rashi

so here's an example of a lesson that was great in theory, but didn't quite pan out in practice. i chose the rashi on "b'etzem hayom haze." that noach entered the ark in the main part of the day. rashi says that people had in mind that when they saw him enter the ark, they would break the ark and kill him. and hashem said that noach would enter in front of everybody, and we'll see whose words stand.

i thought chana would really enjoy the conflict and how hashem "got one over" the people who wanted to kill noach for claiming they needed to do teshuva.

but.

it has taken us so long to get through the pshat of the words. i can't remember how long we've been doing this rashi. weeks? the nice thing is that the words aren't too difficult, it has a lot of familiar words and the conjugations of verbs are different enough that she has to work and easy enough that she recognizes them. it's a great rashi for teaching skills. and she's not finding it tough. we've been doing it phrase by phrase, adding on 4-6 words each time as soon as she masters the previous phrase in terms of reading pronunciation and translation. we still have the last 4 words left but it's been smooth.
but by the time we get to the end, having spent all this time on translation, she doesn't appreciate the concept. i tried to discuss it a bit with her, but she didn't really get it. if i would have just told it to her like a story, she probably would have enjoyed it. it does seem like day to day, a lot of the enjoyment of the story aspect gets lost in the drudgery of the translating.

overall, though, her skills are improving. today's pasuk was easy and she did it without fanfare. what i'd like to do now is have a day where we just review all the rashis we've done since we started rashi. i think there are only 4 or so. but it would be nice if she reads them all fluently and knows their translations. i was going to do it today but she's playing with her cousin. perhaps tomorrow.