Bleary Eyes

This week has been planning week. My eyes are bleary from lots of reading into the wee hours. I got some wonderful books today from Torah Umesorah that really helped to clarify my thinking on our kodesh (religious) studies. I really want to get all of our learning done as efficiently as possible, and sometimes deciding what is crucial, what is extra, and what can wait until the following year is very hard to discern. We don't want to burn out, yet at the same time kodesh really is as substantial a set of skills as chol. We could easily spend 3 hours on chol and 3 hours on kodesh. But we have many other things to do besides crack books...

This week I would like to finish clarifying my kodesh goals, and next week I would like to comb through chol to make sure I've trimmed everything practical. I also would like to look at places where kodesh and chol can overlap to maximize our time.

With language, there can be a lot of overlap. Science can be infused with a torah perspective. Art projects can come from torah subjects or themes. In history, I'm looking forward to reading in our new Jewish history book in tandem with our ancient history book (though our Jewish history book doesn't really pick up until halfway through our ancient history book). It's been really interesting to study what the setting was when ethical monotheism appeared on the scene.

Anyway, I'm tired but enjoying the process here. Tomorrow, we have Girls Night Out at the local amusement park with two of Amirah's friends. Thursday is her birthday, and grandpa comes up for a week (while grandma stays home, hopefully continuing to recover from her very mysterious ailment of 5 weeks). Better go to bed before I crash right here. Good night!