Naor's wildest dream came true: his teacher drives to work on a motorcycle. Here is a story of a cool Jewish mother that stops at nothing for her kids. She has two grown up kids and four vehicles at home. When her son finished the army and started working in Haifa while studying in Tel Aviv, she didn't want him to endanger himself riding his motorcycle long distance. So, she gave him her car, got a motorcycle license this summer and is now riding to school daily.
Nadia's teacher used to be a documentary movie producer. Now she is providing wonderful citations from Henry Ford and Cat in the Hat in every parent newsletter.
Both teachers gave the kids and us their emails and cell phone numbers, encouraging to call with any questions.
Naor has spent the last two weeks before school driving us and himself crazy from his loneliness. I couldn't schedule any playdates with the kids from his new class because everyone seemed to be on vacation. Then, in one day everything changed. He met with his teacher who invited along three kids from his class. After this he walked to their home and had a long playdate with two of them. Arrived home in the afternoon only to tell us that he is going to a class party at some Frozen Yougurt place in the evening and someone is coming to pick him up. Terrified from this sudden independence, Moshe rushed to set up a cell phone for Naor.
The kids do complain that it is too noisy in the class.
Unable to hear the homework explanation, Nadia just copies the homework assignment letter by letter from the board. Occasionally, we have to call her friend or teacher to figure out what it all means. Moshe mused that she should take a photo camera to school and do a snapshot of the board with the list of homework.
There is no nurse at school. This may be the biggest shock for our kids who are used to coming and socializing with their school nurses almost daily. Sometimes it is a real fever, sometimes a scratch, a belly ache or a bad mood. In fact, on the very first day when Naor was at school in the US, his nurse called me:
"Is it true that your child likes coming to the nurse's office?"
I was surprised: "Did the other school's nurse told you? This is just the first day."
"No, but I know the type. He has been here twice already today. A very nice boy."
They loved nurses and nurses loved them, giving them a nice white bed to lie on and confess and a box of apple juice that cured any ailment. Now, absence of such psychologist in their new school may turn to better or worse. Hopefully, it will make them stronger and reduce the minuscule complaints.
The fact that kids have a lot of school books (instead of the printed handouts given in their US school) turned out to have some consequences: their bags are very heavy. For now, they pull 5 kg / 11 lb back and forth daily. The teachers do offer to leave books at school but as experienced parents advice me, this usually leads to forgetting to bring home something essential for the homework or exam preparation.
The world is small! At the afterschool activities fair we recognized a couple from the past - Newton, Gan Yeladim. Our older kids went together to kindergarten 6 years ago. Now we are neighbors. Typically for Israel, they have 4 kids now while we are just catching up with the 3rd.
Nadia was not happy with her seat assignment in the class. "I sit next to a boy who makes fun of me and my table is far back in the class." But then it turned out that she occupies exactly the same seat as I did (back in Russia) in the 80th. That completely changed her attitude. I think we may be in trouble when kids need to rotate their seats in a few months.
School offers a number of the after-school activities on the premises. I was told that it is important for the newcomer kids to participate in the popular activities to help socialize with the classmates. This sure is true - I saw three girls practicing their splits for the Jazz club before the school bell.
The kids told me that a few grades have their classrooms in a bomb shelter - there was no other building to expand into. Bomb shelters here are not underground as we used to have in Russian schools, but rather reinforced concrete structures with only one hermetic door. I am sure it is strange to study in the classroom without windows, however I recollect that the most exciting work arrangements I ever had were old army hangars (low ceiling, no windows) that my Special Effects company, Boss Film Studios, occupied.
Homework is minimal so far, however on some days I have to sit hours with Nadia studying Gematria. Being The Math Mom, I thought myself an expert in different fields of math. But here came Gematria... According to Wikipedia, it is a system of assigning numerical value to a word or phrase, in the belief that words or phrases with identical numerical values bear some relation to each other. In Nadia's 3rd grade it is presented as a coding system where every letter of the Hebrew alphabet represents a number. Words are sums of the numbers of the letters.
