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.

Summer Update I: bar mitzva prep

Things have been kind of brewing under the surface.  Everyone grew recently.  Lots and lots of inches.  Suddenly, they are all big. 

Elazar has been showing an interest in davening.  He asked about going to mincha, because it seemed short.  A week or two after that, he asked to go on a specific day (or Ari invited him, I don't remember).  And now he's been going to mincha regularly and asking about maariv on Motzei Shabbos. 

This past week I told him that he can daven in English, and he said what about saying Hashem's name? Doesn't that have to be in Hebrew?  I said ideally yes and he can say "Adonai" if he sees "God" but if it's too difficult, he can just say it in English.  He got pretty excited about that but asked how he will know the English.  I showed him that there are siddurs with English and he was thrilled.  Ari gave him one in shul.  Yesterday I told him that there is no rush to finish the whole thing while everyone is davening, and if he wants to slow down and try to understand parts of it a little at a time, that's more important than actually saying the whole thing.  He said but he can't ask either of us what something means in the middle of davening--me because I'm not there, and Ari because he's davening.  We said you can ask us later or just try to figure it out from context.

On a side note, the boys played a trivia game yesterday and I understood from the adult playing with them that it was a game "for those who are in school," i.e. my kids didn't know the answers.

I'm trying to think carefully about Elazar's next year.  I want to prepare him for as much as he can do before his bar mitzva, but I want to be very careful.  It seems to me that waiting a year or two or five or even ten for him to be motivated and do things with joy and because of his own desire would be FAR preferable than pushing him to do it so he is ready and capable at bar mitzva.  It's a tricky line.  The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to wait.  On the other hand, there is something about anticipating responsibility and preparing for it with respect and eagerness. (I suppose "eagerness" being key, and if "eagerness" slides into "dread" maybe we want to stop well before that.)

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. 

Unschooling and Judaic Studies

I've had some things on my mind regarding Elazar's education.  He recently turned 11, which felt to me like he was "getting bigger" and could maybe have the maturity of starting to work up to things he is going to need for his bar mitzva.

Earlier this year, he wanted to learn how to read hamapil and has been happily practicing a line a day.  I'm trying to think how long it's been since we started--maybe a few months.  He still isn't quite finished.  In fact, it's taking him a lot longer to get fluent at reading than I thought it would.  I believe it's because he isn't all that motivated.

I think that I'm doing him a disservice by asking him to read a bit every day.  He doesn't object, but he doesn't love it and he's not picking it up nearly as quickly as I thought he would.  (I believe this is because he doesn't enjoy it very much and also because he is lacking fire to badly want to read/be a literate Jew/daven.)  I do think he'd be better off if I left it alone and waited until he was interested.  When would he be interested?  12?  13 before his bar mitzva?  16?  25?

I simply don't have the guts to wait it out.  Ari has expressed that he thinks he will never do it if we don't nudge him.  I really don't believe that.  Deep in my heart, I believe that Torah is good, that it is enticing, and that he would turn to it eventually to discover what it's all about, and at that time, he would learn to read and translate very quickly.

But alas.  He is our first son, and we don't have the courage.

I'm hopeful that our youngest might be left alone for longer, that we will have more trust in unschooling by then, and that he will have the pleasure of picking it up quickly and smoothly when he wants to.  (However, as we were blessed with sons with very little spacing, I'm not sure how much time we'll actually have to actually let that play out.)

*****

We looked up Elazar's bar mitzva parsha, and it's the longest leining.  The. Longest. Leining.  Not great for an ADHD child.  I have a fantasy that my sons will lein the whole parsha, the whole haftora, and daven musaf, just like my brothers did.  Well, Ari didn't grow up that way, and thinks that puts insane and unnecessary pressure on bar mitzva boys.  Good thing he's in charge.

I feel that in the birthdays before bar/bat mitzva, children have an awareness that halachic adulthood is coming up.  They are excited about it and excited to embrace some of their halachic responsibilities.  To me, it's a good time to harness that excitement and get on the chinuch bandwagon to gently introduce things they'll have a chiyuv for after bar mitzva.

I thought maybe Elazar could start going to mincha.  I wouldn't ask him to do shacharis.  He still can't sit for five minutes.  But I thought mincha is short.  I asked him how he felt about that, and we discussed upgrading his computer if he went for 3 or 4 months, and he didn't seem opposed.

