whining

so i wanted to review the pesukim today. in fact, i decided maybe i won't even do a new pasuk. chana freaked out. crying, it's not fair... i said "what is not fair?" because i personally think it is fair to make a person review until they know it if the goal is to know it. that did calm her down somewhat. she remembered a lot of the words in the pesukim. i think we'll need to review a few more times.

i like the first read hebrew, then say the english. it familiarizes her with the cadence of the hebrew, which i felt she was lacking. otoh, if she can easily translate the words, she doesn't need the hebrew on her tongue. oh, i'm always dithering! that's the 'trouble' with being in charge of the education. since i have all the freedom and all the choice (and thus all the responsibility), i'm always rethinking.

we didn't get through all the pesukim because the whining was getting progressively worse. and i was thinking how unpleasant it was. so i asked her to please stop whining and speak in a normal tone. she said "you're making me do it" (which btw i know this is not a parenting blog but when yr homeschooling parenting does come into it, and me making her have feelings is, as i've read in books about therapy, an "invalid" statement because nobody makes you feel anything; you are in charge of your own feelings. she says that fairly frequently and i'm not a big fan, but i realize that addressing it directly is not going to help her). so i said, "how?" and she said i'm making her do things that are too hard. and i said i am asking her nicely, because the whining is bothering me. and i don't want to yell at her, and i don't want to say mean things, so how else would she like me to handle this. and she suggested that i stop making her do work. as per faber and mazlish (how to talk so kids will listen etc) i validated her suggestion, and then politely expressed my feelings about it. (i want to do chumash so that she learns the pesukim). she then turned back to the pesukim.

then she wanted to skip pasuk 12 (we had done 1/4 of it, and וירא אלוקים את הארץ was the phrase that sent her over the edge!! hello! and i wouldn't tell her what וירא was and told her to find the shoresh and she went ballistic). so remembering her penchant for control, i agreed we would do that pasuk this afternoon and she got through the next pasuk pretty smoothly.

for קץ כל בשר i have been saying in a dramatically momentous voice: END of all MANKIND. which she enjoys.

when she translated "came before me" she asked who wrote that, ie who was the "me" and i pointed to the "elokim said to noach" and she said, oh, yeah. then she asked why the torah wrote it twice.
i thought that was an excellent question (even more so since she refused to translate the previous pasuk, and yet somehow still remembered what it was about). why would the torah narrate the situation, and then narrate hashem telling the situation to noach?

i also found another rashi, but i'm not sure if i'll bring it up today. we'll see how the afternoon session goes. i want her to review all the pesukim again, which will probably annoy her. i'm looking for rashis that have common and simple words.

postscript:
chana did a really nice and quick job translating the 4 pesukim. almost ready to move forward. maybe another day or 2. (an aside: people often ask me how i manage without tests. i'm sitting next to her; i can see if she knows it or not!).
the question is, will she know this in a week? in a month? is this part of her knowledge base? she's still struggling with 'corrupted' and 'violence.' which don't show up all too often. and i think she has the jist enough.

then i had her review the rashi, and she said that she thinks it's time for a new one, because she knows this one! (she didn't get it 100%--still has some trouble with the words. but i'm excited because she asked for a new rashi :)