Home Schooling

Sometimes, one day or one week rolls into the next. This has been the case over the past few weeks. Overall, we have been getting into a weekly routine and rhythm. Tomorrow will be week 8 of quarantine and homeschooling, and week week 4 of distance learning, meaning the teachers have some form of modified teaching and assignments. 

Here is some of what I wrote Dan's family about what it has been like to learn from home

Once kids get to an age where they can learn a bit more independently, learning from home can be a real opportunity for growth. It’s the younger and antsier kids, where you have to physically sit with them the entire time, that stretch a parent’s resources and where a school environment with great teachers can be superior all around.

Overall, distance learning has been really successful for Ava and Ezra. They have daily schoolwork, and Dan and I have supplemented with our own “curriculum” (writing, research projects, advanced math as well as jewish subjects and piano). From an educational standpoint, they are getting a unique experience.

For Aiden, it is far more hands on. It has also been a lot of fun, especially when he is interested in a topic, although I because he is only 7, he needs more guidance and supervision.

For Abigail, she is lucky to get bits of learning and activities from everyone in the house! Ava does elaborate projects with her, and Aiden teaches her what he is learning, like the properties of 3D shapes. (And I now know what vertices and prism shapes are!) On the other hand, if we are all busy, then she may not get as much attention, which makes me a bit sad.

Overall this is a mind bending experience with unique opportunities for growth. Sending them back to school will be bitter sweet. 

Pesach Holiday

It was another marathon two day holiday - Tuesday night to Thursday night - for the last two days of Passover. The pace is different, since the kids don't have school and Dan doesn't work. They have been going to parks and ravines and, in keeping with social distancing, exploring areas off the beaten trail. They've made some amazing discoveries and I love what they are learning about nature and habitats. They found an area with trees that must have fallen several years ago during an ice storm, a marsh that had a couple ducks and lots of mud. 

On Wednesday night, I made salmon burgers, brocolli  with cheese and sweet potato fries. It was a huge success. We are a bit more limited in what we can eat over Passover, and need to get creative and find alternatives. For the salmon burgers, instead of using bread crumbs, I used matzah meal, the go-to for pesach. I was was worried that my sweet potato fries would be soggy without my secret ingredient, cornstarch, but they were still very crispy! Maybe this was from soaking which apparently removes the starch. 

Ava and Ezra were also extremely helpful with making the meal. Ezra peeled the potatoes, and he ans Ava helped helped mix the ingredients for the burgers, and then formed patties. On Sunday evening I made lasagna for Monday and Tuesday, and still had some leftovers which seemed to do better with age. I used matzah in lieu of lasagna noodles, and the kids really enjoyed the last few pieces tonight along with the rest of the salmon burgers, fries and brocolli. 

Definitely a more productive day for me, as I was able to work while Dan was with the kids over the holiday period. I finished work relatively early and we had dinner together as a family. 

Week 5

Today was the start of Week 5 in quarantine. I tried to continue working with Aiden on a narrative piece. I followed a great step-by-step guide that I purchased on a website called "TeachersPayTeachers", which is basically etsy for teaching. But I think the full narrative piece was a bit too much for Aiden. He is great at creating paragraphs, with prompting, but couldn't quite get to the next stage of adding an introduction, paragraphs with transitions and a conclusion. He just wanted to free style. On the one hand, I want him to enjoy writing and let his creative juices flow! On the other hand, I want him to learn how to structure his writing.

In the afternoon, I had the kids do a craft activity. We haven't had much time for crafts, but I want to build a good rapport with them and thought this would give me some "cred" in their eyes. It also had an educational component, which made me happy. The kids designed a "counting of the omer" calendar, which is for counting the 49 days between Passover (liberation) and Shavuot (revelation). They enjoyed the activity but didn't quite finish - hopefully they'll work on it tomorrow.

Aiden has been enjoying a book called Inkling - we alternate reading pages. It is still an effort for him to read his pages, but he's improving every day and I think he is locking into the power of reading. Dan caught him reading the Guiness Book of World Records on the couch today. It is such a pleasure to see Aiden (and all my kids) casually curled up with a book!

