Some Chizuk for Homeschooling Limudei Kodesh

 I was talking to a friend who is nervous about homeschooling, particularly on the Judaic Studies front. I jotted down a few thoughts and here they are:

It doesn't actually take that long to learn skills. It can be done in 2-3 years post high school in yeshiva.

There is a lot of Torah learning that can be done in an enjoyable way (telling stories etc., having conversation, learning topics like hashkafa or halacha outside any book) that can be tailored to students who are "not students." There was an amazing session at one of the Jewish homeschooling conferences I went to years ago and she talked about how in homeschool we have the freedom to avoid Chumash skills and hours of Gemara if they are not working for our child. We can be creative and there are SO many paths of Torah learning. Chassidus, Navi stories that they'll relate to, coloring, videos, hands on stuff. There is no need to go "the classic path" just because yeshivas do it.

Baalei teshuva are the scaredest to go rogue. They so badly want their kids to have the yeshiva education they didn't get.

People who got the yeshiva education are less enamored of it. Ari once told me the worst torture of boredom he ever had in his life was 7th grade Gemara and he used to think to himself, "if I can get through this, I can get through anything boring in the world." All he wants for his kids is for them not to suffer that.

It could be really exciting for you to get the skills at the same time your kids do. I'm in love with the Rabbi Winder books. (l'shon hatorah). I had ok skills before but this knocked me up to the next level and it's what I used to teach in high school. I was renowned for teaching skills--and I picked up those skills teaching my own children.

Rabbi Winder workbooks

 I really love the L'Shon HaTorah workbooks by Rabbi Winder. And all 3 boys are finally old enough to do them. I want to make it part of their Avos UBanim Motzei Shabbos learning, but E is old enough that he doesn't do that anymore. I'd love to sit them all down once a week to do it for 10 minutes or so. But they'd have to agree (#unschooling) (not #radicalunschooling or I'd wait for them to ask) and I just don't know that they would agree to it. 

Another possibility is leaving E alone and figuring he'll either be an adult who isn't much into skills or wait until he passionately desires skills and is willing to put in his own efforts when he's older. And just seeing if the younger 2 boys are willing.

Then I think that odds are, in the high school years or in the going to Israel years, they'll be interested in acquiring skills and why not just wait until then?

The eternal tug of war between whether or not to try to involve them in skills or trust that they'll eventually want skills and work to acquire them from their own motivation.

I will certainly bring it up for discussion and see if there is willingness. Jack has been learning with me once a week as part of our evening special time, and I think he does better when learning in a linear, orderly fashion. I've been skipping around and I don't think it's doing much, similar to when I was he kept asking me and I was haphazardly trying to teach him to read and he was much happier with a textbook and curriculum.

So even though I think it would be more fun for Jack and Aharon to learn together, it may be that Jack is the one who is ready and it's not time for Aharon yet. But I will discuss it with them and see.

Even if they may be theoretically amenable, oftentimes they are very busy with their own pursuits and are unwilling to stop. Jack stops once a week to have special time with me, and when I asked if we could learn a little Torah as part of that, he said Sure. But the odds of also getting Aharon to join go down exponentially when you are trying to coordinate with more people. So that's why even though it might be fun for them to do it together, practically that may not end up being something that can be regularly coordinated.

I do suspect that once the two youngest are interested in skills, they'll be motivated and put the time and effort in.

learning E's bar mitzva parsha

We've been doing ok on the birchas haftorah.  We found a video and sing along to it and E's been learning it. 

I've had a hard time sitting down with him to learn the parsha.  Not leining; Ari's doing that with him.   It's hard to find time to sit and learn with him.  I guess I'm settling in to the new school year at work and the yom tovim are coming up. 

I realized also I'm having a hard time focusing.  What are our learning goals?

Today I had a conversation with Elazar.  I said that learning his parsha involves 4 skills:

1) leining/trope
2) reading
3) translating
4) understanding

I asked him which skills he is interested in working on and which skills he wants to pursue.  He said that the reading part is the hardest for him.  But he also felt that the reading would be important to have by his bar mitzva.  He figured he'll be working on reading with his father at avos u'banim, so he'd prefer not to do that with me.

He said he likes figuring out what the words mean if I read him the words.  So he doesn't mine trying to translate it and having me help him.  He thinks that's fun.  (And he generously added that when I read it to him, I could read it with the trope.)

So that's the plan.  I read it to him, and together we'll translate.  And then try to understand the pasuk.  We'll see how that goes.

bar mitzva prep thoughts

I've been pondering the bar mitzva again.  E is 11.5 now. It's creeping closer.  For the girls, I spent the year before bat mitzva preparing them to daven, running through mitzvos they weren't keeping yet and going through their chiyuv/obligations, making sure they were fluent at reading the brachos they'd need to say and the davening they'd be halachically obligated in.  E still has tremendous difficulty sitting, even for 5 minutes.  He is absolutely not interested in working on his Hebrew reading more than the once a week he does it now.  (Compare to A, 2nd grade, who spent 2-3 months dragging me the aleph-beis reader every single evening until he achieved the degree of fluency he wanted.) I know for a fact if we wait until he is interested, it will go faster, he will remember it better, and he will be excited about it.