However, he really is having difficulty reading.  If he could read and follow along, it might make sense.  But it seems that having him go to mincha would merely be an exercise in discipline and self control for him.  And not a spiritual activity.  And while I think he's old enough to be capable of that and capable of tolerating the discomfort that would cause him, since it wouldn't actually be a meaningful davening experience, I don't quite see the point.  (I was looking to see if I ever wrote about it but I can't find it.  How I've seen Elazar spontaneously take 3 steps and bow and ask Hashem for things in his own words.)  It might regulate him to davening and it might get him to feel part of the community.  But it also might be unnecessarily painful and be one of the reasons he eventually doesn't daven.

*****

So, in summary, Elazar's getting closer to bar mitzva.  I'm simultaneously thinking that emotionally he's getting into a mindset where he is receptive to chinuch.  AND that educationally (ADHDwise) he is still incapable/unmotivated regarding the academics required for swathes of that chinuch.  Which leaves me wondering how much to nudge and how much to wait and see.

I'm definitely in a different parenting place than I was with my older children.  With them, it would have been unthinkable for me to not be firmly emphasizing how it all has to be done in time for bar mitzva.

But I've been through two teenagers and have the battle scars.  ברוך שפטרני Baruch Shepetarani (the blessing the father makes at bar mitzva: blessed that I am now no longer obligated) may happen at bar mitzva but parenting still happens through the teen years.  And I am definitely approaching the teen years differently (and less stridently) now that I'm more experienced.

As always, I do the best I can with the information I have at the time, and hope that I can continue to learn, continue to adjust to new information, and to be receptive to what my child is telling me about his needs.

Beginning of No School

Yesterday I finally filled out the paperwork for NYS and sent it in.  The 11th grade IHIP (individualized home instruction plan) was fairly simple--oddly, I find high school paperwork a lot easier than elementary school.  The boys all had previous year's paperwork that I could use except for 5th grade for Elazar.  I have done it 2x before with the girls, but apparently it was before things were in the cloud and so I had to make a new IHIP for him.  A tip that I use for Math and Language Arts is to google "5th grade curriculum" for the subject I want, and then copy the ones that are most likely to come up or that he already knows.
Excerpt from math:

- learn to choose, describe, and explain estimation strategies used to determine reasonableness of solutions to real-world problems.

- estimate quantities of objects to 1000 or more, justifying and explaining the reasoning for their estimates.

Examples from Language Arts:  

- Compare and contrast the varieties of English (e.g., dialects, registers) used in stories, dramas, or poems.

- Use context (e.g., cause/effect relationships and comparisons in text) as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase.

- Use common, grade-appropriate Greek and Latin affixes and roots as clues to the meaning of a word (e.g., photograph, photosynthesis).

- Interpret figurative language, including similes and metaphors, in context.

- Recognize and explain the meaning of common idioms, adages, and proverbs.

- Use the relationship between particular words (e.g., synonyms, antonyms, homographs) to better understand each of the words.

Even though we unschool, Elazar is involved in these activities.  Mainly from youtube videos, which are pretty sophisticated and have introduced him to most of the above concepts.

Chana started college Russian.  Since she came home from Japan the day that class started and took a couple of days to recover, she only had about 3 days to do the first week's worth of work.  It was a bit overwhelming in addition to figuring out the online system but I think she got the hang of it.  She hasn't asked for any more help.  And yesterday she went to Gulliver's Gate Museum (#socialstudies) and there was Russian there and she was able to read it and look up some of it online.  So she's already happily using it.

I signed Jack up for engineering once a week and Jack and Aharon up for Science class once a week.  We also have parkour once a week.  Elazar adamantly refuses to go to science class (for the older grades there is more talking and sitting and less hands-on activity so I agree with him).  Chana started Gemara class 3x a week and has already asked me about Bahaaloscha and Dovid and Golyas in the last couple of days.  I also hope that she will continue her once a week math sessions with her friend.  The $200+ chemistry set that I bought at the beginning of the summer continues to be unopened.  I wonder if I should hire someone to do chemistry experiments once a month with her.  I'll ask her.

Aharon and I reviewed the aleph beis today and he only knows them in order.  When I pointed to them and asked him if he knew them, he doesn't know most of them.  He did not want to review nekudos and was not interested in learning more.  Aharon is somewhat unhappy socially.  This is not a new story and has been somewhat of an issue for years.  Because the boys are close in age, he doesn't have his "own" friends.  I would have sent him to preschool because of this except that he was a particularly aggressive toddler and I didn't want to send a biting and smacking preschooler to preschool.  Now that he has outgrown that, I did send him to camp this summer so that he could branch out on his own and make friends his own age.  But he wasn't happy in the second month.  And in fact, one of the boys in his bunk that he liked actually plays a lot with Elazar.  So I have to schedule separate playdates (because the boy only plays with Aharon if Elazar isn't there) and it often doesn't work out.  Elazar is extremely social and extremely proactive about making playdates.  So he often has already arranged a playdate before Aharon even thinks about playing.  So this is an ongoing issue that I am grappling with.  If I knew he would be happy, I would consider sending him to school.  But he was unhappy in camp.