Abigail

I adore each of my children completely, equally and with all my heart.

Today, a few words about Abigail.

At the seder, Abigail said: "No fair. Why does G-d get to speak with Moses?"

Sweet Abigail, as the youngest, wants to make sure she gets to do what the big kids get to do. If the big kids get media time, you can be sure she will ask why she can't as well.

Abigail is hilarious. After the seders, she starts to say a prayer every time she nursed. She'd say: "Baruch Atah Adonai, Elohenu melech Haolam, Boobi, Boobi, Boobi".

She has been asking questions about what is real and what isn't. She asked if monsters are real, and I explained that they are not. Then she asked if lions are real, and when I said yes, she tightened her grip around me. I explained that they only live in zoos or far away, but she asked if one could escape. Then she asked if tigers are real, and then snakes. Each time she got more worried, even though I tried to explain that these animals do not live near us!

Tonight she watched a cartoon movie with her older siblings about animals that talked. When I was putting her to bed, she asked if animals can speak. I explained that they couldn't.

Sweet Abigail!

Two Beautiful Seders

For many, it is a very different Passover this year. As each family remained cocooned in their own homes, there were no gatherings of cousins, grandparents and in siblings, no welcoming of family  travelling in from near and far, no heated political debates over a symphonic feast for twenty five people.

For us, although the pre-pandemic plan had been to have my brother's family, my parents and my parent-in-laws travel to us for both seders from out of town, and to add some friends to round out the table, we still had a very freilach (joyful) pesach. I prepared a traditional meal, and started on Sunday by making a batch of chicken soup. On Tuesday, I made quinoa and the deliciously sweet charoset, and the first of two briskets. It was my first time making brisket, and although not complicated, it's quite an intimidating cut of meat. On Wednesday morning, in went the second brisket, and somehow I missed "Step 2" of three steps and somehow forgot to cover it for three long hours! I'm not sure dry it ended up tasting, since I don't eat red meat, but my family, bless them, seemed happy enough even with the second one.

 Still on Wednesday, Ava and Ezra made the matzhah balls, which were just the right fluffy consistency. I use the quinoah to make tabouleh by adding chopped cucumber, sliced cherry tomatoes, green onions, mint and parsley, along with a simple dressing of lemon, olive oil and garlic. It's such a fresh, healthy recipe, one that I found two years ago when we hosted our first seder.

I roasted potatoes as well as asparagus, which I served with lightly roasted mandarins. I made chicken marbella and two good old chocolate manichevitz cakes from the box. Although I tend to loathe cake mixes, this one is always a winner and saves time with the myriad of small things to do for a seder.

I always forget how long all the small things take, when you put them together - boiling the eggs, preparing the seder plate, setting the table. Thankfully, my kids were quite helpful this year. Aiden helped set the table, Ezra prepared the seder plate, and Ava made the frosting by stirring in just the right amount of oil and boiling water, and spread it beautiful onto the cake.

By the time everything was ready, it was about 7:15pm. We were all dressed up and I will admit that it felt like a real, formal seder for us. All the smells were there, the scent of chicken soup in the air, the traditional seder plate and matzhah on the table, the hagaddahs laid out. The kids enthusiastically participated in the reading and the songs, and I felt extremely blessed, thank you G-d, for having my family. I know that there were many who had seders alone, the less observant ones enjoying a zoom seder, the more orthodox ones without virtual family to curb the feeling of isolation.

After a huge, delicious meal, we went through the second half of the seder. We loved opening the door for Eliyahoo and I wondered if the neighbours heard us and perhaps even enjoyed the familiar tune, although it wasn't so early when we got to that point. The seder ended at about 10:45 on both nights, our bellies full, our hearts content.