I've also been thinking about radical unschooling.  One of the most beautiful things about unschooling is that you meet the child where the child is, not where you want him to be.  You have trust and confidence that what the child is working on now is useful and good.  And you focus on enjoying the relationship with that child and on partnering with the child to achieve the things that the child is interested in doing.  (Reminder to me: make plan to drop E off in semi-supervised wilderness so he can test his "survival" skills.)

Contrast that with the idea of the bar mitzva.  Many of my friends (this is my first boy, so I don't know how to raise boys) mentioned that they couldn't believe how their sons stepped up to the expectations of being a bar mitzva and navigated their responsibilities now that they went through the transitional rite of passage.  Would I be doing my son a disservice by "letting him off the hook" and not pushing him to lein?

On the other hand, the actual basic bar mitzva situation (he gets up, makes a couple of brachos, the end) is really quite manageable for him.  If we just do that, we would all be happy.  And he would probably even be happy to work on a speech and deliver it.

A friend of mine (who homeschooled 5 boys who are grown up now) said to me that I should just do his aliyah and make a big deal about celebrating the fact that he is now chayav in mitzvos.  This is a beautiful thing and a milestone and worthy of celebration on its own.

Another unschooling friend of mine has 3 boys, all high school and over bar mitzva age, and told me about how as per their wishes, their bar mitzvas were extremely low key, just the aliyah, and how their interest in learning and davening blossomed later--ages 15, 16...

An unschooled young man who now has children of his own told me last year that his youngest brother, still unschooled at home, really only began to "get more serious" after age 16, so he thinks bar mitzva may be young and there is no need to be nervous at that age.  This coincides with my own unschooling experience with my current 12th grader.

It's hard to let go of the leining.  All three of my brothers leined, did haftorah, and davened mussaf for the amud.  And Ari and all of his brothers leined (though not the whole parsha).  To me, a big part of being bar mitzva is being qualified to be part of the minyan, being able to lein and being able to daven for the tzibbur.

I remembered a post I wrote a while back.  It has excellent advice, and I have taken my own advice many times since I wrote it.  It has three pieces of advice: 1) Whatever it is you want your kid to learn but they won't, do it yourself instead.  This way, any "living through them" you may be unconsciously experiencing, you take care of by making it happen in yourself.  And by you being involved in it, it more likely comes up in conversation and is part of the natural home environment, so your child has exposure to it without being annoyed by being forced into it. 2) Daven. This will help you clarify your goals and bring emotional relief.  3) Make your relationship with your child your priority.  Stop focusing on what you want from him and focus on how your relationship with him is, and make sure the interactions are enjoyable and positive.

So I am about to embark on learning Elazar's leining of the first aliyah.  It took me 2 years (almost a decade ago) to teach myself how to lein.  My husband assures me that my skill level is that of a 12 year old boy.  My brother sent me the trope, and I shall begin learning.  I'm curious how long it will take me--and I am an adult with a marvelous ability to focus.  Let's see what I'm asking of him.

Further, if I get fluent and sing it around him a lot, he will likely learn it pretty easily.

Aharon's First Torah

A couple of days ago, Aharon told me he doesn't like it when I speak in Hebrew. 

"Well," I said, "I speak in Hebrew so that when you want to read the Torah, you'll understand it.  Because the Torah is in Hebrew."

And he said, "But I can't read the Torah."

"Actually, I think you can," I said.  He hasn't been practicing his Hebrew reading very much (except once a week at Avos U'Banim), but like unschoolers usually do, he had practiced every day while he was interested in mastering it, then hit a level of proficiency and stopped working on it.  Last time I saw him read, I felt he was pretty fluent.  I had been thinking I should offer to work on davening with him, but as always, I vacillate between wondering if I should try to work with them and figuring it will be way more efficient and quick if they do it when they are motivated.

Aharon and Elazar began talking about how they actually knew a fair amount of what the words meant in the Hebrew reader.

[When I started unschooling, I had a fear that one day my kids would grow up, realize they have massive gaps in their education, and blame me for not forcing them to learn it.  But I then realized that a lot of unschooling is cheerfully talking about how when they want it and are interested in it, they'll learn it.  So they don't learn Torah inside right now, but when it comes up, we talk about how when they are interested and want to, they'll learn it.  It turns out that unschoolers happily and cheerfully learn new things and master new skills as they become relevant or interesting.]

Tonight, Aharon was wandering around, and I said, "Hey, want to try to read the Torah?"

He said okay.  I asked him which part of Torah is his favorite.  He said the part where Hashem turned the water into blood. 

No problem.  I pulled out Shmos and opened up the pasuk.  Aharon read המים and I repeated it after him and he said, "the water!"  Then he read אשר and didn't know what it was.  I said "that" and he said "אשר קדשנו במצותיו" and I said Yup. Then he read ביאור and I told him that was the Hebrew word for the Nile River.  Then he was getting antsy and I told him just one more word.  And I pointed to the last word in the pasuk and he read לדם.  And I repeated it and he didn't know.  And I said just "dam" and he said, "Blood!"  And he grinned.

