chazak teruma

We finished Teruma.  It feels like we zipped through it compared to slogging through Mishpatim.  Artscroll rashi was invaluable.

I think I enjoyed this much more than Chana.  I've studied the mishkan in general, and gone through pasuk by pasuk with Sarah, and I think I learned the words in the pesukim a lot better 2nd time around. I hope I'll retain the translations somewhat.  I feel really accomplished in my own learning.  Even though by chamishi I was basically sitting next to Chana with the artscroll following along and making sure we translated it accuratedly for the new pesukim, I feel like I understand the pesukim a lot better now.  I should have probably put in that kind of time for Mishpatim.  I just feel like sometimes Rashi is not the most pshat translation, and it takes some time to go through mefarshim to get a straightforward pshat.  I don't always like teaching rashi's interpretation of a pasuk, no matter how much all the yeshivas teach it that way, because then the kids grow up thinking that's the meaning of the pasuk, when it is really just one opinion, and not even the most pshat oriented one.

We did very few rashis this parsha, and the few we did, I just summarized for her.

mizbeach

I sat with the artscroll rashi book open today.  But that wasn't nearly enough.  I'm google imaging right and left.

http://www.utom.org/library/pictures/tabernacle/copperalter2.jpg

That's the picture that I found most useful.  My favorite is that it labeled all the different weird Hebrew words like border and netting.  I did this with Sarah and I don't recall a lattice netting.  (google "lattice" for Chana, but then I ended up pointing to our radiator cover that also has a metal lattice.)  Guess I learn something new each time.

I did peruse rashi in English to discover what it means to put something under from the bottom.  Superfluous and saying the same thing twice.  Chana wanted to know why.

PS.  Chana had her bas mitzva and we still haven't finished all the meanings of the brachos in shemona esrei (though she can fulfil her technical chiyuv of tefila without it).

PPS.  I had been wanting Chana to work on writing Ivrit and I told her to come up with an idea for a story but so far that's all we did.

PPPS.  I'm not impressed with Sfasenu 4.  It's getting that I pretty much need to sit next to her when she reads it and I'm not sure she's actually improving in her Hebrew.

artscroll rashi

I have excellent skills.  I went to an elementary school that did Ivrit b'Ivrit.  From kindergarten to 8th grade, our limudei kodesh teachers did not speak English to us.  In fact, I believe the principal specifically hired teachers with poor English.  At least, they always told us they didn't speak English.  I went to a rigorous high school and was in Honors classes.  For one test, we had as many as 50 rashis, Ibn Ezras, Rambans etc to know inside.  (For comparison, my daughter, in a rigorous high school non-Honors, has about a dozen.  Probably the honors classes are similar to mine.)  I feel comfortable opening a mikraos gedolos and looking inside.

With all of my wonderful education that we all who are homeschooling are desirous of giving to our children, so they don't have to crack open an artscroll, today I opened the artscroll Rashi to deal with the mishkan.  And it is glorious.  The picture of the menorah is so clear.  Chana was not that interested, since I had kept muddling through it when we were doing it and she didn't want to hear about it anymore. ("I KNOW about the goblets and the buttons and the flowers.  You showed me so many times already!") But I really hadn't understood exactly what the pesukim were saying about the different locations of each.  It just seems so much clearer with Rashi laying out the details, and artscroll translating Rashi so beautifully.  I opened it to deal with the planks.  I will be using it for the rest of our pesukim on the mishkan.  And hopefully with the boys in the future.