September update

Even though Elazar is not much interested in Judaics at this moment, a lot of his energy is directed towards science.  He keeps watching science videos--apparently there are a lot of different stinging bugs and they have lots of variety and different types of exoskeletons, and he watched someone intentionally get stung to see if the hype was true about this species (it was).  I signed him up for an engineering class, 8 wks, on Fridays.  Friday is not a great day for any class, especially as Shabbos gets earlier.  But it is for 3-4th grade (putting him on the older end, which hopefully increases his chances of being able to sit through it).  It is LOCAL.  A ten minute drive!  And supposedly they are building a robot using power tools and then programming it.  They need to get a few more kids to enroll in the class for it to run.  I really hope it works out.  Elazar's been asking me to go with him to "the dump" so he can salvage scrap and build things with it.  But he really doesn't know how to build things.

Every day the boys are working on their reading.  Not a day goes by where I don't field a few questions from each one about either how to spell something or what this word says or where a certain letter is on the keyboard (Aharon is working on that now, apparently).  The boys also often help each other out with reading and writing.

All this gives me the time to deal with the rather copious amount of conflict and fighting that has been going on.  When I reflect, it's not even the majority of the day (I've had those months and those years).  It's probably 2-5 blowups a day.  Not terrible.

(And all you homeschool mamas who are trying to deal with the rather copious amount of conflict AND do school lessons--you need an extra hug.)

We finished Pippi Longstocking.  I tried a chapter of Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.  The genius of that is the older sibling dealing with an annoying younger sibling.  That worked nicely for the girls at that stage.  Elazar doesn't quite relate to that.  I'm thinking of trying All of a Kind Family since it's on my shelf.  But I think he would prefer humor.  I tried to buy The Great Brain for my kindle last night (actually, I just wanted to send a sample to see if Elazar would like it) but it's not coming out in kindle version until January.  So I'm still looking for the next good book that will be funny for Elazar.  Maybe Matilda.  I also tried a chapter of Danny, Champion of the World and although Elazar was polite about it, it didn't captivate him.