at her pace

i did megila how i like to do it.  i told her in english, emphasizing details she didn't know so that it was new and interesting to her, and at the pace she likes.

it was a bit of a tough sell since today is the last day of one of her free trials for one of her video editors, and she's in the middle of making some action/spy movie thing.  we got through 2 perakim until she asked to stop.  she asked:

• would mordechai bow to the king?
• haman wanted to kill the rest of the jews? even though they did bow to him?

 at one point, chana said to me, "i'm sorry, i wasn't paying attention.  i missed that." and i repeated it.  it reminded me of the cartoon my mother cut out over 10 years ago when i was homeschooling sarah.  there is a picture of a kid sitting at a desk in the middle of his living room, and mom says," i'm looking for a volunteer to do a report on boll weevils.  no volunteers?  nobody?  i'm going to have to pick one..."
and the caption says: the down side of homeschooling

it's true that i tend to notice very quickly when my student stops paying attention.  that's because most of our learning is interactive.

al pi darko

today during chumash time, i pulled out the condensed version of pesukim i culled from the megilla to make the bare bones of the story.  i read it to her and translated it. 

i realized that this was not the way to go this year.  i am reminded of my friend's wise words: any year that you have a baby, kiss that year of homeschooling good-bye.

so really, as aharon is only 9mo, anything we do this year is gravy ;-)

the problem with doing it so bare bones is that chana was ready to have a much more sophisticated level of detail in the story.  when i read the first 3 perakim to her in english, the details she focused on and the things she noticed and commented on and the questions she asked were fairly detailed and sophisticated.  since the entire word for word translation was a little TOO detailed and boring, i made the mistake of thinking we could whiz through what we did in previous years.  this was also boring, and not detailed enough. 

as usual, i am back to the idea that i don't use a curriculum or supplies because in the moment, i need to make decisions about how and what to teach. 

i think tomorrow i will take a block of time, with no agenda in terms of amount to cover, and just go through it at exactly her pace and with the amount of details that will be interesting to her.

i think she would greatly enjoy navi this way (after seeing our thwarted attempt at the little midrash says).  i am finding, though, that i just don't have the time/energy to throw another subject into the mix.  however, that might be a good idea for a summer project.  if i don't have her translate, and just do the story with her, we can do some navi this summer.

know thyself

we just finished shlishi.  these last 6 pesukim were break your teeth kind of pesukim.  earlier in the day, i asked chana to review rishon (i know i was saving it for friday, but we were both sitting around).  she asked to do it at 1.  i said ok (it was about 12).  at 10 to 1 i reminded her that we were working at 1.  at 5 to 1 i reminded her.  at 1 i said, let's go.  she asked for 2 min.

i said, no, right now.  she thought we had negotiated that she could ask for 2 min.  i said only if i wasn't ready at the time she agreed to.  she tried to negotiate for 2 min, but i stood firm. 

she asked if instead of us doing chazara, i could just do milim.  so i did that, and she didn't know most of them, but often read the phrase around it in order to give her context, so we got a decent review even though she doesn't know a bunch of the words and i am running out of zitsfleisch to keep doing chazara.  i wonder how much of noach she remembers. 

patar did show up a lot and she remembered it :-)

then we zipped through the rashis.  they are all pretty simple.  there are 9 we are doing.  then break until 7:30ish.  it didn't take too long to do the new pesukim, but they were tough.  i think tomorrow i'll have her review all of shlishi.  maybe friday she'll review sheni.

oh, and in case anyone was wondering, chana and i ran out of steam after reading 3 perakim in english of the megila.  i think she's at the age where it is too long and too many details.  i think what i will do is find the condensed version of the megila that i do with the pesukim cut out and read it with her.  either i'll read it to her (though she is not all that auditory) or she'll read it out loud and maybe i'll translate it or we'll figure something out.  stay tuned.

also, i decided, after sitting down to read the little midrash says with her again, that it had a lot of details that were boring her, and so between that and the midrashim, i'm not going to buy it.

i kind of had this fantasy that with unschooling i could just leave them lying around and my kids would just pick them up and read them like my homeschooling neighbor down the block has with her son.  but i think i have to know myself and know my kids.  just like i don't do science projects no matter how simple and interesting they look, and i don't do crafts, and my kids don't do computer sites (at least not the girls), i have to accept that the best method i have found that works with me and my kids is for me to directly interact with them and teach them the pshat so i can tell exactly what level they are on and how much they are ready for and exactly how to present it.  there is a lot of mutual feedback going on and i have never found a substitute, which is why people try to talk to me about curricula or workbooks and i just found that there is nothing more efficient or more interesting to me and the kids except for us to do it together where i present the material in the best way i can see for them at that exact moment.  i have the same thing with math; it's easier for me to write problems for them than for me to follow a book, because there are never exactly the problems to work on the level of my kid as many as i need or exactly what i think they need to be working on.  so too with chumash and navi and megilla, i think it's best when i interact with them.  darn, because i kind of wanted them to go off and find it themselves and do it themselves, but they really learn best by being taught.  so i have to put in energy and engage them and keep it interesting.

which means when i fall down on the job, they don't learn.  kind of like when they ask me questions and instead of knowing the answer and being able to explain it to them in exactly the level they need, i say, "i don't know."  that's when unschooling falls down on the job.  i can't be lazy about being a resource for them.

last 2 nights we've been back to the 8-9pm schedule that chana loves so much.  2/3 of boys have been going to sleep by 7, giving me time to unwind and still have energy to sit down for work for an hour.  i forgot that things are phases and phases are temporary. 

we zipped through the rest of sheni today.  i haven't done chazara on rishon yet.  i wonder how important it is.  she has the flow, and i don't think she'll learn more vocab via review.  but i did "budget" friday for chazara of rishon, since fridays are usually hassle-full days :-D

we did a few rashis.  she's still not getting the concept of the rashi that the nile river is the main point of pharoah's dreams.  every time we do it i explain it again or a little more.  when she says she doesn't get it, we move on. 

i think sheni definitely will need chazara since we did it so quickly.

i realized today we haven't done megila when we went on a trip and the kids were given a blank book to fill in the purim story and nobody was interested.  an interesting point about unschooling is that the other kids in the group already knew the story.  elazar was asking me about letters and sounding out some words, and chana was working on animation-type drawings, as is her current interest.  

i figured we'd maybe do megila tonight and i asked chana to choose from 3 options:

1. she read it in english
2. i read it to her in hebrew and explain it
3. we do it like we did last year, which is that she reads and translates select pesukim that i put into a pamphlet years ago.

she requested option 4:
i read to her in english.

so getting into the unschooling spirit, i said yes.  i'll let you know how it goes.