tefila

every once in a while i wake up in early morning and start thinking about the general direction of my kids' schooling and areas that need shoring up and areas that need more focus. i realized chana is 9 yrs old and we haven't paid attention to tefila all that much. she still doesn't like to read a lot of hebrew, and i kept putting off davening until she was more fluent in reading. but i think it's time to start some memorization. i started making a mental list of what i wanted to get working on, but what better place to write it down than here.

asher yatzar
bentching
birchas hatorah
shma
shemona esrei

the reason for those choices is because i want to prepare chana for keeping halacha fully when she is bas mitzva. she will need to be fluent in the longer brachos.

that reminds me to put

al hamichya
borei nefashos

on the list. we've already done some of that, and some of bentching, and the first paragraph of shema, and asher yatzar a few times. but mainly, if not this year, then in the next year or 2, i'm going to have to get started on shemona esrei (preferably plus translation) so she'll be prepared to daven with kavana when she's chayav.

with sarah, i used to daven every morning for 20 minutes or so. the kids were very bored, but i think they learned all of it, like ashrei and birchas hashachar etc. with chana's stubbornness and the more unschooling approach, that kind of fell by the wayside. i still have a twinge about not doing hallel with her on rosh chodesh.
the theory in my mind is that she's not chayav, and if she can read fluently, she can pick it up easily later. this wars with the part of me that feels that elementary school education should entail having all this fluent on the tongue.

anyway, in a non-alfie kohn move, i bought chana a pair of boots and she needs to earn them. (that part is not against alfie; it makes sense for kids to earn luxuries. what he's opposed to is making something a reward for education, implying that education is inferior and something you do in order to get luxuries...). so while i would like to make chana a list of household chores for her to do to earn the boots, she's already doing a lot of household chores and it might be easier for her to read those things on my list until she's fluent. i'm thinking of making a chart with boxes and she has to read it out loud and check off the boxes, and when she's finished, she earned the boots.