Back To School And Other Volatile Situations

Unlike in the UK and other countries where each school or district goes back to school on different days, in Israel every school. kindergarten and nursery starts the academic year on September 1st. It's a day of national celebration. Every school has a ceremony to welcome the new First Graders. Every child has the obligatory photo taken (which is then promptly displayed on facebook - to be fair, I've seen a lot of these from the UK and USA too). DD hates having her photo taken but I told her it was the law so she reluctantly agreed.

"If I must"

We started second grade. There were tears on the way to school for the first day. She is terrified that the Hebrew will be too hard. (I'm a little concerned myself).

I was greeted at the end of the second day with DD, hands on her hips, telling me, "Mummy, this isn't going to work if you keep forgetting to put the things I need in my bag!" Of course she had everything in her bag that she needed but she's not familiar with the books yet so she didn't know.

The parents' whatsapp group was buzzing tonight about the second question (out of two) in Bible homework: What Pentateuch will we be learning this year? None of us knew the answer. LOL. I'm glad it wasn't just me. DD wrote, using a full sentence as instructed: I don't know what Pentateuch (I think it means what book of the Pentateuch) we will be learning this year. I resisted the urge to add: So I'm looking forward to a nice surprise. An email from the teacher earlier implied that there had been an information sheet but if there had been it never arrived home. Hebrew homework was a doddle in comparrison. I did most of it myself as we were dangerously near a meltdown. Phew!

WARNING - skim the next paragraph without trying to understand the details. It's just to give an idea of the situation.

There are 'afternoon programme' wars at our school. (School finishes at 2.20 pm whereas working parents do not.) After a six year monopoly for the privately run afternoon programme for grades 1 to 3, the municipality has brought its own afternoon programme to the school which is half the price of the private one. On the other hand the private programme provides home cooked meals and you can sign up for individual days whereas the public programme has no food and you have to pay for the full week even if you only need select days. On the other hand you can pay for a hot school lunch in a sealed tv-dinner type box for next to no money but also next to no nutrients. On the other hand three selected days at the private programme are more expensive than the full week of the public programme. And then there is the third option - school run extra curricular activities. DD wants to do art and magic. Two activities are cheaper than the public programme but three activities would be more expensive. So I'm fine with going with the activities as I only need cover for the two days. Then the private programme realized it was in a precarious situation and started to lower its prices. But they've not updated the partial week prices so it's now more expensive to send your child for half the week to the private programme than for the whole week. And further options in the private programme now include the programme without food or the food without the programme. It's all extremely confusing.

You can tune back in now. Or not.

The other complicated thing is the meal schedule. Left over from the days of rising with the dawn, grabbing a cup of coffee and a chunk of bread, and putting in a few hours in the fields before a proper brakfast at 10 am, every school has the 10 o'clock meal which is brought from home - a sandwich and some fruit and/or vegetables. Maybe a yogurt drink aswell or a cereal bar. Up till last year this was a good idea as the kids didn't eat again until they had a hot lunch after school at around 2.30pm. (Great for us as we don't do breakfast in our house - a glass of OJ and out the door.) Then last year the cheap catering hot-lunches were introduced and served at 12:50. So the afternoon programme lady had to serve her good but more expensive food (which DD had last year) also at 12:50. Only she wasn't that hungry at 12:50 was she? Did I mention that another meal option is to send both a packed breakfast and lunch into school with your child? Shoot me now.

OK, here's what we're doing.

OJ before leaving the house at 7:55am, 10 o'clock meal has now been moved to 9:30 (good for us) and lunch break at 12:50. I am sending in a box of food which will be enough to cover both meal breaks. DD can eat whatever she wants from the box at either meal. And when she comes home at 2:30 she can finish the leftovers, add a snack if necessary and call it late lunch. We'll then have an early supper at about 5 pm. (Twice a week she'll be home at 4pm after her chosen activities.)

I'm exhausted and it's only the second day. Tbh I'm generally exhausted atm but that's another blog post.