June 2012 Updates: More studying news! Hahgoot worked hard on her school homework this month: she learned more ways to draw mini- beast diagrams (from observation, for example) and practiced her spelling, which is getting harder each week (Hahgoot is starting to finish the options for Year 3...). Barak taught her some tricks for remembering the tough words and she seems to have them etched in her brain in no time. I never get a chance to practice them with her, she knows them very fast.

In maths she continued the nice workbook from her teacher with problem solving strategies (top left) and also worked enthusiastically in her “gold stars” book.

In addition to extra practice on skills to get her pace up, we also played around with another workbook, introducing mathematical thinking with fun hands-on activities.

Hahgoot was excited to make an eight sided dice (Octahedron) Another workbook that works on practicing her skills while making it fun with stickers (bottom). It starts really easy and ends with really complex multiplication and division.

In Hebrew we started with this workbook, that deals with humour and creative thinking (for year 3). This is also useful for the lessons about emotions and empathy we’ve been doing recently. Hahgoot is very intrigued about the content, but whines a lot about writing tasks...

My constant work on Hahgoot’s reading ability and confidence has finally paid off: she took a book to read by herself in Hebrew at last! In English she has been reading complex chapter books for 9 years old (here she is reading “How to be a friend”, which is a book about a girl with epilepsy).

In English Hahgoot is a lot more proactive in choosing books by herself (left) but she is also happy to take my suggestions and read both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain enthusiastically (it’s an illustrated version for teens, I read it when I was twelve and thought it was challenging! She thought the author was “rather good” and was very interested).

Dorothea helped us finish the Shavuot celebrations by helping us bake a cheese cake (top left) and Hahgoot started the new BJE unit about Israel with much interest. The unit included learning about Jerusalem, the Negev and the Dead sea.

Hahgoot designed her own lion for Jerusalem and “a postcard from the Negev”, which she addressed to Deena and Emma, who she knows also do the BJE by correspondence.

At the “Art Box” class at the art gallery Hahgoot learned to etch and work with salt on paper to create interesting effects. I hanged all the collages and other works up on the window in the girl’s room.

Hahgoot liked the etching so she did another at home (left) and also enjoyed a Sunday Kids Art Club workshop where she worked in clay.

I collected colourful rose petals in our street and Hahgoot tried out making “flower petals beads”, an idea from the wacky book her aunt Revital sent. Hahgoot really liked touching and cutting the petals. Then she added flour...

Next she added salt and water and mixed it up. She added the petals and mixed the very sticky dough. We put it in the fridge to settle for a while. Then we made the squishy beads. They dried for a few days but despite having a very nice smell, they didn’t look very good, so instead of threading them we decided to throw them in the garden for a “natural” decoration.

Hahgoot had some time to do her own games as well, like this “apartment” she made up for her dolls. Hahgoot had some rides on her scooter but also a couple of falls and now refuses to get on the scooter again. Each time she falls I need to start from square one to encourage her to keep going; it is very frustrating.

In our next presentation: Social Life!