Reasons 2B Cheerful - Growing Up

1
After sleeping in my bed for most of her life, DD finally slept in her own bed for two nights this week. It happened after a particularly restless night when I got very little sleep and ended up on the sofa because her bed was covered in lego. The next day I cleared up her room and put my foot down. There were some protests at first but we both got a great night's sleep. The next night there were no arguments.

I kind of missed her though so when she asked if she could sleep in my bed last night I said yes. I am probably my own worst enemy.

2
Today is the last day of school! Hooray! We have 3 weeks of summer school, till 1pm and only 5 days a week, ahead of us but at least no homework is involved. Well none that's not set by me and that I don't understand.

3
End of year report card. I won't know until DD comes home from school but I feel that we've made great strides this year. I can see the difference in self-confidence and independence from last September. For one thing, we've gone from me having to walk DD into the classroom every morning to just taking her across the road and waving her off as she joins the throng of children walking down the street to the school gates.

In the national tests in Hebrew and Maths she read the questions, answered them and finished the papers within the time. That could not have happened even back in January when I was called in to discuss how weak her language skills were (in Hebrew). The teacher told me then that DD wouldn't read one question or write one word without putting her hand up to check she was getting it right. And her maths which is good, was being dragged down by the word problems and not being able to read and understand the questions. It was heartbreaking.

However, with amazing help from the school, a "big sister" from the Big Brother/Sister programme, and some effort at home, we succeeded in breaking through the language barrier. I don't know yet if we caught up to end of 2nd Grade level as I've not seen the report card yet, but she's happy to go to school and she proudly shows me the ticks and smiley faces she gets in her notebooks. More and more she manages to finish her homework at school by working independently rather than wasting time so she can do it at home where I can help her. Night and day from where I'm standing, whatever the report says.

4
I wrote a controversial post about the EU Referendum. Huge backlash on facebook. Comments on the blog by some rather important figures in the blog world. I pulled up my big girl knickers and faced it all like a writer. Controversy is good (see, I've learned something from the Mail Online). Almost 1,000 unique views in 4 days. My Klout score went up to 51 - it's gone up by 8 points in the past 2 months. Now I'm just waiting to see if all this effort has got me back into the TOTS100 top 500. I can hardly bare the suspense.

I'm linking up with R2BC on Lakes Single Mum.

Reason 2B Cheerful - February 2016

 The Reasons to be Cheerful linky is being hosted by Lakes Single Mum again this month.

Almost finished bar the roof of the cabin.

1 Noah's Ark

An arts and crafts project at school had the 2nd Graders put into groups of two, three, or four to make a Noah's Ark. I hate these types of project as they are homework for the parents. Remember when I had to make Mini Israel?

We got our group so I called one of the other mothers in the group. And then God answered my prayers when she said: "I was just about to call you. I'll take the girls home from school on Tuesday and give them lunch then my husband will make the ark with them. You don't have to do anything."

It turned into a family effort with T's big sister helping and her little brother lending his toy animals. The end result is amazing. Thank you dear people. Btw, I have put in a request to be teamed with you for every art, craft and science project for the duration.

2 Spring is in the air!

It's February! I once described February as the Monday morning of the year. And it is if you live in Northern Europe. But here in Israel the weather has turned warmer and hints of spring are everywhere. We are still using the heating for another 6 weeks probably but only in the evenings.

Spring is in the air and the window is open (only one but it's a start).

3 Decluttering

Putting these two tv-stand type units one on top of the other, has saved me about 100 GBpounds. That's what it would cost to have a tall Billy bookcase delivered by Ikea and built in DD's bedroom. It also means one less item of furniture in the living room (one of the units was already in DD's bedroom).

I'm getting the decluttering urge again. Partly because of Rachel Jonat's Minimalist Mom series on her blog (of the same name), partly because it's almost spring, partly because the Yedidya Bazaar is in just a couple of months, and mostly because I love the feeling of less stuff and more space.

4 Shabbat

It's Shabbat and we have a whole day of nothingness before us.

Shabbat Shalom! xxx

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.