Adventures in Mama-Land

  How are you doing for poems lately? Craving a really good one?     I first came across this poem in Garrison Keillor's anthology Good Poems for Hard Times , which we've been choosing poems out of to read randomly at family dinnertimes since corona hit -- for no reason whatsoever. And as a sometime

I couldn’t decide what to call this book.  Avos?  Avot?  We live in Israel, but I am proudly Ashkenazi.  In my head I say Shabbos, Shavuos and Avos, but everybody around me says Shabbat, Shavuot and Avot.  I also still call our Chanukah candle-holder a menorah, resisting the “Chanukiyah” pull with all my strength. I went with Avot anyway, just as I have in most of my recent books.  There’s just too many of “them” out there… and when I say them, I mean also my own children, who are learning in Israeli schools.  The Family Torah is all-Ashkenazi, all the time.  But everything else is Sefardi, pronunciation-wise.  Including this book. It’s short but sweet:  a collection of children's rhymes (with illustrations) to introduce the Avos/Avot :  Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Yosef, plus Noach, Moshe, Shimshon and David. (Click on the cover or click here to see it on Amazon.) It’s based on poems and ideas I came up with while homeschooling -- but never had a chance before to edit and &

Legal disclaimer:  I am not the owner or publisher or Elemental Science, and have no affiliation with anyone who is.  I’m just an ordinary parent looking forward to using this curriculum with my kids. As I have mentioned a few times , I like Elemental Science in general and think it will be a very do-able curriculum for this year – I’m looking forward to diving into it. I initially found it lacking in a few areas, one of which is the poems that are provided to help kids memorize characteristics of various living things (plants, mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and human body systems). A while ago, I created a one-page printout with two original poems to help memorize plant characteristics (parts of a plant; parts of a flower).  Now that we’re starting the animals section, I have created SIX original four-line poems detailing the major identifying characteristics of each of the major types of vertebrate. In case you’re curious, I used the Denver Zoo website – among

My father’s birthday was April 25th, so this is his week.  We are all thinking of him in our own ways. These are old poems, and I was going to include a whole bunch of apologies and whatnot for not being gardening-related or childrearing-related, but hey, I’m making ZERO money from this blog, and the fame isn’t that much ahead of that zero mark.  So read them or not; it’s okay by me. Ghosts 1: Skeleton Birthdays There's not a month that passes now without a few the year is littered with them friends who have moved on, leaving only their birthdays fossils in my mind. They will dig me up years from now and probe my brain. What is all this? The sacred birthday burial ground.   Ghosts 2: Haunted Numbers The telephone number I need Springs to mind Bubbles up Eager to be of use 398-8520   So familiar; this must be the right one I almost dial, but my fingers Stroke the keypad Ske