so we are making progress in revi'i. i told chana we were doing 4 new pesukim today. she was reluctant, but she decided if she can play bejeweled in between new pesukim it would be ok. we also did a new rashi. chana kept commenting that the word "hafach" is odd to use for the destruction of sedom. he flipped it over? rashi says all the cities were on a big rock. so we did that. not too long, not too complex, and has the abbreviations of "she'neemar" and "v'gomer" in it, which is useful to know.

then for review, she wanted to go through shlishi by herself and just say any words that she doesn't remember. we did that in the car yesterday. it's good for the car but overall i think it breeds carelessness. but anyway, i wanted to review an old section of hagar and sara. so i stopped her and flipped back to that.

then chana felt she needed a break. she's been working for a half hour so far, including bejeweled.

also, chana was angry after the rashi. i asked why. she said because she didn't know it. i asked her why she thinks she is supposed to know all the words and translations and pronunciations the first time she sees it. she gets sullen when she doesn't know it right away or remember it.

anyway, i wonder how much she'll remember from lech lecha. i'm going to have her do about 11 pesukim.

she read it grouchily. she remembered ones i thought she wouldn't, and didn't remember words i would have liked her to. guess that's life.

whoops! we've been busy a lot, so i haven't been blogging. we finished shlishi and started revii. chana is not fluent with the end of shlishi yet. last night, for the entire chumash, i think she whined the whole thing and didn't say anything in a normal tone!

i did tell her that i understand she is frustrated and having strong feelings. but i don't like it when she makes strong statements like "this pasuk isn't important." ok as i'm reading that, it doesn't seem so terrible and does seem like just emoting. but she gets into this groove where she speaks very negatively about the torah or rashi. so i asked her to confine her angry comments to things that are not outlandish, such as "this rashi should be erased and never read ever again! it doesn't help anybody and will never help anybody!"

she's been graciously working on that.

i had her do 3 old rashis yesterday. it's been a while and i was pleasantly surprised. although she didn't remember the accurate pronunciation of a lot of the words, she did remember a few that i didn't think she would, and she did remember the general idea of the rashi. not bad.

i'm on bedrest now. luckily, homeschooling can be done pretty easily on bedrest (at least the part where your kid sits next to you with the books).

so back to the whining. it is pretty unpleasant to go through all of chumash when she whines. otoh, it is much more pleasant than doing chumash through tantrums. as always, the line is a little complicated between her expressing her feelings and working through them, vs her just being indulged by me when it would be better for both of us if i put a stop to it. i tend to rely on my subjective feelings, and i tend to notice the whining when it's already past the point where i should have stopped it.
it's also hard to know for sure whether i'm pushing her up to or beyond her capacity, or whether it's just a matter of her getting used to working a little harder. so hard to know.

anyway, i see that she's in a mode now where she's feeling negative about it, and feels like it's too hard, but i'm going to see if i can coax her to do it without whining.

so today is shushan purim. chana moaned through chumash today, but since elazar was out and jack was sleeping, i had all the time in the world and it didn't really bother me. just shows me how
a lot of dynamic and interaction stems from my own impatience, worry, wanting-to-get-it-done-with, being unable to think creatively about how to handle complaints because there is too much going on. ie it takes 2 to tango. i remember a rabbi of mine once saying that parenting isn't necessarily the hard part; it's parenting during everything else that's the hard part. anyway, i decided to do just spot milim for the first bunch of pesukim because she knows them well. when we got up to the pesukim that are newer and she's been having trouble with, she had to do the whole pasuk. she resisted, but i accepted the emotions of resistance, and we moved forward. slowly slowly. it took us about 35 min to do the 19 pesukim, with full translation starting at pasuk 12. so those last 7 pesukim are giving her some trouble. their construction is complicated, and there are some new words.

we google imaged "morning star" today to see what "shachar" is.

no new rashis. none have struck me and she's good enough at the one we've been doing.

of course, if we want to improve rashi skills, we have to do more rashis. but after wrestling with those pesukim today, i'm happy to lay off a bit.

we finished megilla so we are back to just shlishi. we aren't that far along, so it's going pretty quickly. i would have her do sheni, too, but she's actually pretty fluent in it. so why.

and today she read rashi twice, working on pronunciation. she still doesn't have it perfectly, and i'm wondering how much i should bother.

chana finished the abridged version of the megila. she's pretty sharp. she asked a lot of questions that are actually covered by parts we skipped. for example, how did achashverosh think of putting haman on the tree he prepared for mordechai.

back in chumash, we've been doing shlishi and adding a new pasuk. chana asked a couple of times why it says "the people of the city the people of sedom." good catch on the double language. i wasn't quite sure what rashi is saying about it, so i didn't do it with her.

she knows pretty well the rashi we had been doing, and i haven't picked a new one yet. i think today we'll just read w/o translation, since she remembers content/translation but is still struggling a bit with proper pronunciation.

today is rosh chodesh adar. so we started megila instead of chumash. for sarah, i had pulled out pesukim that tell the bare bones of the story. sarah had illustrated it. so i got that out and chana read and translated and enjoyed looking at sarah's pictures. she asked why achashverosh made a party (i left out the part about showing off his wealth, so i explained that). she liked that the women had a party, too. she agreed with vashti's decision not to show up. couldn't believe achashverosh would kill her.

we are up to the part where haman is about to be promoted.

for chazara, she will do shlishi up to where we are in the car on the way to the horseshoe class.

chana noticed that lot calls the people of sedom his brothers. she wondered if they treat all visitors the way they are treating these men. she wondered how lot became accepted into sedom if that's how they treat visitors. did lot move in before they started doing that?

i told her that she was going to be upset by the new pasuk. because it's hard? she asked. i said no, because of content. she was a bit perplexed as to why lot would offer his daughters. the pasuk was complex enough that i had her do it twice, which she doesn't like to do.

then she took a break to play a one-minute game on the computer. then she did rashi. then she blitzed through sheni chazara. (actually, she's still in the middle of it right now, but she told me to write that).

ps there are a few words that chana just doesn't remember each time. i think those will be a wash. "kala" is finish "yasaf" add etc.

chana asked why it says hashem left when he isn't subject to space or position. i said it means he stopped giving nevua to avraham.

i didn't get a chance to write what we did yesterday. we finished sheni and did the first pasuk in shlishi. chana noticed that lot's behavior (running to greet, bowing down) is similar to what avraham did. we remarked that lot learned from avraham!

she asked why there were 2 people, when avraham had 3. i said let's do rashi. she said but rashi isn't always right. (i try to emphasize that rashi isn't always literal which isn't the same as right/wrong but it's a distinction that took sarah a while and i assume it will be similar with chana). i think the idea made sense to her that the one that told sorah the news finished his job so he didn't go on to sedom.

then we went to gymnastics and chana chazered rishon in the car. she did a truly excellent job. i think we can even stop reviewing rishon for a while. which is good because sheni still needs some work and we are up to shlishi. so this morning we did the rashi (yesterday, chana asked me to read it to her before she did it. i read it to her phrase by phrase, and she mostly translated it auditorily. it is much easier for her to translate it when i read it than for her to read it without nekudos and then attempt translation). at first it was unfamiliar but then she remembered it. then we did the first 3 pesukim of shlishi. then she will review sheni in the car on the way to the play we are going to see (the man who planted trees). i like reviewing in the car. now theoretically instead of working with her, i can have a cup of coffee or clean up. theoretically :-)