we did one rashi, the one we did last time. she remembered the content. our next 2 wks work will be to work on the pronunciation of the words.

it's rashi day again. we've been doing chumash in the car a lot, which doesn't lend itself to blogging but makes both of us pretty happy. today we finished shlishi. and i have to figure out a rashi. we shall see we shall see

so chana just reminded me that today is rashi day. she reminded me of this when i asked her to do a page of 3rd grade math (she's going into 5th) that goes back to the basics of fractions. so i said, oh, yeah, and after this we'll do rashi.

i was dreading rashi. earlier in the day we did 2 new pesukim, about eisav selling the "oldestness." i picked a new rashi about something chana had asked--why rivka is referred to as lavan's sister; didn't we know it already? we did the rashi with nekudos. chana had trouble with it. she is not a careful reader, didn't know words i thought she would know (anshei for example) and flopped when i said, hmmm.. instead of telling her. which is pretty much how i thought it would go, which is why i dread it. and then she complained that she didn't understand any of it; it was just a bunch of isolated words. so i went over it again and read it to her and explained it phrase by phrase. and wondered what is the point if she dislikes it so much.

oh, yeah. to get skills.

chana just wandered by her page hanging on the wall. the one highlighted mostly with words she knows and a few here and there highlighted in a different color words she didn't remember. and she looked at it and said, "what was terem?" then she said, "before, right?" yup. so an advantage to hanging it on the wall is that sometimes she wanders by and thinks about those words she doesn't know.

too bad it's not really practical to have all of them hanging up. but maybe she'll learn the 8 words on that page.

how do you know what she learns if there are no tests

now that we started a new parsha, chazara is pretty short. and chana asked to do the beginning to herself. i prefer to have her do it out loud so i can hear how she is doing ("but how do you know if they know it or not?" i am always asked when people realize there are no tests). but it's a lot more peaceful and she has more stamina if she does it herself. so she did it to herself. a couple of times she asked for a word but then remembered it right away. a couple of words she asked and i told her.

then we got to the new pasuk and she said, hey they both had favorites. this is just like in avatar (and she said the mother liked x and the father liked y; i didn't register the names) except that yitzchak also liked yaakov, and in avatar the parents disliked the children they didn't favor.

then in the next pasuk, chana wanted to know why eisav was tired. i said, wouldn't you be tired after hunting in the field? and she said, no, why does the torah tell us that eisav is tired. i said, you'll see. she said pleeeeaaaaase tell me! please please please i don't remember what happens. i said, you'll find out tomorrow. she said, no now please. i said, do you want to do more pesukim? she said no.

some questions

chana's chazara is going to be highlighting again, to be done later. (darn, i just remembered it's rashi day. perhaps it's not going well because i dread it??)

so today chana asked how old rivka was, and compared it to yitzchak's 40, and said "creepy.." then asked if it was legal.

she also said that eisav was never a slave of yaakov. so why would hashem say that?

chana highlighted one page and there are only about 5 words she doesn't know on it. i think it gave her a good sense of how much she knows. but she didn't enjoy the highlighting (because it is chazara!) we finished chaye sora and started toldos today. only 3 pesukim because they are tough. there are still a significant number of words she doesn't remember from chaye sora. i'm not sure if extra chazara will help her remember them or not. i think tomorrow i'll have her highlight a page from noach and see how much she remembers. or vayera.

in the meantime, i hung it on the wall. i'm impressed!

a homeschooling rule of thumb and a new tactic

today chana did it in the car. we did chazara on the way, and shevii on the way home. shevii was quick and fairly easy, so we did it in one day.

i mentioned to chana (who was getting a headache) that i was thinking about why she feels so negatively towards chumash. because she spends the majority of the time being involved in what she DOESN'T know instead of being involved in a positive, accomplishing feeling.

so i was brainstorming with my educational consultant, emily amie witty. she suggested numerous ways for me to increase the percentage of positive chumash experience. many of them i didn't see myself implementing. for example, to spend more time doing pesukim she already knows feels like a waste of time to me (in homeschool in general i have a rule of thumb: if she knows it already, or will somehow acquire it herself in a few years, then skip it and let her do her own thing instead). i had told chana that i would calculate the number of words she knows in shishi compared with the number of words she doesn't know. but emily suggested i print out the aliya and have her highlight herself the words she knows in one color and the words she doesn't know in another color. and then she'll see how much she knows. and then display it prominently so she can frequently notice and enjoy it and/or show it to those who will appreciate how much she has learned. it's a fabulous idea. if it works out well, i will have her do it with an aliya from a previous parsha so she will get a feel for how much she has learned.

we finished chamishi today. chana said she didn't want to do the index cards. and she thought we were up to the beginning of chamishi. so i picked a few pesukim towards the end of revii and told her to do them. she asked if she could do them to herself. i said yes. she asked me for the words she didn't know. i don't know how well she did the pesukim to herself, but there was definitely less yelling. she asked for a word, i told her what it was. then we got to chamishi and she realized that "let's ask the girl if she wants to go" wasn't in revii, so she must have done some of chamishi. she c continued to do it to herself. then we did the new pesukim out loud. chana physically acted out some of it as she was reading it, particularly falling off the camel. she wondered why rivka put a scarf/veil on. she figured it was to cover her hair. i had assumed it was to cover her face. rashi says nothing.