure out educational goals, content, presentation, assessment, and testing.  I'm putting in about 6 hours a day in prep.

Chana finished chapter 7 in the AP Bio book and we took a break for simple physics.  We are also reading the Rambam's intro to the Talmud.  She is not enjoying the torah shebaal peh so much from my high school sourcebooks (we are in kibud av v'em--maybe that's it ;-P).  Probably because I am not so well prepared  prepared at all and stumble through the sources instead of knowing exactly what to teach and teaching it dynamically.  We are taking a break to power through the end of Shmuel aleph which we've been desultorily reading through for years.  Here is a classic unschooling tale-- I think we've been doing it for about 5 years.  We barely do it, only when she asks, but she has an extremely positive association with it.  I hope we don't ruin that by doing a full perek every day until August.  She wants a smartphone (until now she's been using Ari's old phone which is cumbersome) and I asked her what siyum would she like it to celebrate, and she said Shmuel.  We don't have time for Shmuel aleph and bet before she goes away to camp.  Chana is also reading Camus' the Stranger to me and I'm enjoying it a lot more than I did in high school.

Chana has not been doing her geometry.  I asked her if she was doing it and she told me flat out that if she's being unschooled then she can take a break if she wants.  I personally am fretting a bit regarding the SAT/ACT because I feel like she needs time to learn the test in addition to learning the material.  But the ball is in her court.  Worst case, she can take classes in community college and transfer.  She did fine in her end of the year test.  We did the untimed CAT since she does better with untimed tests.  I didn't realize it was a much longer test.  But she got through it, even though it took weeks, and I finally sent the paperwork out last week (I chose "on or around June 30th" for it to be due).

Jack (6) pulled me over the other day to do some R' Winder workbook and to read 100 Easy Lessons.  He had stopped a while back, saying he could read well enough and he didn't want to do the book anymore.  He opened to lesson 78 where the bookmark is, and zipped through it.  So it seems he was right.  Yesterday I heard him reading the nekudos on a sheet from Aharon's camp that I put on the fridge last week.

Elazar just asked me how to spell papyrus and was quite surprised by the "y."