Peculiarly, the following equation holds is gematria:
child = father + mother
אמ + אב = ילד
44 = 3 + 41
Nadia's teacher used to be a documentary movie producer. Now she is providing wonderful citations from Henry Ford and Cat in the Hat in every parent newsletter.
Both teachers gave the kids and us their emails and cell phone numbers, encouraging to call with any questions.
Naor has spent the last two weeks before school driving us and himself crazy from his loneliness. I couldn't schedule any playdates with the kids from his new class because everyone seemed to be on vacation. Then, in one day everything changed. He met with his teacher who invited along three kids from his class. After this he walked to their home and had a long playdate with two of them. Arrived home in the afternoon only to tell us that he is going to a class party at some Frozen Yougurt place in the evening and someone is coming to pick him up. Terrified from this sudden independence, Moshe rushed to set up a cell phone for Naor.
The kids do complain that it is too noisy in the class.
Unable to hear the homework explanation, Nadia just copies the homework assignment letter by letter from the board. Occasionally, we have to call her friend or teacher to figure out what it all means. Moshe mused that she should take a photo camera to school and do a snapshot of the board with the list of homework.
There is no nurse at school. This may be the biggest shock for our kids who are used to coming and socializing with their school nurses almost daily. Sometimes it is a real fever, sometimes a scratch, a belly ache or a bad mood. In fact, on the very first day when Naor was at school in the US, his nurse called me:
"Is it true that your child likes coming to the nurse's office?"
I was surprised: "Did the other school's nurse told you? This is just the first day."
"No, but I know the type. He has been here twice already today. A very nice boy."
They loved nurses and nurses loved them, giving them a nice white bed to lie on and confess and a box of apple juice that cured any ailment. Now, absence of such psychologist in their new school may turn to better or worse. Hopefully, it will make them stronger and reduce the minuscule complaints.
The fact that kids have a lot of school books (instead of the printed handouts given in their US school) turned out to have some consequences: their bags are very heavy. For now, they pull 5 kg / 11 lb back and forth daily. The teachers do offer to leave books at school but as experienced parents advice me, this usually leads to forgetting to bring home something essential for the homework or exam preparation.
The world is small! At the afterschool activities fair we recognized a couple from the past - Newton, Gan Yeladim. Our older kids went together to kindergarten 6 years ago. Now we are neighbors. Typically for Israel, they have 4 kids now while we are just catching up with the 3rd.
Nadia was not happy with her seat assignment in the class. "I sit next to a boy who makes fun of me and my table is far back in the class." But then it turned out that she occupies exactly the same seat as I did (back in Russia) in the 80th. That completely changed her attitude. I think we may be in trouble when kids need to rotate their seats in a few months.
School offers a number of the after-school activities on the premises. I was told that it is important for the newcomer kids to participate in the popular activities to help socialize with the classmates. This sure is true - I saw three girls practicing their splits for the Jazz club before the school bell.
The kids told me that a few grades have their classrooms in a bomb shelter - there was no other building to expand into. Bomb shelters here are not underground as we used to have in Russian schools, but rather reinforced concrete structures with only one hermetic door. I am sure it is strange to study in the classroom without windows, however I recollect that the most exciting work arrangements I ever had were old army hangars (low ceiling, no windows) that my Special Effects company, Boss Film Studios, occupied.
Homework is minimal so far, however on some days I have to sit hours with Nadia studying Gematria. Being The Math Mom, I thought myself an expert in different fields of math. But here came Gematria... According to Wikipedia, it is a system of assigning numerical value to a word or phrase, in the belief that words or phrases with identical numerical values bear some relation to each other. In Nadia's 3rd grade it is presented as a coding system where every letter of the Hebrew alphabet represents a number. Words are sums of the numbers of the letters.
Peculiarly, the following equation holds is gematria:
child = father + mother
אמ + אב = ילד
44 = 3 + 41
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