chazak chazak

Elazar's first siyum.  He finished reading Shema.  He has earned the privilege of playing with his tablet (that he paid for with his own money) without needing to read a line to earn an hour.

• Elazar's reading in 3rd grade is ridiculously more fluent and came faster than then "normal" teaching I have done numerous times with new Hebrew readers in kindergarten and first grade.
• Instead if it taking months and months of patient and slow incremental building, it came in bursts.  A week of working on letters.  Months go by with nothing.  A day of working on letters.  Nothing.  One hour on a Shabbos morning where he decided to learn the nekudos.  Then six months later another look.  Then six months later another.  A few minutes every week at Avos U'Banim.  

He wanted to finish up Shema this morning.  He decided to just blast through til the end.  He only had 4 lines left.  It took him just a couple of minutes to read.  He started reading Shema on December 21st and he finished on January 6th.  He could barely remember the letters when he started.  Now he isn't quite a completely fluent reader, but he is much more skilled and capable than I would have dreamed after practicing only 45 lines of reading.

Part of me wants to run with this and start him on tefila.  But I suspect that would be disastrous.  No, the thing to do is to have confidence that he will easily be able to master tefila fluency with plenty of time before his bar mitzva.  

On one hand, it would be nice if he would be "grade level" and read fluently like other 3rd graders and daven like them and learn like them.  On the other hand, school would probably be dreadful for him and he's having a grand ol' time every day, wakes up with a smile, excited and delighted to enjoy his day.  And everything indicates that he will be able to focus later on in order to accomplish his chiyuvim with ease. 

So, maybe, upon further contemplation, this way is nice.