Adventures in Mama-Land

Have you ever wondered what it's like to be blind? Picture yourself in a world of darkness, groping around, not knowing where - or what - anything is.  Last month, I got to go to the Dialogue in the Dark exhibit at the Israel Children's Museum in Holon.  You're immersed in a darkness so intense you can't see even the outlines of the other people in the room. Our blind superhero You're lost in a hopeless, unsolvable maze.  Are you near a wall, a door?  Are you about to bump into something?  Your only hope is to trust in the skills of your guide, an all-seeing miracle worker who can somehow navigate her way through total darkness. Our guide was Michal.  Michal is blind, but there, in the dark, she was strong.  She knew her way around better than the back of her hand.  She memorized our names and called them out throughout the tour to make sure we didn't get lost.  She warned us about obstacles and coached us to "look" around ourselves with fingers

A bit of explanation... an ABC story, in ASL, is an artform where a story is told with each word taking the handshape of the next letter. Like making up a story in alphabetical order ("a bad cat ditched every frugal dog"), but with way more freedom of expression in the handshapes of the letters, it's a cross between storytelling and dance. Can you find all the handshapes??? I love it when my fascination with Judaism and my fascination with ASL intersect!!!  If you do, too, be sure to check out all of JewishDeafMM ’s videos for parsha, holiday thoughts, and more.

What is going on ?!?  These days, it seems like “school time” has to be stolen furtively from “everything-else time.”  We are barely getting anything done because of catching up with all the million other urgent things that must get done NOW.  Okay, you might not think yesterday morning’s “me-only” Pilates class wasn’t urgent… but that’s only because you haven’t seen the shape of me lately.  Shudder. Let me just tell you, it is NOT the same to make up “class” time in the afternoon that we missed in the morning.  First thing in the morning, Naomi Rivka is complacent, attentive happy to sit in a chair.  I suspect many people are.  First thing in the afternoon – nope!  For one thing, by the afternoon, she is probably already in the middle of a million projects.  Even if it’s something as simple as a Barbie getting married, or a series of drawings she’s working hard on.  Just take me in front of a firing squad of unschoolers for steering her away from THAT and plunking her in front of a

I was sitting wondering this in class tonight, probably when I ought to have been paying attention, but what else is new? Who’s going to use the language in 20 years?  Is it like learning Latin, a static, dead language, or, like Yiddish once was, a language reserved for chatting with old, stubborn people who refuse to go with the new ways (in the case of Yiddish, this was “learning English”… whereas in the case of deaf seniors, it is “not getting cochlear implants”). One of the best-known deaf kids (THE best-known?) thanks to her mother’s “Signing Time” DVDs, even Leah Coleman now has cochlear implants (actually, as of seven years ago – read the article; she makes many good and important points).  Her mother still recommends signing as part of the child’s communication toolbox, but not necessarily as the primary, first language of deaf children that advocates have worked so long and hard to have it acknowledge to be.  (She DOES strongly recommend giving children a language, any la

I’m not going to generalize about deaf people based on only having met a few, but I’ve noticed… well, some deaf people don’t have wonderful spelling.  And spelling is important to me – it’s something I notice. One of the handouts that was given to our class early on mentioned that reading in English is an area where many deaf people are at a disadvantage, because ASL is NOT English, is not coded English, is not in any way related to English. (it’s actually becoming less related to English with the deprecation of “initial” signs, like the D handshape in DAY, or the L at the mouth for LUNCH – apparently being phased out in favour of the less-Anglocentric FOOD-NOON) So native speakers of ASL are at a disadvantage when it comes to English.  I’ve known it for a while, but somewhat dismissed it, because after all, anyone can learn English… right?  Especially when they’re surrounded by it as Deaf people are in the US and Canada!  Well, dummy me – not if they can’t HEAR it. While dea

I will update this page as I create or find excellent Pesach resources!  And scroll down for my own special, ongoing personal Pesach project…. To begin with, on my own site… Great Big HUGE Pesach 5771 Lapbook / Lapfolder (all original PDFs, available by donation) My husband’s original 10-page Ten Plagues for Passover Colouring Pages Passover / Pesach Printables Activity Pack #1 and Activity Pack #2   Haggadah Printable Overview – to read aloud with kids and/or incorporate into your own studies and/or Seder. The RonyPony Haggadah 5771 .  “Bare-bones” but complete Hebrew text interspersed with the English from the Haggadah Overview, above.  This is just a “beta” version.  Feedback welcome for next year!!!! A Small Pesach Mah Nishtana / Four Questions Book for Kids Other Pesach and Yom Tov resources here (scroll down to “Yom Tov”), including a cute Pesach Snakes & Ladders game! Videos of various kinds: Fun free all-Hebrew Pesach

I’m sure you know that shining moment when everybody in the class is staring in your direction, open-mouthed?  When the teacher, a mad bald, white-bearded, pot-bellied tiny deaf man, is gesticulating frantically in your direction as if you were Einstein himself? We all get that from time to time, right??? So what did I do to deserve it in my signing class tonight? He does this thing where he goes around the circle and points to each student and you have negative three seconds to sign a word:  in this case, it was occupations.  And this was our THIRD time around, so we’d exhausted all the easy possibilities. I had already signed “doctor” and “bank teller” (it had been done, so I had to guess again) and “security guard” and frankly, I was sniffly from allergies, feeling LOUSY.  So when it came back to me and every profession anyone had ever heard of had been taken, I lazily stuck the sign for ANIMAL in front of the sign for DOCTOR .  Two basic signs any kindergartner would kno

As a homeschooling parent, there is so much I CAN do and DO do on a regular basis that it’s discouraging when I come up against one of my failings. Yes, failings .  (family members, especially younger siblings:  this is not true; I am lying, I am omnipotent, I am making this up, and therefore stop reading right now) Here’s one:  I absolutely cannot, in any way, make up a story. I just can’t! In one of my signing classes, the teacher was trying to get us to sign more fluently by making us draw three random “story cards” and then using classifiers (descriptive hand movements that don’t correspond to exact word-signs) to tell a story based on the pictures we’d drawn. Well, I failed miserably, and would have failed in any language, even English.  One of my “stories” involved an elf who found a key and a baby and a bag and there was a lot of random arm-waving but it was basically a STUPID story that culminated in the elf OPENING A DOOR! Don’t get me wrong:  I can write a stor

TONIGHT WAS MY FIRST SIGN CLASS IN THE NEW YEAR. . I LEARNED A LOT - - YAY!!! !!! Yes, after two cancelled sessions (summer and fall), my ASL 1D class is going ahead full-steam!  Only 11 students, and although I feel rusty, I wasn’t utterly pathetic.  It is the weird gnome-like teacher I had last time, but somehow, I’m so grateful that the class is running, at last, that I was happy to see him.  Wish I knew enough ASL to remind him that he owes me $5 from last year, though…!