****

An example of how halacha comes up naturally: Aharon wanted to eat his pizza bagel and I told him to make a bracha but he was waiting for the bagel to call off a bit.  Then he came over to me a minute later with a tiny bit of the cheese from the top and asked me if this was the same bracha as the bagel.  I said no, that's shehakol, and he should make that bracha and then a bracha on the bagel later when it cools down.

limudei kodesh 4th grade & Hippocratic Parenting

My 4th grader really wants a phone. It's my policy that my kids earn their electronics.  This is against radical unschooling policy, which promotes abundance mentality.  I'm reminded of advice that my mom gave me about 17 years ago, when I had no idea what to do with my infant: "Jessie, it doesn't really matter much either way.  Just make a decision and go with it."

There are a lot of bad decisions I can make as a parent.  Sometimes it takes all of my energy to be what I call a Hippocratic Parent*: a parent that First, Does No Harm.  To simply be kind, to not be aggressive or furious or tense or impose my emotional issues on them.
______
*which is different than a hypocritical parent, which is what I always associate to :-P

But a while back I read an interesting study that moderate parents who incline more towards permissiveness or more towards strictness don't actually make a difference in long term outcomes.  So the choice of raising children with an abundance mentality which inclines them to generosity, vs. the choice of raising children to earn what they get, which inclines them towards appreciation and responsibility, is really just a matter of preference. (Radical unschoolers disagree, and I respect that.)

I'm not an unschooler purist because I do want my children to learn Torah and appreciate Torah. 

And although I can appreciate that radical unschooling has a different attitude towards money and gifts and earning privileges than I do, and it makes a lot of sense, there are things that I like about having kids earning their tablets and phones and laptops.

So Jack wants a phone.  Both girls earned their phones when they finished Chamisha Chumshei Torah.  I have told Jack for years that when he finishes Chumash, he can have a phone. 

The issue is, he doesn't read Hebrew very well.  We haven't done L'shon HaTorah workbooks.  So having him read and translate isn't really an option.

But last week, late at night, he asked me to start learning with him.  So yesterday we did.  I read the first page of the Stone Chumash in Hebrew and translated (mostly Biblical Hebrew to Modern Hebrew, with a few English words thrown in like "hover" for "merachefes").  We asked a lot of questions, like What is Tohu Va'vohu?  How does one divide between light and dark?  What does it mean that the spirit of Elokim was hovering over the deep?  What deep?

I told him that these questions are like riddles and as he gets older, learning Torah is looking for answers to these riddles.  Right now we are doing a first reading.

I forgot how much fun it is to introduce someone to the joy of learning. 

I don't know if he'll keep up with this or not.  I think it probably makes more sense to not push and to let him do it when he wants.  I go back to all throughout High School, I tried doing Bio with Chen.  And we did have quite a few enjoyable Bio learning sessions, even though we never quite learned it as thoroughly as I wished.  But now she wants to take Neuroscience and Bio is the prereq, and I found her an online college level Bio course and she's learning it herself. 

So I don't know how this will play out.  Unschooling continually surprises me and never looks like I thought it would. 

flash of panic

I just walked by Chen's bucket o' books spilling out.  In addition to the ACT books and the physics books, there are the R' Winder series books that she asked me to buy for her (but to my knowledge hasn't opened). 

I felt a sick feeling in my gut that the boys are never going learn Torah skills.

Immediately, I recognized it as the panic that periodically flares up for the unschooler.

I look forward to the day, decades in the future, when I can look back on this moment and know that either they did end up learning the skills, in their own way, in their own time, with great joy and efficiency.  Or that they never did pursue skills and yet still turned into admirable human beings who pursue Torah, truth, and growth.

overall attitude vs skills

Chana frequently complains about Chumash and not liking Chumash and Rashi.  At the moment, she's acquired enough skills where it's not so difficult and she doesn't complain too much.

She is in 7th grade.
Every day she:
- reviews one aliyah of the parsha she is in the middle of
- does 4-10 new pesukim (depending on how complex they are)
- reviews all the rashis we've done in the parsha
- does zero to 4 new rashis (depending on which rashis I've chosen on the new material, if any)

So now we are in a good phase.  But we had many hours of fighting and whining and complaining, as you will see in the early years of this blog.

Overall, I don't know how much she enjoys learning Chumash.  She's often said she dislikes it.

On the other hand, we've done Navi only very sporadically over the years.

Chana has a wonderful attitude about Navi and great associations with learning it.   She frequently speaks about it with enjoyment and happiness.  But she hasn't spent much time learning it.

In terms of unschooling, I think the theory is that eventually she would get to a point where she would be interested in it herself, and then she would pursue it (or I would help her learn it), and she would learn it quickly and efficiently and with great motivation.

However, I have "discharged" my obligation to teach her skills with Chumash.  If I did Chumash the way we did Navi, she wouldn't have these skills at this age.  Is this age necessary?  She's only 12.  The unschoolers I've spoken to said that they didn't really pursue serious Torah education until leading up to and after their bar/bas mitzvas.  So it's a bit of a scary risk having your children reach almost "grown up" and not having "taught" them.  

Also, I'm not sure that "enjoyment" and "positive attitude" trump "perseverance" and "putting in consistent effort."  (Though perhaps I can argue that I didn't teach perseverance and consistent effort, I just forced it and she will resist and and stop doing it when she is permitted.  As opposed to inherent motivation, which will keep a person learning.)  (And I can respond to that that if a child is forced to persevere and put in effort, and then they gain skills, they feel good about their accomplishments and learn that's what works.)