I've been making some effort to daven out loud as many mornings as I can and sometimes I hear the boys humming the tunes.  

Overall, the boys are pretty proficient at English reading and doing basic math problems.  I want to learn with Elazar and start a daily seder with him but he is extremely uninclined.  As usual, I go back and forth between thinking I should just unschool and leave it all up to him.  And feeling concerned that I am not being mechanech him about how important Torah is by not doing it regularly when he is old enough.

Also, their playroom is utter chaos.  I think it's time to remove a lot of things that they aren't playing with anymore and revamp it.

That's my news.  Happy unschool!

November Rain

It's one of those delightful homeschool days where it's raining outside and we are just pattering around the house.

Chana has switched things up in her schedule.  She was taking Mishlei 2x a week in the morning and although she was enjoying the class, waking up in the morning was excruciating.

I also had been a little concerned that she was spending the entire week recuperating, to the point where she had no energy to read the Stranger and no energy to learn Bio, despite the fact that questions keep coming up and the answers are in the Bio book, if only we would learn it!

She also missed Torah SheBaal Peh from last year.  That was amazing.  I specifically wanted her to get a feel for the halachic process and gain an appreciation for the complex system of halacha and that's not my area at all.  I am beyond thrilled that she got that from the class last year, and that she was missing it!

The school, as always, was incredibly wonderful and accommodating and agreed she should try it out.  She went yesterday and enjoyed it.  We'll see if the schedule change works for her.

Another change we made is that we've begun doing Bio at 10pm.  Pretty agonizing for me, as my brain turns off at 8 or so.  But I'm not as exhausted as I used to be (though Aharon is STILL on daylight savings time and waking up an hour early) and if I'm feeling awake at 10, I'll ask if she wants to learn, and 90% of the time she says yes.

And here's the kicker.  She literally has THREE times the attention span at 10pm.  She could only get through a paragraph before.  Now she can do a whole section.

She's given up on Teaching Textbooks for geometry.  It was clear, but slow and boring.  Her best friend tutors her once a week.  I have no idea how that is going.  I insisted that she take the PSATs (much to her annoyance) and I guess we'll see how she does.  She didn't have enough time to finish any of the sections and when she was tested by the state, they agreed she was slow but since she's working at grade level, she didn't get an IEP.  We have to decide if further testing is called for.  She also wants a specific calculator.  Not sure if it's even worth investing in that if she doesn't end up going to college/taking math.  It may be that going to community college first and then transferring is better for her.  It may be that she won't want to go go college right away or ever.  (As I'm thinking out loud here, I think it is a good idea to buy the calculator.  I already spent more than the calculator on Teaching Textbooks, and she wants it to take the ACTs, so it's probably worthwhile.)

The boys continue to bombard me all day long asking how to spell words.  They have been making videos and uploading them to youtube.  They've also been playing Draw Something.  So there have been a lot of things to read and write.

The house has also been getting pretty messy.  Since KonMari, I haven't needed to clean up so frequently.  The basement and their room keep getting messy as they make their videos and use all sorts of props.  And the floor keeps getting littered with paper scraps.  Even when they vacuum after themselves, they just don't clean or neaten up to what I like.  So after being spoiled for over a year with KonMari neatness, it has been a bit of an adjustment to clean up every day.  But it doesn't take that long.

Minecraft swords.  A bunch are taped together to make some of them 3D

High School Judaic Studies plans for this year

I cannot believe how the air turned crisp as soon as September 1st happened.  Chana is back from her August travels.  I start teaching out of the house tomorrow, one class.  I'm working out babysitting trades with my homeschooling neighbor so I can go to work because I told Chana to choose one class in the school I work at, and she chose two.  She chose Mishlei, which students in the school usually describe with hyperbolic enthusiasm.  However, since that class is only given for 11th graders (and she is in 10th--yet another shout out to the incredibly flexible principal I work with), Chana decided she would like to hang out with some of the students she met last year, and she decided to come to my Chumash class.  These are the girls she was in Chumash with last year.  She dropped out of Chumash in January.

The whole last year I wasn't sure if I was making the wrong or right decision by insisting that she go to class.  She complained about it a lot and felt that the girls were not really her speed.  This is true.  But also true is that she's a slow warmer upper and maybe she would make some relationships.  What was definite is that the girls in the school were very receptive and friendly to her, liked her, and were willing to embrace her.  I figured even if she doesn't click with any of them, it's not like it's an emotionally horrifying experience to be around people who like you.

