Three more weeks on dry land have flown by. In fact they flew by so quickly that I was surprised when asked how come I haven't written in such a long time. It's only been a few days, I thought. Well it has been a few days. Twenty some days to be correct....
So what does a family of 5 do on a not so big island for such a long time?
We have 3 main missions:
Find a boat, Home school and have fun.
Oren is in charge of the boat hunt. Unfortunately we still have no news on that front. As I already wrote, not a lot of boats are on the market now (Yes, i do know that Venus, the late Steve Jobs' mega yacht is around here and is for sale... Slightly out of our budget...)
We are hoping to find something by the end o the month. Keep your fingers crossed and wish us luck!
(Kids waving goodbye to Oren as he leaves to inspect yet another prospect)
Balancing homeschooling and fun is an interesting challenge, especially with 3 kids of different ages and different needs.
As you might remember, our plan is to go back to Israel at the end of our journey, before the next school year begins. Mika will be starting 3rd grade there, Gur will be going into first grade and Arbel will be on his last year of pre-school.
The main difference between school in the US and schools in Israel is of course the language... 3rd graders in Israel read in 3rd grade level, only they do so in Hebrew...
We speak Hebrew at home, read the kids stories in Hebrew and made sure Mika and Gur got Hebrew education (thank you, Sara, Gili, Hen and Mili in Merkaz Ivri!) and yet while in English she finishes hundreds of pages in a day, she still a beginner reader in Hebrew.
So we have been writing and reading! I'm proud to say she just finished the first Ivy and Bean book in Hebrew!! What a feeling!
Oren had to go back to Fajardo to look at a potential boat, lucky for us that's where are boxes are stored and he got us book number 2! This one started out a lot faster! I'll let you know when it's done :)
Oren is also in charge of math, and I think Israel has it at a more advanced level at this age. We have 5 (!) books to cover and Mika is just about to finish the first one!
Another thing we've been working on is the Torah which kids in Israel start at 2nd grade. The language of the bible is different from today's spoken Hebrew and it takes getting used to. We have just finished creating the world and got to heaven ;) slowly but surely
We found that spending the mornings at home studying and then headin for an afternoon at the beach works well for us.
This homeschooling would have been simple had it only been one kid and one grade level. Lucky for us we have 3 :)
Gur is reading! Which is incredible! Miss EJ, his amaIng kindergarten teacher gave him a head start, and now he is making his way through Dr Seus what fun!!
We have downloaded a few books to the kindle and he's doing an incredible job!
What's really cool is that he is doing the same in Hebrew too!
As we lost most of the reading materials I has prepared for him when the boat got hit, I have been improvising ;)
Arbel is spending fun time while his siblings are studying coloring, playing but also using the ipad and incredible software like teach me and I write words to learn his letters and more.
Yesterday he read his first word: NO!
I was shocked!
Other teaching aids we use include cardboard boxes, leaves, sea shells and just anything we can find around us
That's a glimps of this aspect of our trip.
More stories will follow soon (sooner then 3 week, I promise!)
*BTW IF YOU OR YOUR KIDS WOULD LIKE TO WRITE MIKA OR GUR THEY WILL BE MORE THEN HAPPY TO GET LETTERS ANS REPOND. JUST TAKE A PICTURE Of the letter and send it to my email: odarya@gmail.com
See you soon,
Darya
If having similar names is not enough, guess when Zaria turned 7? Right! February 10th!
(The view from scrub. That's me jumping off the trampoline ;)