I do think perseverance and effort are valuable things.  I know a lot of unschoolers are concerned that their children will not gain these skills (which I addressed here and here and here, for example).

I choose to unschool not because I think that enjoyment is more important than learning to put in effort.  Unschooling as an educational approach resonates with me.

Chana's attitude towards Navi as compared to her attitude towards Chumash gives me something to think about.  Chana's Chumash skills compared to how much time she has put into learning Navi is also something to think about.  At 12, though, the unschooling journey is really just at the beginning.  Chana herself is preparing to go to high school.  The boys are right now completely 100% unschooled.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

This is not an unschooling post

The vocab in shlishi was so difficult, even though it is short, that Chana began complaining with only 5 pesukim left to the aliya.  She agreed to do 2 more and save the last 3 for this evening.  She said that going through the parshios where they build and make all of the things they are discussing in these parshios will NOT go quickly because she is not remembering this vocabulary.

Maybe if I were a little more flexible about Chumash and thinking in terms of the goal of her understanding the mishkan and not wrestling with the text, I would probably not have her go through all these pesukim and translate them, but instead we would take out a book with pictures.

I read a Marshall Memo this morning with the title: Day schools are not about Jewish Identity, but Jewish Literacy.  I'll post it in the comments.  But it did remind me why I do have Chana grapple with the text and I don't just do pictures.  I don't know if I'm just making her frustrated and just pushing her to do pointless translation that won't even stick into her head.  But I want her to engage with the words of the Torah, the specific words that are used.  I want her to be intimately involved with them.  To spend time reading them.  To have a relationship with them.

Of course, I risk that her relationship with them is dislike.

On the other hand, maybe acquiring skills is painful, and when she comes out the other side she'll be glad she has them.

On the other other hand, maybe I'm making her bang her head against these words, and she's not relating to it in a meaningful way, nor will it have a positive impact long term.

(Yep, since we homeschoolers are completely and 100% in charge of our children's education, we agonize about ponder these things.)

One of the pesukim was so fascinating.  It says the kohen gadol will wear the Tzitz (crown), and it will be on his forehead "l'ratzon" for the jews before Hashem.  First Chana asked what "l'ratzon" means.  I said shoresh "ratza" and it will be something desirable.  She didn't understand.  I said it was like the pair of shoes that she keeps asking me to buy.  The shoes are "l'ratzon" to her.  So she understood, and then she asked what that even means in Hashem's framework because He has no needs.

So I got all excited because we never did finish those brachos in shemona esrei and there is a bracha "retzei" that asks for our prayer to be desirable to Hashem.  So my brain is already creating this awesome little lesson about what makes a prayer more "desirable" than others (e.g. kavana), meaning there's a qualitative difference and that's described as "l'ratzon" or not, and I'm showing her the bracha... and she tells me she's not interested.

So we closed the siddur and the Chumash.

It is my opinion that because a great deal of Chumash time involves activity that Chana does not enjoy, she is eager to get it over with and not inclined to pursue these questions.

On the other hand, I've always been inclined to leave questions as questions until the student pushes to think about or find an answer.  This question won't go away.

my thoughts are not his thoughts

We've been on vacation this week.  A few times Elazar asked about his Chumash and was disappointed that we forgot it.  And a couple of times Chana told me her stomach hurt when she thought about doing Chumash.  Hey, isn't homeschooling supposed to prevent schoolitis stomachaches?  Am I doing something wrong?  Maybe.  I guess we will see how Chumash goes and make a plan to change things around, if things aren't working.

Tonight Elazar ran to get his Chumash before bed.  We reviewed reading, trope, translation of the first 3 words of the first pasuk.  He still doesn't remember the nekudos or how to blend very well.  He does remember the words and what they mean.

It's odd to me to not go "in order."  First, he should learn how to read using the aleph bina.  Then he should do R' Winder books.  Then he should open the Chumash.  But who am I to tell a child, no, I will not teach him Chumash.  Chumash is what he wants and Chumash is what I will teach.

He was a bit impatient to move on past those 3 words.  I explained to him about "chazara," which he has heard Chana do.  He was actually pretty enthusiastic about the idea of reviewing so that he'll remember it.  Especially considering an article brought to my attention recently about how children who consider themselves "smart" are disinclined to work hard at things they aren't naturally good at.

So Chana tomorrow.  We'll see how it goes.

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.

how will an unschooler learn chumash, rashi, and gemara skills?

This is the question I was supposed to answer at the Orthodox Jewish Homeschooling Conference.

And it's the answer I feel most badly about not answering clearly and in depth.

Perhaps the reason I skirted so much around the issue is that I'm not actually qualified to answer it yet.  I did unschool Chana for limudei kodesh completely until 3rd grade.  I am unschooling Elazar and Jack completely at the moment.  But they are almost 6 and 3.  So there isn't much going on.  Next year Elazar will be in first grade, and I fully expect him not to pick up skills next year.  He actually asked me this morning when he was going to learn to read.  And I told him he can learn to read whenever he wants.  He said, eyes wide, "You will teach me to read right now?"  I said, sure.  He smiled, his eyes glazed over briefly, as I imagine he was imagining the glorious world of literacy.  Then he looked at me and said, "Nah, I don't want to learn how to read yet."  And he ran off.