I think a lot of people feel like socialization is a problem to worry about  if you decide to homeschool.  We have certainly been asked "What about socialization" in many different ways and it comes up in most conversations when people discover that we homeschool.
But I also know many, many parents whose children are in school who have deep and painful socialization woes with their children.  There is loneliness and conflict and socialization in school isn't all sunshine and happiness.  And in my experience with my own children, my first daughter was lonely in homeschool when one friend moved away and another friend matriculated and then she decided to go to school.  But it took her almost TWO YEARS in school before she made friends.  And she was a very social child who was eager to make friends.  My second daughter is seeking a very specific type of person and type of intimacy which is also not so easy to find, even in school.

Anyway, she's not joining my class for the Torah (I can easily teach it to her at home and in a fraction of the time) and I have no doubt she'll dump it in five seconds if my class bores her too much.  But it does confirm that nudging her into attending last year was not terrible.  We'll see how it plays out.  Right now she is thinking about skipping my class once a week so she'll mentally have one day with nothing scheduled.  I'm not thrilled about that but in terms of conflict-fatigue with my teenager, this is not something I'm up for making an issue about.

Chana was ambivalent about not taking TSBP again.  She really liked the teacher.  She really liked the subject (and that is exciting to me, since one of my goals for Chana was that she should gain an appreciation of torah sheba'al peh).  She enjoyed the chevrusa part and expressed that she will really miss that.  But ultimately, she decided against it because she found it pretty excruciating that after the first 10 minutes of presenting the material (which she found highly interesting and stimulating), a great deal of class time was used explaining material she already understood.

I hear that is a problem that homeschooled students encounter.  They are "selfish" in their learning in the sense that they haven't really learned to adjust the pace to group learning or to other people.

I am a little disappointed that Chana won't have TSBP this year, but I'm hopeful she'll take it next year (even though the "ONE YEAR AT A TIME" mantra of the homeschooler echoes resoundingly in my ears).

This summer we were in the middle of the Rambam's introduction to the Talmud (which she wasn't crazy about) and we finished Shmuel I.  I hope she'll be inclined to continue learning Shmuel II with me.  We also were going through some of the bein adam l'chavero mitzvos from the TSBP booklets I have from high school.  It turned out I need to prepare beforehand and Chana was finding those a bit boring.

And now the next post about Chana's 10th grade secular studies:

notes from my presentation

We were asked to submit notes of our slides or handouts from our presentations.  I wrote up a basic outline of what I planned to say.  If you read it and you heard my speech, you will note that what I planned to say and what I said are not the same.  I find homeschooling a lot like that, too.

What i submitted:

What is unschooling?

Unschooling is on a continuum.  Most homeschoolers unschool to some degree.

Things to have around the house:

white board and many colored markers, various maps and charts, books, aleph beis games and puzzles

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How will my child learn anything if we unschool?

• they’ll learn it themselves when they find it relevant and useful or interesting.

• they’ll learn it late, but very quickly or with great vigor when they need it or find it interesting.

• they won’t learn it, but they’ll have an attitude of “if I want to know something or how to do something, I’ll just learn it or learn how to do it.”

How will my child learn limudei kodesh if we unschool?

Goals:

Skills	concepts/information	middos/character development
read Hebrew	know torah stories	self control
write hebrew	know halacha	discipline
daven	understand tefila	perseverance
read and translate	follow concepts and steps of gemara	responsibility
chumash	concepts of a rashi	doing things they don’t enjoy
rashi
mishna
gemara
navi
mishna berura etc
speak Ivrit

Tips:

• Relax! You can always catch up later

• Listen to your gut.  If you feel like you should push, then push a little (yes, this is contradictory.  Be flexible!)

• Any time you worry that your child should be learning, let them play and pull out a sefer yourself.  When you see how much you are able to learn all by yourself, you’ll realize how easy it will be for your child to learn when s/he wants to!

• The more learning Torah you do, the more it will come up naturally in conversation with your children.   
  

