Monday, January 11, 2010

Ideas for TV-watching and Shabbat

I want to give a big thank you to everyone who commented and emailed about my TV and Shabbat posts. This last week has been much better and I believe I've found some things that work for us. Maybe some of these will help you, too.

I've stopped using their TV time as my computer time. When I would be online I would often miss the end of the girls' show. I wouldn't realize until they were well into the next program and you can't turn the TV off in the middle of a show. Well, I can't.

I warn them ahead of time that there is only one show. It used to be that they would argue about what they wanted to watch and we'd end up seeing three shows. Now we take turns picking the show much like the turns choosing which car seat they sit in. If they can't agree to this then Ima makes the choice or there is no TV.

In the evening I talk to the girls about what we are doing the following day. I've started mentioning how many days until Shabbat and what we need to do to prepare for Shabbat.

I bought a couple of books that have been big hits. I introduced them on Shabbat. There will definitely be more.

There was a discussion on a Jewish Homeschooling list I belong to about games for pre-schoolers. I purchased Sequence and told the girls it was a Shabbat-only game. I also have a couple games in storage that I haven't introduced yet, so we have a few weeks' worth of games waiting.

At our Beit Knesset there is a children's Shabbat class. We'll be joining in next week. We had tried a few months back but the girls were more interested in playing.

We didn't get them any new toys, but we will get each of them something appropriate for the chag before Pesah.

I'm always interested in more ideas so please keep them coming!