So I am not actually in any way qualified, via experience, to answer how unschooled children acquire skills.

However, that doesn't mean I don't have some thoughts on the subject, which I regret not having articulated more clearly at the conference.

Points I mentioned:

- Many children become interested a little before bar/bat mitzva age, when they realize at age 11 or 12 that various halachic responsibilities and obligations are coming up soon.

- Unschooled children learn skills later, but more quickly and efficiently.

- You can always start unschooling and catch up later when you get nervous, at around 9 or 10.  There is still plenty of time to teach them all the skills they need.  (I did that with Chana but I wish I had confidence to risk it because I think a lot of unschooling really flowers as they get old enough to truly take responsibility for their education, which happens after bar and bas mitzva.)

- As you do a lot of learning outside, you do show them the text ("See?  This is an asnachta" or "Look how Rashi says this word here") and make it clear that you are reading in the original language, and how learning in the original language is more accurate and more nuanced than translations.

- You have conversations about how when they are ready to learn to read they will be able to read it inside.  And when they are ready, they will put in the time and practice and get good at translation.  This way, they grow up thinking that as soon as they are willing to put in the time and effort (which is under their control and their will), they will do so and successfully gain skills.

- Many people are able to gain skills very quickly (in a matter or 2 or so years) when they are motivated.  And in the meantime, your child can have an awesomely fun childhood.

But I really didn't speak about the concept that is dearest to my heart and perhaps the most fundamental.

All of these are predicated on the assumption that your child will WANT to gain skills when he or she is older.  That your child feels Torah is interesting, valuable, relevant, and desirable.  As an unschooler, this should be your unwavering guiding goal and everything should emanate from that.

more whining about rashi

i'll leave it for you to decide who the subject of the title of this blog post is, me or chana :-P

we've been briskly moving along these last couple of weeks, with chana doing her chazara and new pesukim and rashis.  a few days we had to slow down because the pesukim were complicated, but then we hit a batch of simple ones.  so it's been business as usual and with very little input from me, so there wasn't anything to write.  chana's actually been deciding on her own to pick it up, so it hasn't even been on my head.  i hadn't even thought about chumash and she decides to do it (except today she has a friend over.  so i guess we'll do it this evening). 

then we blasted through that whole bunch of pesukim, and i picked a pen up and underlined a bunch of rashis.  i haven't counted them, but chana said it was 24 rashis.  i don't know if that includes the ones she is in the middle of doing already.  last night she went crazy about the amount.

she asked the usual questions: WHY? why do i need to do rashi?
you already told me i'm so good at it.  why do i have to do more?
why do i have to do so many?
i feel like you are doing this because you hate me! (ok, that's not a question)
why do i have to do this? i hate rashi and i hate chumash!

since none of these rashis were particularly complicated, but clearly all of them together were overwhelming, i began to question myself.  am i making her do too much?  is this going to make her hate chumash and rashi forever? 

i'm happy to say that i am finally an experienced homeschooler.  this has happened before, many times.  i've asked the questions and had these doubts and fears, many times. 

i think the answer is:

maybe.

maybe i am pushing too hard.  maybe it is too much.  but maybe it's fine.  maybe pushing is what she needs. 

maybe i'm making a mistake.  maybe not doing it would be a mistake.

i have to just trust that this is a long term endeavor, and there is a lot of feedback (meaning if your child is complaining miserably, at length, over and over, you really ought to rethink how you're doing it).  nothing is written in stone.  you can always backtrack and try something new.  maybe you will do it wrong.  maybe you are doing it wrong.  odds are, you are trying harder and care more than anyone else in the world, because it's your child.  maybe you are pushing too hard or not enough.  what are the chances of getting everything just right?  do your best, be willing to be wrong, and trust in the longevity and freedom of homeschooling.

as far as practical, i think i may be erring on pushing chana too hard.  with sarah i erred on pushing her not enough.  there are and will be effects both ways.

i do, find, though, that if i continue to push chana too hard, the conflict lets me know that it's not a good idea.  a little discomfort and a little unwillingness i understand.  feeling like she's being tortured constantly is probably not beneficial.  (though that scene from the original karate kid comes to mind--where he's being put to work and put to work pointlessly and fruitlessly and frustratingly, until the epic moment when it all clicks and he understands the purpose and he has skills.)

we'll see how it goes today.

chumash unschooling beginning methodology

As i discussed here, I used to go through the R' Winder Lashon HaTorah books and then begin chumash once the child had a sense of prefixes and suffixes.  I hope to possibly unschool the R' Winder books (though that might be a bit of a challenge, but the kids always enjoyed them and to a large degree Chana did unschool them because I basically let her go at her pace and she often requested to do it), but there is a good chance that Elazar will start being interested in the pesukim before he has made significant inroads in R' Winder.  I have been interested in leining for a long time (years), and I began to really study it when I noticed that Elazar responds to tunes. 

So if Elazar should ask me to read him some chumash, I will open up to the first pasuk, lein it with him a couple of times, and explain it.  I'll do that either for as long as he is interested, or until he has a basic grasp of the pasuk.

