Terumah - my lesson plans

I seem unable to actually keep track of what we are doing in school and organize it in a post.  I do keep track of our schoolwork, but you aren't interested in my cute little checkmarks lol!  But I can tell you what we plan to do this week.  This will give you a fairly good idea of how school has looked in our house lately.

We always start school by reading one chapter each day of the current Torah portion.  This week I hope to add torahclass.com lessons to match what we are reading.  My children enjoy the illustrations you can download.

We will continue reading "Tirzah," a book about a girl who lived through the Exodus.  It has been wonderful to see the possible details and points of view behind the story we read in Scripture.

We will probably spend some time studying light this week.  This is an ongoing unit study we work on when I don't have anything striking in the torah portion.  I have a couple websites that we can spend time exploring.
Discovering light   Life before artificial light 
I also found a new preschool site with printables for Sadie here.

Okay. my apologies.  Since I began writing this post, I worked on Terumah for Torah School.  I was amazed at how much I found in the next Torah portion!  But in keeping with my rule to stay within my limitations, we will focus on building a paper model of the tabernacle.  Pdf printable is found here.  This is incredible and very doable for younger children with mommy's help. 

We will do the Torah copywork lesson for Terumah, available under the tab "Torah Family Printables."  We do one sentence a day and practice some reading with it.

Holly and Isaac will continue their reading lessons in Language Lessons for Little Ones 2.  This is helping me go systematically through the various sounds.

Naomi is getting near the end of Language Lessons for Little Ones 3. 

Naomi will finish lesson 25 and start lesson 26 in Math-U-See Alpha.  She works mostly independently.  She has been getting 100% on everything, so I am very pleased with her progress.

Holly and Isaac are working on Lesson 8 in Ray's Primary Arithmetic.  They get to play around with bottle caps, etc. and do all their lessons orally right now.  Naomi will switch to this book when she finishes the Math-U-See she is working on.

Naomi will do about 4 pages in her cursive workbook.  She has the most beautiful handwriting for an eight year old.  She is very precise, which can also be a real time sucker.  It's a mixed blessing lol.

We do hebrew lessons with Daddy.  I have a dry erase board on an easel.  We do most of our school at the kitchen table.  They copy down the hebrew words I write into their notebooks, including Daddy.  Then I have them come up and write words that we have already learned.  Sometimes one person draws a picture on the board and we try to label everything in hebrew.  We also do reading practice with the help of "Time to Read Hebrew."  This book has helped us begin to learn our vowel points.

I download coloring pages from aish.com for the current week's torah portion.  The kids can color those if they finish a subject early, etc.  They use the pictures to tell the story of the torah portion on Sabbath for Daddy and I.

Each child has a folder which I fill up at the beginning of each week.  Any printables like their copywork, coloring pages, cursive etc., are put in the folder.  This week they will have their copywork and coloring pages, a map of Israel and Egypt, which we add to each week, and Naomi will get a math test.  Sadie always gets extra coloring pages because that is the majority of her schoolwork right now.  We also often do pages where the kids label the parts of something.  Last week we labeled the parts of a tooth.

So that's the plan. It's not glamorous or complicated.  But it is do-able and I have been able to remain faithful to get it done every day.

In reality, Isaac will be more interested in building a gun with duplo parts and shooting the "monsters" in the hallway.  Holly will want to draw pictures.  Sadie will distract everyone by building towers with the math blocks when they are trying to read a sentence to me.  Naomi will complain that the cursive is too hard even though her cursive nearly exactly matches the example.  And Elisha will bang a spoon in a pan on the floor so no one can hear what I'm saying.  But we'll stick to it.  We'll get the work done.  Lunch will taste really good when we are done.  And I will delight in Naomi getting an A on her math test.  I will be proud of Isaac when he sits still long enought to finish his copywork.  I'll be thrilled to see Holly making up math problems with the bottle caps for her brother to solve.  And Sadie will use three different colors in the same picture and stay in the lines.  Even Elisha will crawl up in my lap as I teach and snuggle into my neck.

So homeschooling is a wonderful thing.  Teaching Torah to my children is a great honor.  Watching my children remember to help their siblings like Torah says is a reward in itself. 

So here's to praying for a good week for all of us.  Stick to it.  Teach confidently.  Trust YHVH to lead you and give you discernment.  Be patient for just a few minutes longer.  And enjoy the fruits of your labors.