today continued

so we are doing the review of the last pasuk. it's a doozy. 7:11. has words like "nivka'u" (they were split) which has the delightful aspects of 1. a new shoresh. 2. being passive and 3. the vav at the end being "they" and not "him/his."
other new words: tehom (useful so i'll drill it), raba (for some reason she never remembers its relationship to הרבה), ma'ayanot, and niftachu (same problems as above except that the shoresh is familiar even though chana has thus far been unable to recognize the p.t.ch shoresh in other forms except liftoach!).

so i told her we'd have to do it 3x. and i asked her if she wanted me to run through it first. at first she said no, but then she said i should. so i did. she reviewed it w/o reading the hebrew. this has been a constant tussle between us. i want her to read hebrew, then translate. to become familiar with the hebrew, too. she prefers to look at the hebrew, then translate it into english. sarah preferred this as well, and i think she ended up with less hebrew reading fluency and familiarity. so i try to insist, and she resists. etc.

so this time chana did it with mostly english, and i restrained myself from forcing the hebrew because she was having so much trouble with the pasuk. and she didn't notice or appreciate it. then she said "and now review 5 more times" which i readily agreed to, and she got upset because she was making a joke. she then spent a whole bunch of minutes attempting to negotiate less than that.

i finally told her she can review the pasuk 2 more times or do the new one now. then break, then more review. she chose the new pasuk, which blessedly, as anticipated, was a breeze. we are now having break and then back to the pasuk.

i'm in a bit of dilemma (as usual ;) because i am beginning to feel like maybe i should spend more time before abandoning the chazara of the first bunch of pesukim. basically, any fluency that she acquires now is a favor to her for later. imagine if we could go through chamisha chumshei torah and she is basically fluent in all the pesukim. ah, is this a pipe dream? in my post 9 av musings, i am sad that in this state of galus it is a pipe dream that children should be fluent in the 5 books by the end of 8th grade. (let alone that mishna needs to be done between 10 and 15! zoinks). (or were chazal referring to all 24 books? double triple zoinks). otoh, on a happier musing note, how fortunate are we that i can just open up a website and have the translation to all of tanach. the internet is beyond even the printing press in its potential good for humanity.

but back to traipsing through this pasuk with chana. and hopefully then rashi,