jubilation

the white board is working great! one hr ago i was about to write:

"too darn tired to think about chumash tonight. fretful baby and clingy toddler. forget it. try tomorrow."

but jack went to sleep and ari was around to distract elazar for 10 minutes, so chana and i hit the book.

so our new process (note how it has changed from even last month, based on her input) is currently: no writing things in her own dictionary. looking up to be haggled over (and acc to chana, done as infrequently as possible). i will write down in english as we go on the white board, for her to refer to as needed in order to keep the thread of the pasuk.

i glanced at the pasuk first, to see how it would go.
וְכֹל שִׂיחַ הַשָּׂדֶה טֶרֶם יִהְיֶה בָאָרֶץ וְכָל-עֵשֶׂב הַשָּׂדֶה טֶרֶם יִצְמָח
i saw three words she doesn't know. i warned her about it. she said she'd rather do double chumash tomorrow. i said double tomorrow means looking up all 3 words and translating the 1/2. looking up 3 words in one day is apparently too much, so she agreed.

(now secretly, i'm telling you that i myself was not sure what the pshat of this pasuk was. i don't even remember this pasuk at all. was this talking about what happened already? what was going to happen? so i peeked at the english. teacher's prerogative: trying to teach a student how to translate while ironically needing the english to make sure she doesn't teach it wrong...)

so chana translated "and all" beautifully, not missing a beat with the chaf and immediately saying "v'kol" after "v'chol."

siach she had no idea and i wrote it on the board in a different color:

And all שיח

it turns out she doesn't know the word "sadeh." who knew that i never use the word field? i just told her what it was, and she said, "is that because otherwise there will be FOUR words i don't know?" yup.

i wrote sadeh in hebrew and then parentheses (field).

the next word terem she didn't know, and i wrote it in pink and then in parentheses wrote (לפני).

wouldn't you know, יהיה gave her a ton of trouble. i used it in a sentence, still she had trouble. finally i wrote it on a 2nd white board (always good to have a bunch--i happen to have 4 student sized white boards and 1 larger one) and asked her to find the shoresh and then r' winder for the yud prefix.

then she pretty easily translated "and all grass the field before it will צמח"

she forgot "before" but i pointed to the white board and there it was. yay!

then i asked her to read it as a whole to get the feel of the whole thing. i introduced her to onkelos, telling her that he was a convert who wanted to be jewish who was closely related to the king (i think he was the nephew, but i can't remember) and the king sent soldiers to bring him home him, and twice he talked them into converting. chana liked that. i told her that he wrote a translation of the chumash, and showed her the word "אילני" and asked her if she knew what ilana means. she knew it was a girl's name, so she was intrigued. i told her it was עץ. so on top of שיח i wrote (ilan--etz) (forgive the english; i'm getting lazy. i wrote it in hebrew; i'm just sick of alt shifting back and forth).

then it said "and all tree the field"
so i made a little blank space and asked her what was missing:
and all tree __ the field
and she said "in" which i wrote in (haha)

so now it said and all שיח
(עץ--אילן ) _in_ the שדה (field) טרם
(לפני) it will be in the land
and all grass _in_ the field before it will צמח

hmmm... looking back, i should have put sadeh in pink, too. oh, well.

anyway, i had chana review it, and asked her to guess what tzamach meant. and she lifted her arms like a plant sprouting and said "grow." and i said "right" and put it on the board.

and all שיח
(עץ--אילן ) _in_ the שדה (field) טרם
(לפני) it will be in the land
and all grass _in_ the field before it will צמח --grow!

please take note: she didn't look up one thing in the dictionary.