This is different from how I taught chumash in the past, where I focused on them translating, figuring the best way to learn it is by doing it.  (This also provoked many complaints and tears).  So now, I'm going to just tell him the information, keep it pleasant, and (theoretically) have confidence that when he wants the skills, he will concentrate on them and acquire them.

ben chamesh l'mikra

elazar asked me a few weeks back why i spoke to him in hebrew.  i took chana's chumash and opened it and asked him what language it is.  he said hebrew.  (he knows at least half of the aleph beis).  i said, "that's why i speak to you in hebrew! so you'll be able to understand the torah!"  and he got very excited and said, "i can understand the torah?" and i said, "i hope you'll be able to understand a lot of the words, and whatever you don't, we'll teach you."  that was the end of that and it went as well as i had hoped.  neither sarah nor chana was that excited that they would understand the torah, though they definitely appreciated that me speaking to them in hebrew would help.  i think that elazar seeing chana and me being "amelim b'torah" so to speak, poring over it for long stretches, made it appealing to him.  (i didn't learn as many hours with sarah, and chana didn't observe what sarah did as much as elazar observes what chana does.)  even jack heard my rabbi giving shiur over the phone last week and noticed he was speaking about aharon and that he mentioned rashi numerous times.  jack (age 2 1/2) got pretty excited hearing about rashi.

since elazar turned 5 twenty days ago, a remarkable transformation has occurred.  i am, as i often am, marvelously delighted with the deep insight of chazal.  as we were strolling outside, and elazar was walking next to me, i realized that he is mature enough to wear a kipah.  i said to him that i think it might be time to start wearing a kipah when he is outside, if he's up for that.  he knows his friends (homeschooling neighbors--yep, i hit the jackpot) wear yarmulkes, and his daddy does, and all grown up (male) jews that he knows.  he agreed, and he asked why do we wear yarmulkes.  did hashem say to?  i said, no, hashem did not tell us to.*  i vaguely remembered (hopefully accurately ;) that it's a minhag not to walk 4 amos without a headcovering to remind us that hashem is "above" us.  so i said that it is to help us remember that hashem is above us.  he got all excited, "hashem is in the SKY?" oops.  "nope.  um, higher."  "outer space?"  yes, classic, i know.  i still remember when we were in a plane soaring above the clouds and 5yo sarah turned to me and asked if we were going to see hashem.  i said, "when i said 'above us,' i meant more powerful than we are and in charge of us."  he likes powers and being the boss so that spoke to him.

anyway, in my usual unschooling/lazy/halfhearted-chinuch way, i let the matter drop.  elazar, though, came home and dug up his yarmulke that a family friend had bought him last year.  he brought it to my parents' house for shabbos.  he wore it outside at least half the time.  this morning he put a hat on before leaving the house to play.  when we were going out again, he remembered his hat and dashed in to get it.

i was pretty impressed that he was remembering and following through, and i said, "i think you might be ready to start learning torah."  he gave me such a gleeful grin.

well, folks, here it begins.  the grand unschooling experiment?  what will i do?  how will it go?  will i end up deciding that pushing the skills is more important?

i love his excitement and delight and anticipation.  is it realistic that this will be his attitude?  or does it make sense that he will have to put in some grunt work to acquire those skills?  (does the grunt work have to be painful?  i think about those rebbes that i hear about, who make learning the vocab and the translation enjoyable..)

how will i start?  what will i do?

he planned to go play some more and then start learning torah later this afternoon.  do i wait for him to ask? ("purist" unschooling)  do i suggest it when there is a quiet moment?  do i just read and translate it?  do i tell it as a story?  do i make any attempt whatsoever for teaching it to him so he'll remember it (ie review it with him)?

i'll do a little thinking, a little planning, and dive in and see where my intuition takes me.  i count on observing his reaction and then i make adjustments. 

i told him the story of dovid and goliath the other day (i told you, he likes the little guy having power, so i figured that would appeal, and it did) as a bedtime story.  the next day, we google imaged suits of armor and slingshots.

i guess he is ready.  i had planned on letting him play for another 2 years, and not start chinuch except very informally, following the dictates of the gemara (or 6 or 7).  but i see that his intellectual spark has ignited.  so here...we... gooooooooooooooooooo....

________
* note part of chinuch: distinction between d'oraisa, d'rabanan, and minhag.

the day has come

surely most days will not be like this.  but this morning, chana is going to see a show with her bubby.  so last night we agreed that chumash would be 10am.  she woke up early so she would have time to do what she likes to do before chumash.  at 9:55, of her own volition, she went to eat so she wouldn't be hungry for chumash.  then we started.

we started with chazara.  we have been doing chazara of one aliya per day, plus chazara of some of the pesukim of the aliyah we are in the middle of.  naturally, as we were about to get started, aharon woke up.  i told chana to please do the aliyah on her own.  she is at the point where she mostly knows it and felt comfortable running through it by herself!

then, even better, i told her to please review the rashis by reading them in hebrew aloud if she feels comfortable.  since she is at the point where if she doesn't know each word, but she overall knows the meaning of the rashi, that's good enough, she felt comfortable doing that for all but the more recent rashis.

when i came down, she was just finishing up.  then we reviewed the new rashis and did a little review of the end of shishi, and she whizzed through the rest of the pesukim til the end of the aliyah.  granted, these were pretty easy pesukim.  but she did them all with almost no help. 

