School ended for the secondary students almost a week ago. The primary kids will finish the year on the 30th, so since our school is Sunday-Thursday, rather than the more common Sunday-Saturday schedule, they still have a full week left. P has some testing to finish up, and the twins have projects days, but really, it's just regular school. With the exception of no after school care and no hot lunches. Oh well.
Thursday will be class day for all the kids, with the Topic Book Fair and Open House. The Primary school, Kitah Alef and up, functions with theme blocks. Depending on the topic, one to three weeks are dedicated to a certain theme/topic. This is incorporated to the teaching as much as possible, and the daily class life as well. At the end of the topic period, each kid has to create a topic book on their level. They save these and display them for everyone to see three times a year. At the end of the year they come home, but photocopied versions of the ones the class chooses to be outstanding remain in the class library. I might add, that those kids, who entered Kitah Alef together stay together as long as they are in the school. So over the years they build up quite a library this way. It's nice to walk in to the 6th graders and see all their topic books on the same, repeating topics through the years. Some of the junior high classes keep up the tradition and intend to till they finish school! I am not sure if we'll stick with this school for secondary or the kids will go to the state schools, like the older ones do now, but I'd love to see what they have to say in high school.
This week they do their last topic book. By tradition, this topic book is about anything they want to write about. The kids look forward to this topic book all year, but really, this is the hardest assignment they get, because they do have to choose the topic, have to research it, and make it the most beautiful book they make all year, as they had the whole school year for it! So this year, Matthew decided to type up the whole book, in two column format, one column in Hebrew and one column in English. He included photos as well, nicely embedded to the text, printed and then heat bound. His choice of topic was the lake Balaton in Hungary, where we send some time each year. He missed not going this year! Justin, on the other hand, made the whole thing by hand, even attending a basic book binding workshop with his auntie Meyra in May to make it just perfect. He drew, copied, and glued photos in, and did a great job. His topic was bananas: where they come from, what types exist, how you can eat them, what else you can do with them, and why it's a stupid idea to grow them in Israel. Patrik went the typing route, and made a book report in English about one of his favourite Hungarian books. With some help, he even translated passages into English. He did just great! Noa's book is about food in Armenia, complete with recipes. They all worked very hard and did a good job, even if Matthew only started working on it last week!
Yonah had a surgery on his leg on the 22nd. While it started out as a minor adjustment, it ended up being a complicated reconstruction. The surgeon decided on a change to reduce over all recovery time and avoid another surgery in the fall. He did a great job, and while Yonah experienced some complications, he is scheduled to come home on Wednesday, in time to come to the younger kids' open house at school on Thursday.
The newest, albeit possibly temporary member of our family is napping next to me on the couch. He is nursing a spiral fracture to his upper left arm, and for some odd reason our couch in the basement is the most comfortable place for him to sleep. Which is odd, as the couch is the most uncomfortable thing ever, and we have been planning on replacing it with something that doesn't cause blisters on our buttocks...
Also: Thanks to the commenter who linked me all the "Harel Skaat kissing his boyfriend in public" videos. Can I just say, I don't care? (In part because I've seen that happen before, in part because I think he has the right to having a private life.)
I purchased all the tickets for our vacation in Hungary. Two of the boys won't be able to come, though. They volunteered to take care of the house while we are gone. I'm slowly starting to shop for the holiday, and we will start packing sometime during the week. Oh, it will be so much fun!