Joy of Reading

Today involve giving lessons to the kids, trying to get whatever work done that I could, and preparing for tomorrow (Wednesday’s) Seder. I am working with Ava and Ezra on proper essay writing, and with Aiden on paragraph writing and reading generally. He clenches his hand when he writes, which makes it painful for him write more than a few sentences. I am trying to teach him how to hold a pencil properly, since I learned this when teaching Ezra. Thank goodness we are in the age of computers - typing works much better for Aiden.

Today I caught Aiden reading a book on his own, and it brought me a huge amount of joy. He seems to find longer books daunting, and here he was reading a full length book. A few months ago I brought back reading to the children at night, and it seems to have helped a lot with Aiden. When it’s time to stop reading and go to bed, Aiden is often so immersed in the story that he’ll take the book or iPad to his room and try to steal a few more minutes of reading. Abigail, incidentally, comes out with surprising statements that reflect her understanding of the story.

This week, teachers have finally started to officially assign lessons to the students. Today Aiden wrote a short story based the google feature that allows you to superimpose an 3-D animal in your house, so that it really looks like the animal is walking around one of your rooms. The teacher asked students to write a story based on an animal being in their house, which I thought was a brilliant idea. Aiden spent quite some time on his story - instead of writing, he typed it up, which he much preferred.

Aiden’s story was very cute, although he had a number of run-on sentences. We corrected them together, which made me wonder if children learn more at home than at school! All the one-on-one attention must sometimes win out against a room full of students with one teacher to manage them all. Deep thoughts during our week 4 in quarantine/home school!

Mock Zoom Seder!

We had a mock seder on zoom this evening with the extended family. It went beautifully. I had prepared an outline for the seder in and allocated parts in advance (for those who did not have preferences). We had at least a few representatives from Dan's four siblings, as well as his parents, and my brother and parents. Plus we had two of Dan's first cousins, Andrea and Amy, and their parents, Lawrence and Ruth. Those who attended spanned several cities, countries and continents: Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Los Angeles and even Australia.

The seder ran through all the "best of" or "Greatest Hits", rather than running through the whole haggada from cover to cover. As it was, the seder ran fora about 1.5 hours and I think that people enjoyed it and had fun.

Here was the introduction that I gave:

Welcome everyone! We're so excited to have you all here! Let's test this out by having each family give a shout out. Give a cheer when you hear your family! [l then listed each of the families.] 

I then offered this short reflection:

Pesach, as you know, is all about freedom, and a part of our history when we were slaves. This pesach, while many of us have certainly had experiences with having our freedom taken away, this is really the first time in our lives when we as a society, and globally as a planet, we've collectively had true constraints on our freedom. One important part of pesach is that are each supposed to feel like we ourselves personally experienced the exodus. Let's tap into these new feelings and experiences as we walk through the story of pesach. We can feel what it might of been like with our freedoms taken away, with our lives so confined, and how sweet that first taste of freedom must have been.

I then went through some logistics, and away we went! We had our seder plate on the table with the different items, real (like parsely) or improvised (like a sticker of a shank bone).

All in all it was a lovely mock seder and nice to have everyone together before the actual seders this Wednesday and Thursday. Due to covid-19 we are, of course, having the seder with just the six of us. But I hope that the mock seder that we had will make the real seders a bit less lonely, as we can draw from the sweet memories from this evening.

Bringing Their “A” Game

It’s Friday, the end of our third work week in quarantine. I cleaned my kitchen and it feels amazing. As long as I don’t look down; the floor has cracks and there are always crumbs in it. Maybe one day we’ll get a new kitchen. Is it selfish to hope that we’ll be able to renovate this one day? I look around and see in my mind’s eye a beautiful white kitchen, not the old cabinets that don’t close, the outdated countertops, the cheap melamine drawers.

On to more exciting things. Today we had a wonderful Shabbat dinner. The kids were acting out scenes from a show they had watched, and Abigail did a hilarious yet graceful dance. It definitely felt very lively and busy. Although we are stuck at home, our lives, thank G-d, feel very full.