it's really nice to see how much she's grown in her skills.

part II

chana came down herself. i offered a hug and she refused. i gestured for her to sit down, and we sat close, and i put my arm around her. i said i really don't think this one pasuk is a big deal. she said why do i always make her do sooooo much. i make her do too much work all the time. (which reminds me, when sarah finally went to high school, she said she couldn't believe how little work she had been doing all these years. and we laughed about how she screamed and complained about this. the truth is, though, in homeschool, you can't mentally check out when you need a break and start daydreaming. the teacher notices immediately :-P so in some ways homeschool is way more intense and focused, even though it's for shorter time). she did the pasuk in about 3 seconds. i wanted her to do the 2 others, but said should we do one today and one tomorrow, or both tomorrow. she opted, of course, for both tomorrow. hopefully it shouldn't be an argument since she agreed. and now a 7 minute break before rashi.

i don't know if anyone reads this, but i often wish people would suggest approaches or methods when i wonder how to approach teaching something.
for example, memorizing the vocabulary or suggestions to get something into long term memory.
another thing i'd like a suggestion on is that after we finish noach (and i think we have about 4.5 pages left, so it's coming up) i really wanted to do a review. i want chana to be able to fairly smoothly translate the pesukim. all of them. BUT. i know this will be an exercise in frustration. although she definitely learned a lot of vocab throughout, there is i would estimate at least 1/3 of the new words that she forgot (it will be interesting to see how many of them she actually remembers compared to my estimation). i don't want to start her translating and have her get frustrated and then furious.
so should i spend a week or 2 reviewing the vocab? should i read the pesukim and translate them first, and then have her do it? what's a good way to do this so that she is reviewing before she does the official chazara on her own, where she translates it?

why does this take 1/2 hr to write when in real time it was 5 min?

let's discuss the complications of
ki vo shavat mikol melachto
asher bara elokim la'asos.

first, the external complications. i was hungry, chana was hungry, elazar was hungry. i wanted to get it done (when oh when am i going to learn that "getting it done" is completely counterproductive, not to mention giving the student the message that, in the words of the rambam, it's a burden to be cast off my shoulders). jack needed to be held. chana wanted to play on the computer and i told her i'd like to do chumash first. she agreed. but then she had no patience for me needing to get elazar settled with food, with tv, so we could concentrate.

so in that environment, already not ideal for learning, the pasuk itself is quite complicated for a student with chana's beginning skill set.

ok, she didn't remember that "ki" is because. no prob, i just used it in a sentence and she remembered it "i want to do it because i like it" or something like that.

vo, believe it or not, is complicated because 1) the student has to remember that beis and veis have the same meaning. 2) the beis prefix means in/with and 3) the vav suffix means him/his/it. (not to mention being able to correctly put in context the translation enough to choose whether it is him, his, or it).

that would be in addition to remembering yesterday's half, and seamlessly translating this into that context.

(we did do a brief review, which chana doesn't love. vayekadesh oso. she remembered and he made it special, and had a bit of a problem with "oso." she said "the same" like oto davar [nice association], and i gave her a sentence "lakachti oto" which got her to remember it is "him" but by that time she had lost the entire thread of vayekadesh oso...).

at this point, of translating "ki vo" and not quite grasping all the parts in a meaningful way, chana requested that we do only half of the half of the pasuk. i heartily agreed, seeing how complicated it was.

(ps my neighbor on the block who is homeschooling and whose child is in first grade is somehow doing 5 pesukim of chazara and 2 new pesukim a day... and questioning if she's educating well enough. fellow homeschoolers, do not fall into self-doubt! questioning if your approach is working or not is healthy. comparing yourself to others and spiralling into the stress and anxiety of a social approval framework is destructive).

anyway, moving on to "shavat" even though chana clearly hasn't gotten the flow of "ki vo" but not wanting to beat a dead horse...

chana has to realize that shavat is the same shoresh as shabbos. she has to realize it is a verb, not a noun (only plausible if she has the thread of the pasuk, which she doesn't). she has to realize that a verb with just the three letters of shoresh means "he in the past tense" ie "he rested." i told her all these things, feeling that she will not remember them, feeling that telling her things is not an optimal way for her to learn them but not knowing a better way. feeling that if i walked her through the steps she would lose patience. (suggestions welcome).

to remind her that shavat was rested, i reclined in a resting position. she remembered it when i did that. i said "ki vo" "because on it he..." and she yelled at me for reviewing, even though i was reviewing it and not making her review it, and even though the review is necessary for her to keep track of what's happening. (note to self: i think perhaps chana would be more receptive to review if i explain to her that the purpose is to hold all the pieces together to make the translation make sense. i have to figure out exactly how to explain it to her and then attempt to do so).

mikol was no problem, and melachto, despite it's having shown up 3x in the last few days, is still a blank stare. (note to self: i could have given her multiple choice to see if she could have at least chosen it from a few choices, which would be a little more active than me just telling her what it is. it is my thought that if she says it vs me telling her, it has a diff effect on the neural pathways of her brain and she retains it better). i pointed to the vav at the end and she said "him" which is close to "his" but not close enough for it to make any sense to her.

