May Cuties

Ada's been having fun on the computer lately making collages in Publisher and lists of things (that we already have lists for) like her class list in Excel.  She's getting lots of great skills. Tonight she came and asked me how to make another "list." I was about to tell her how to open a new spreadsheet when she said, "Oh, I remember!"I raised my eyebrow in surprise. "Really," she said. "You go to start and then Micro-office and then click on elexus, right?" Sounds good to me!

Doing Hebrew reading homework has also become more fun because she has real words rather than nonsense syllables ( which were torture for both of us!). She has a good time recognizing all the words she's seen or heard in other places like davening or chumash. Sometimes we get some amusing ones like: עשיר . What's amusing about that? Well I was looking for ×ֵ×™×–ֶהוּ ×¢ָשִׁיר? - ×”ַשָמֵ×—ַ בְּ×—ֶלְקוֹ . She said - no! It's like "a shiur."

Ada: Mommy, this hurricane is so popular!  At the bowling alley, they were showing it on the TVs!

Tonight I met with the group of ladies that are coming together with me this summer on JWRP's T.A.G. Mission to Israel. I am so excited that this is really happening! It's been so much work between recruiting applicants, interviewing, ironing out issues, and preparing the participants but I'm sure it will all pay off when I see the incredible experience that these women will enjoy. I feel so privileged to have a part in this project. For now, all I can say is July 18th can't come soon enough!

p.s. Imagine the horror! I forgot to take a picture of our first get-together! Ugh, so much for making a scrapbook....

At Dovid Gabay's show at the Hudson Valley Resort tonight:

"He'd be good for a minyan!"

lol.

Ada completed (for the third time in her academic career) the study of the Alef-Bet letters. The milestone was celebrated in lots of ways.

One day, the class had a show-and-tell where each kid brought something that started with a letter of the Alef-Bet. They were supposed to write the word on an index card provided for the purpose. Ada, of course, wanted to bring something for EACH letter of the Alef-Bet. She prepared a list (I helped her with ideas for just a few of them.) and then went down the list getting all the items together and checking each item off as she found it. I was blown away. So was her Morah, as I found out the next time I spoke to her.

Another day, they baked Alef-Bet cookies for their celebration. Ada told me she made the letters of her name and it came out like "Vayikra." I had no idea what she was talking about until she explained that the last alef was small just like in the word vayikra in the Torah!

Ada is thrilled to have a real Alef-Bet book (the classic early primer) and confided to me that having real homework makes her feel very grown up. The first assignment was to read pages alef through yud (1 to 10) and I was supposed to sign the chart indicating that she did her homework. There was also a section for comments. Ada announced that she wanted to finish the whole book and that, when she finished, I should write a note to Morah in the "Compliments." Over-achiever, perhaps? When she got up to page 15, she noted that the page number said tet-vav (which is the numerical equivalent of 15). She said, "That says tet-vav, like tu in Tu B'Shvat so it means 15!" Her analysis of the things she learns and her ability to apply them in other situations blows me away! Talk about higher level critical thinking!

This page contained an embedded video. Click here to view it.