Even though I haven't been brave enough to unschool Chumash, I dropped math 2 years ago, when Chana began to seriously dislike fractions. I slowly introduced them to her a year plus later, in a very relaxed way, when we didn't "need" to keep up with any curriculum, talking a lot about pizzas and how many slices they have, and moving on to addition and subtraction and reducing and multiplying and dividing and improper fractions.
It was nice that when we hit a rashi that had fractions (hashem remembers the sin for 4 generations and does chesed for thousands; rashi says hashem's punishment to chesed has a ratio of 1:500), Chana was receptive to reducing the fractions and showing how they are equivalent.
Purpose
I am planning to try to blog our daily chumash struggles, triumphs and activities. For grandparents, it will keep you updated on chumash progress. For parents (that's you, Ari) it will facilitate our parent-teacher conferences and give you a chance to input your opinion on how you want things handled. For friends interested in education of elementary school age children for chumash, well, there might be some of that.
How This Began
I am an Orthodox Jew and I've been homeschooling for fourteen years. Teaching chumash is one of the most important subjects, and one of the most challenging. We care so much that our children love Torah. v'shinantam l'vanecha. We want so badly for them to have the skills and the ability. Skills work is a particular challenge for homeschoolers, who have not accepted boredom as a fact of school. Or should I say it is a challenge for the mom/teacher...
My oldest "graduated" homeschool (her choice) and is in high school. When I started, I was teaching chumash to a 3rd grader, with a toddler and an infant for company. We now have one chumash learner, one preschooler, a toddler and an infant.
I largely "unschool" and when I started this blog, I was reading Alfie Kohn. Many of my posts explored this. Although I currently am not brave enough to unschool chumash, I am seriously thinking about it for the boys.
My oldest "graduated" homeschool (her choice) and is in high school. When I started, I was teaching chumash to a 3rd grader, with a toddler and an infant for company. We now have one chumash learner, one preschooler, a toddler and an infant.
I largely "unschool" and when I started this blog, I was reading Alfie Kohn. Many of my posts explored this. Although I currently am not brave enough to unschool chumash, I am seriously thinking about it for the boys.
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