the weekend

on friday we finished the parsha.  chana was delighted.  i'm feeling a little rushed.  she is rushing to finish so she can get her computer by pesach.  i'm feeling like we are rushing and she is not grasping the material as well as i'd like.  we were in the car for almost 2 hrs on friday round trip to elazar's bio class, so we finished it then.  it was a bit tricky since i wasn't looking at the pesukim.  i noticed thusly that chana is great at translating the words but less great at grammar, tense, prefixes.  usually i'm on hand to correct her but i was driving.

friday nt we did some rashi.  shabbos she was still raring to go.  and motzei shabbos we did more rashi (the new ones i didn't have a chance to choose because i was driving and therefore could not choose them as we were doing chumash) and she did some new pesukim. 

chana did some math and figured out that she has to do 3 pages a day if she wants to be done by pesach.  frankly, i don't think that's doable.  the pesukim are too hard.  it would be ok if i were doing chumash like i used to do with sarah--just go through the pesukim and translate.  but it barely registers that way, without chazara.  hard to believe i did it that way with sarah.  the faster we go, the more there is to review, and the harder it gets.

tonight (sunday) i told her at 7pm that when aharon goes in, i'd like to do chumash.  sof kol sof, we started at 7:30.  we worked until 8:50.  we were leisurely, which i've really been striving for as i've noted this past week how much more relaxed and pleasant it is.  when i'm not trying to get it over with, and we don't have a small block of time to fit it in, chana can talk about all sorts of things and it becomes pleasant spending together time and pleasant learning torah time and just pleasant.  (chana mentioned tonight that she spent a lot of time talking about her feelings because this is the time we spend together). 

as i've mentioned numerous times, chana prefers working in the evenings.  and now that aharon has a pretty early bedtime, it's been a good time to relax and get her work done. 

we did chazara of maftir.  she did it well.  (we still have a lot to do in shvi'i, but i didn't want to bog her down because after a certain amount of time, she runs out of energy and the whining starts, which is a signal to me that she's reached her limit.  even if i push her past that, it's really more than seems to be ideal for her.)  then we did rashis.  there are so many rashis that we didn't get to do the new rashis that i chose on friday.  by the end of reviewing some of the older rashis that i felt she knew okay but i wanted her to know better, she had had enough.  so i didn't do the new rashis with her, feeling that would push her past her limit and would dim the excitement she felt about new pesukim.

when we got to vayigash, i realized that she had done new pesukim already on friday night (or last night, i don't remember) and she barely remembered them, because she is rushing to cover as much as possible.  she very much did not want to do chazara, because that was boring.  but i was hesitant to go forward while she didn't really remember what happened previously.

i asked her if i could read it and translate it to her.  at first she was reluctant, but she agreed.  i read it with a lot of expression and translated what she didn't understand.  just like the last time i did it, she really enjoyed it and wistfully mentioned that she wished i would do that more.

again i felt that pang that if i were unschooling her, i would do it that way.  and then i felt again that tug of if i would do it that way, how would she acquire the skills.  but i am planning to do chazara of miketz that way.  i hope she enjoys it.