Do Chazal recommend a specific educational approach and does unschooling contradict that?

here is a blog post where I discuss this at length:

http://homeschoolchumash.blogspot.com/2012/05/unschooling-and-limudei-kodesh-judaic.html

• debate amongst educators about how important skills are (comparable to debate about memorization when the technology of the printing press came out)

• Chazal’s recommendations of 5 l’mikra, 10 l’mishna, 15 l’gemara (Pirkei Avos, end of Chap. 5) are based on general conceptual ability of the child (the gemara says or 6 or 7, so there is some flexibility) and we should bear in mind when the child is capable of these types of study

• Yeshivos began when R’ Yehoshua ben Gamla instituted them when he saw that fathers were no longer teaching their children themselves (Bava Basra 21a)

• Don’t read it: “V’limadtem Osam” אותם (and teach them [your children]); rather read it: “V’limadtem Atem” אתם (and YOU should teach them [your children] yourselves)

• if the child is not learning, put him with with his friends
• What does that mean?

• Rambam, Hil. Talmud Torah 1:6 says to teach children Shema and some pesukim as soon as they learn to speak

• Avoda Zara 19a. a child should learn what he wants to learn.

(R. Elazar): "Ki Im b'Toras Hash-m Cheftzo" - one only learns (well) what he desires to learn. Rebbi finished teaching a Sefer to his son Shimon and to Levi. Levi wanted to learn Mishlei next, and Shimon wanted to learn Tehilim. They forced Levi to agree. As soon as Rebbi expounded "Ki Im b'Toras Hash-m Cheftzo" as above, Levi said 'you have given me permission to leave.'

nagging worries about judaic studies curriculum: listen to your gut

every once in a while, i start to feel nagging concerns.

- chana's hebrew writing is pretty poor; she always writes the same basic words (and still spells them incorrectly!) and isn't really making enough progress in it

- we've pretty much fallen down on the spoken hebrew

- do i want to work on more modern ivrit?  (yes, i do.  but when?  plus, it's not really unschooling.  so i'm throwing more things into the curriculum that i don't have time for and that she doesn't want to do)

- i would love to do navi stories.  why am i not finding time for navi?

those are the ones that are top of my list bothering me.  but now that i'm writing them down, here are a few more:

- she is less than a year away from bat mitzva, and we probably ought to do some targum tefila so she understands what she is saying in shemona esrei.  also, bentching.

- i've really fallen down on the tenses in ivrit, especially present and future (we did past, but she probably needs more)

i think there are a couple of reasons for this.  i'm busy.  the littles take up lots of time.  chana is busy with what she likes doing all day.  it isn't until after 9pm that we settle down to do work.  or even talk.  (during the day, we have about 1.5 hrs that we block off to do chumash and rashi, and she comes over to me and i come over to her many many times during the day to tell each other things and share things and for me to see what interesting things she's working on or for her to tell me something funny that happened, but that's not deep conversation or really spending time together, it's more ad hoc).  and frankly, by 9pm i'm frazzled and fried.

anyway, i just wanted to share what i do, as a homeschooler, when these feelings start to crowd my mind.

first, i smile to myself as i remember that there is no pressure.  remember we are thinking in terms of months or years, so nothing is urgent.  there is plenty of time to make any changes (three-years-ahead-rule).

then, i think that if i'm feeling like there are some gaps in her education, i should listen to my gut.  that doesn't mean i should necessarily change what i'm doing.  but if i'm feeling like i'm not paying attention to certain subjects that i feel might be necessary for my child's future, or are important and not getting the time, maybe it's time to rethink my priorities or make a plan for how to incorporate them.

just because they are nagging me doesn't mean it's urgent.  i take a few days, weeks, or months to simmer it.  i think about how important they are and how or if i want to add them in.

the last couple of evenings, i looked into different ivrit curricula.  as usual, i either wasn't impressed, or they didn't suit my specific needs, or i wasn't able to look at them closely enough.  which reminded me why i homeschool.  because this way i get to tailor the work precisely to the needs of the particular student and calibrate it to her skills, level, and my educational goals.  yippee yay.  i consulted my friend at the board of jewish ed.

as i'm writing this, though, i'm feeling that although i have a nagging sense of her ivrit being lacking and needing work, my heart is pulling me towards navi.  navi is so wonderful and so interesting.  why oh why am i not doing it?

hmm.  maybe i should do elazar and chana together?  or maybe 6 yrs apart is too much discrepancy for me to tailor it to their specific emotions and intellects?  or maybe a group navi story once a week would be awesome?

this summer, one shaleshudis, we were all sitting around the table and ari and i started discussing the facts of egla arufa.  then we said: what are the questions--go! and they shot off questions one after the other.  then i summarized what i vaguely remembered learning that addressed the questions, keeping it on target and short.  it was a lot of fun.  maybe i can do something like that for navi.  i really really really would like to do navi.

but if i say i really want to do it, but i don't do it, then do i really want it strongly enough?  time will tell.

oh, and a final thought--if i'm worrying about this stuff, i can pat myself on my back because chumash and rashi are going swimmingly :-D