golden nugget of the day. chana asked how hashem rested (assuming that an omnipotent being has no need to rest, or what the rest of an omnipotent being would be like). although we have a section of her notebook set aside for questions, that is the skill of writing and spelling and frankly too exhausting for chana on top of all that translating that was so complex. so i wrote the question for her, and asked her what she thought. she thought that hashem finishing his work and not creating anything would be called "resting." ding ding ding. i wrote that answer in her notebook.

yeesh, i'm exhausted. i really think rather than going on to the second half tomorrow, i'm going to review what we did today. i will explain to chana why i think review is important. (why is review important? why not just tell her what it is in english so that she can move forward?)(i think because i'd like her to go through the movements of that difficult translation again. in terms of keeping the thread, it is true that i can just do it in english for her). and hopefully she will consent to just doing it again and not doing anything new.

some days are like this

well, today wasn't great, but i kept my cool. mostly.

so i knew chana wouldn't remember melachto even though we did it yesterday. and i figured vayishbot would be tough, even though she knows shabbos. so i told her vayishbot means rested (she got the "and he" with no problem, at least). but she absolutely fell apart when we got to melachto. it's just too many steps. she doesn't like to look up words that she wrote in her personal dictionary (sarah used to, but i guess every kid is different). she didn't remember that the tuf from melachto was a "hey" and went into a full blown temper tantrum that she doesn't remember anything from r' winder and she wants me to just tell her. she thinks the tuf means "you" (which it often does) and is confused about that the tuf is a hey with a prefix. she also doesn't remember the vocab from one day to the next. even though i sang her a song with it. she was so nasty i walked away from her, telling her she cannot speak to me that way, leaving her sobbing on the couch that she just doesn't remember anything from r' winder.

luckily, somebody called asking me to go for a walk, which motivated me to quickly break the impasse. i went back to her and asked her what she wants me to do in those situations. she said, "just tell me what it is." i said but then it's not you translating, it's me translating. she said, "just tell me what it is." clearly she doesn't care who is translating, because her goal (understanding the pasuk) is not exactly the same as my goal (having her learn to translate as independently as possible).

then, we had another small tussle, which is that although she translated all the words independently, i wanted her to go back and "put the puzzle together" ie figure out what the whole phrase was. chana feels that this is "review" (even though to me it isn't, since she never fully understood it as a whole). she reluctantly translated again, and put it together. very nicely.

also, today was the first time that she translated "asher" as "that" without my "th..." prompt. i held out my hand to shake hands with her, saying that this was the first time she remembered it without my prompt. she ignored my hand and turned away, pouting. i said, "you are angry with me about the translating." and she nodded.

i have to get through alfie about praising. also a point to ponder is that she is clearly telling me what she wants and how she wants me to handle her not remembering vocabulary. also to note that she learned the word "asher." her way.

evolution

be flexible.

that is very important. but that's why we're homeschooling, right? not for no tuition. of course not.

so chana has a decent vocabulary, has a handle on shorashim, prefixes and suffixes. so i was blowing through pesukim with her. and she started dreading chumash. and then she started crying and tantrumming. both before we started and through the whole time. i had thought 20 minutes a day was reasonable.

sof kol sof, we are down to 5 minutes a day. something i read many years ago regarding teaching torah is "stop teaching 5 minutes before the student is ready to stop."

which is great, if you know when they are going to be ready to stop!

i'll give you a hint. crying, screaming, whining, getting distracted, looking away, asking questions about other things, interrupting to tell you about the tv show they watched, and telling you they don't want to do this--you're TOOOO LATE! (and you'd really think you'd catch on to that last one. and you'd be really surprised how often you don't!)

there are a lot of skills in chumash. reading, breaking down the shoresh, prefixes and suffixes, translating, tying the translation together into something that makes sense (what i call "putting the puzzle together"). also looking up words, and writing them down in her own dictionary by shoresh, alphebetizing. mi amar el mi and al ma neemar (who is speaking to whom and pronoun identification).

one thing i've seen over and over. there is a rather large gap between what a child is intellectually capable of and what a child is emotionally capable of.

so the bare bones of what we do.

day 1: read the pasuk
day 2: scout for words she doesn't know, and she writes them down and looks them up (i sometimes use a whiteboard to help her diagram the word, but she can usually do it in her head).
day 3: translate to the asnachta (if i knew how to post pictures, i'd find one and post it. but i'm new at this. it's the little upside down horseshoe with a line on top of the trup, and it indicates half of the pasuk conceptually).
day 4: translate from the asnachta to the end.

so one pasuk takes 3-4 days. (we were doing 4 pesukim a day. short road to burnout and constant tantrums). because i tortured her previously, she refuses to do extra, even if it's very short and very easy. my fault. hopefully, in time, with many pleasant experiences, this will be mitigated.

just today, chana said that she didn't want to read the pasuk first and then translate, because she noticed that when she translates, she reads the words first and now she is, horror of horrors, doing extra work. so we shall amend that as per her decision.

the reason we started reading in the first place on its own day was because chana insisted that chumash was just translation, and she didn't have to read accurately. i said i would like accurate reading and asked her how she wanted to go about that. it was her idea to break it up into a separate day. i reluctantly agreed, and now it seems i was needlessly reluctant because she is ready to go back.