An hour and a half earlier, and you would never had known that we’d have such a sad tidying dinner on the table. It was 6:00 pm and I had not started dinner, other than popping the sweet potato into the oven. I was busy doing work and, if I’m really being honest, finalizing an outline for a zoom Seder we’re having with Dan’s and my family.

The kids weren’t thrilled when they found out that nothing had been made, but brought their “A” game. Aiden set the table, which I had no idea he could do; Ava made Cesar salad dressing and croutons; and Ezra helped fry the breaded sole, and helped is father with the salmon on the barbecue. I threw in some brocolli to roast and washed and chopped the romaine, and tadaa! Dinner on the table in record time.

Learning and Growing

Our official "home school" day runs from 10-3:45pm. We have two periods before lunch, and three in the afternoon. Each periods has a designated subject but there is lots of flexibility. First period runs from 10-10:45 am, and for Ava and Ezra it is either self-directed Research, or a Writing session with me. Meanwhile, Aiden will do his online math class. After recess, second period runs from 11-11:45, and Ava and Ezra generally do their online math class while I do English and writing with Aiden. Then, it's lunch time

For the past couple weeks, I've been working on essay writing with Ava and Ezra. They haven't really learned how to write an essay, and I am teaching them using a fantastic step by step guide I bought online. Meanwhile, I'm working on writing paragraphs with Aiden. Today we started to writing opinion paragraphs, and its so interesting to see how he thinks and what goes on behind his shining eyes and sweet, mischievous smile.

Poor Abigail sometimes gets the raw end of the deal. I am so focused on trying to ensure that my bigger kids stay on track academically, and Abigail is only four so just doesn't have such a rigorous curriculum that I need to follow. I have bought lots of fun activities and she has been very interested in tracing numbers and letters. But sometimes she ends up doing educational games on the computer. She really enjoys listening to books online, the kind that require her to tap the screen in order to turn the virtual page.

Overall it was a lovely day, all things considered. I had better go to bed so that I'm refreshed for a call that I have tomorrow with a chief executive. There just aren't enough hours in the day!

How is this Passover different than all other Passovers?

COVID-19. What do I say that has not already been said? How do I feel that is different than others feel? How is this Passover different than all other Passovers?

This year, each quarantined family unit will have its own two seders. There will be no larger family gatherings, no conversations with friends about where they are going each night, about which night they are heading to their in-laws, and which night they are hosting for their own side. Each family unit will be having their matzoh ball soup and finding the Afikoman on their own.

Which reminds me: I need to prepare for our seders; both nights for our family of six. It's an odd thought, especially when I planned to host two very large seders and have out of towners stay with us.

I am still aiming to make our little seders special. We bought brisket meat, which I will be making myself for the first time. My mother passed along her tender brisket recipe, which turns out is made using a bottle of Mikee brand sauce. My children are in the process of grasping that it will only be us at our seders. I see the confusion in their eyes, the sense of disappointment at missing the vibrant family gatherings to which they are accustomed. This year, our little seders will have to do. 

How Did This Happen?

We are in isolation in our own homes, condos and apartments.

How did this happen?

It started slowly, gradually, and then almost overnight, everything changed. Exactly two weeks ago, on Saturday, March 14th, it was still up to each family to calibrate the risks, assess for themselves whether it was really necessary to drastically change the way that they and all of humanity has lived since the beginning of time. 

Some families, like ours, had stocked up on toilet paper and preferred keeping playdates outdoors. Others felt this was all a bit overboard, and marched into restaurants and clothing stores, deliberately carrying on with life as we had always known it, purposefully washing their hands of the hysteria that the media had conjured up. 

At that time, HR departments in Ontario still sent managers guidance on how they should approach staff that preferred to work from home, barely masking a sense of reproach for those apocalyptic doomsdayers who wouldn't keep calm and come to work.

On Monday, the leaders still went to work, setting an example for the rest of us. By Tuesday, governments started to tell everyone to stay home and isolate. More and more provinces called states of emergency, and we all retreated into our own little worlds.