Reflections regarding Friday August 30, 2024 in Prague, Czechia
In our family, we have a hard time waking up and going to school on the third day of school each year. The challenge of the third day of school is a real thing. It is the day when all the excitement over seeing friends again and meeting new teachers begins to wane because students are settling into their new daily rhythm. It is when my children identify which parts of their day will be “boring.” It was no different in beautiful Prague.
After the very late bedtime due to medical “crises” that only started as the boys were supposed to be going to sleep the night before, I let the boys sleep in a little bit to try and avoid a grumpy start to the day. It did not work. The boys were reading on their Kindles when I walked in and were far from enthusiastic about getting up to participate in our version of school. Fortunately, before Kirby World School ever began I made it clear that their thirty-minutes (or more) of screen time would be determined by their participation in their lessons. Although I much prefer an internal motivator, this proved, and continues to prove, an important motivator for the twins. Amichai and Eitan are motivated by their desire to move up to the next grade level with their classmates.
It was Friday, so we focused on more of our Judaic Studies content with davening/prayers and Parashat Hashavua/learning the weekly Torah portion. The boys also completed some of their math lessons and journaled. Since we hadn’t done some of these style of lessons before, there were some technical glitches for which I hadn’t accounted, and I learned I needed to adjust my expectations regarding how much they could accomplish.
After lunch we made our first attempt at taking public transportation to the Children’s Museum. In trying to avoid a longer walk during what was another very hot day, I failed to get us on the right bus or train. Undeterred, I called an Uber to get us to the museum vowing that we would use public transportation to get home. The boys were grateful for the car ride, but it turned out to be a longer drive than the bus would have been because of traffic. When we arrived at the museum I was pretty annoyed with myself. Had we walked the extra five minutes from our apartment to the train station we would have been dropped off right at the entrance of the building. Another lesson learned. Take the walk.
Prague’s National Children’s Museum is really interesting. Instead of being organized around specific ideas, categories, or objects, it prioritizes stimulating integrated thinking and pattern finding across concepts and objects. Questions that encourage this kind of thinking and processing were all over the place. My favorite question was "What do butterfly wings, dry leaves, and peace all have in common?" The boys totally missed that part because they were excited about the huge floor to ceiling interactive wall at which they could throw balls. We only had ninety-minutes in the space and they must have spent forty-five minutes of their time just at that wall.
While they were throwing balls to their hearts content, two of the docents struck up a conversation with me. They wanted to know where we were from, what we were doing, and how long we were in Prague. They told me how much they enjoyed the boys’ “American energy”. It reminded me of when our houseboat host said the same thing. When I asked one of the docents to elaborate, she said, “Oh, American children are so cheery and friendly. They’re so fun.” I smiled while appreciating that someone else enjoyed the intense level of energy our boys had and wondering if boys in Europe are somehow different.
Further along in the exhibit there was a column filled with window cases exhibiting different kinds of fossils. There were the typical animal and insect fossils. Then, I noticed an 8-bit, a vinyl record, CD, CD player, tape deck, VHS tape, an iPod, and many more items from my childhood. All of a sudden it hit me. I am so old that my childhood memories are now being called fossils. When did that happen!?! I called the boys over to show them these "fossils" from my childhood and had to explain what each item was. They were floored that when I was growing up I couldn't just open an app on my phone or computer and play the music I wanted. They said they felt sorry for me and then proceeded to tell me it's okay because I'm 2000 years old. A fossil, indeed.
After our museum visit, we successfully used public transportation to return home. Along the way we looked for new shoes for Eitan. Before we had left the States, we knew that one of Eitan’s relatively new sneakers was tearing at the toe. However, it was not so big and we prefer to let our children run their shoes into the ground before buying a new pair because they grow out of them so fast. As it turns out, this wasn’t the best idea. Eitan’s shoe was already falling apart in London. It was becoming a little much. However, we chose not to get him new shoes there because we thought it would break our budget. We decided to wait for Prague. Now in Prague we looked in every shoe store between the train station and our flat. Nothing. Even the specialty kids store didn’t have a shoe for him. We aborted our shoe finding mission and went home to prepare for Shabbat.
