Our current Limudei Kodesh and yet another reason homeschool is fantastic

Chana is still doing a paragraph of Shmuel I a day.  She reads and I help her translate (ie help her through the Metzudos) until she wants to stop.

We spent this week doing the Abarbanel on Shaul's mental illness, which, thanks to me having taught it one year, I conveniently had a bunch of parts bracketed in pencil that were beautifully relevant.

We were planning to go back to Shmuel but I thought it might be nice to work on mefarshim skills for a bit and was planning to do a juicy Ramban with her.  But then this morning I was thinking about how great it is that I can walk after my knee surgery a few years ago and I started thinking about the bracha "Hamechin mitzaadei gaver" the praise that Hashem "prepares" the steps of man.  I was wondering if that was a praise for walking or for some other idea.  So I googled it to find the pasuk (thank you thank you thank you google) (What is the bracha of shevach for google's existence?  Maybe "Hanosein lasechvi vina lehavchin ben yom u'ven layla" "Who gives intelligence to the rooster to distinguish between day and night") and I found a really great article about it.

And it is in fairly simple Hebrew.  As I was reading it and enjoying it and looking up all the pesukim it referenced and the gemara and some midrashim, I thought this would be great to learn with Chana.  It will be Hebrew and Torah.  So we started it.  She got through the first paragraph and she wanted to stop for the day.  I thought we would cover more in one sitting, but as long as it is enjoyable and it is pleasant, it's ok if we go through it slowly.

We are covering the AP Bio book reaaaaaaally slowly because it's complicated.  We are also reading some very complicated literature.  I think that homeschool is really giving us the unusual freedom to study very complex things very slowly.  Ordinarily, a student who processes things slowly would have to be in a class where the information is less complex.  But at homeschool, we can learn very complicated things in very small chunks.  Tailoring the intricacy to what will interest her at the speed where she can comprehend it.

Another thing that Chana has mentioned numerous times, and I've also read that other unschoolers feel similarly, is that she has time to think about things.  So if she does only a few lines of the essay or only a few paragraphs of the Bio book, she still has hours in the day where she is processing this information and integrating it and really thinking very deeply about it.

Here is the essay we are doing.  I think it is from Orot.