The Difficulty with Tefila

Is it a good year for more intensive chinuch? Every year I wonder how Torah learning is going to play out. I want to continue the philosophy of them being able to choose to refuse. And I also want to make sure that we are being mechanech that we value Torah learning. Walking that line without forcing or pressuring or panicking is not easy. 

I don't keep track of their grades, but I think we are in middle school and early high school now. 

Since davening is a challenge for all of them, we decided to incentivize shul this year for Rosh Hashana. We made deals for them to come for the silent and repetition of mussaf. (Generally the majority of them sleep late in the morning and we have better luck with mincha/maariv than shacharis, both because of the ADHD length factor and the teenage late circadian rhythm factor). I was going to get them some fancy game like Mario Kart that they are reluctant to buy for themselves because of the expense. But they all end up preferring the matching amount in cash. We haggled through Shabbos lunch a couple of weeks ago, debating whether haggling about money on Shabbos was allowed (we decided it was like doing an auction at shul). I told them to negotiate an incentive that will make them feel excited to go to shul. Like they are earning something they're excited about and it's a worthwhile deal. I don't want them going to shul thinking they are getting the short end of the deal.

I also got them to agree to sit down with me for 7 minutes Mon-Thur so we can go through the mussaf Shemona Esrei together, so they have some idea of what they are saying, what the words mean and what the themes are.

Even 7 minutes has been a challenge, and reminds me why I unschool. (As one of them snarkily remarked about the daily 7 minutes: "We aren't unschooling anymore because I don't want to do this.") They are all close enough in age/ability that it's almost like a little classroom. They are all squirmy and reluctant.

One of them said, "Why can't I just read the English in shul?" I said you absolutely can. But without preparation, you aren't really going to understand the English. Even the English is complicated. Which we saw as we sat down to read it together.

I've been trying to give them a sense of the structure of the mussaf. It really is amazing how quickly they can get bored, how difficult it is go through the words, and how complex the phrases are.

I can really see why tefila is so arduous and meaningless for them. I hope at the end of these few weeks they'll have a sense of the themes and some of what they are saying. But they'd do better with a WAY simplified version. When I think of them struggling through the unfamiliar words and barely understanding what they are saying for hours, I can see why shul doesn't pull them.

I hope that spending the time preparing with them will be helpful in the long term and isn't too painful now. I'm keeping it short and I hope it will help them find it more meaningful. I don't know how much meaning they will find in shul this year. I hope as they mature they will eventually be able to find meaning in the long, complex prayers we say. I think studying them is essential to finding meaning in them. I'm trying to show them how much depth there is and how much there is to think about.

I was going to shorten the time because 7 minutes is a bit too long. But we are still in the middle of zichronos and there are only 2 sessions left. I don't know how much we will make through shofaros. I guess next year is another opportunity b'ezras Hashem.

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.

The following is my probably inaccurate memory summarizing our conversation

This morning we had a little parent teacher conference about some aspects of bar mitzva readiness.  Ari was considering buying siddurim for each kid.  Notwithstanding that we already have 2 children's siddurs on the shelf (and boy #3 is often still asleep when I do tefila in the morning) that the boys already don't use, I didn't think it was a good idea to have the kids follow along while I daven.

Right now, I daven out loud.  They play video games and sing along when they feel like it.  I feel that having them follow along (or I even considered Elazar just standing next to me for shemona esrei and me being motzi him that way) would be excruciatingly boring for them and not confer any actual benefit.  I suggested that during Avos U'Banim, when Ari has the kids for learning, he work on reading Shema, Shemona Esrei, bentching and other brachos achronos. (And Asher Yatzer, which I forgot to mention.) 

The question is, will E be able to daven 3x a day with a minyan and a full davening?  If not, what is the bare halachic minimum?  Ari asked what about birchas Kriyas Shema.  I am singing them out loud to Elazar every day. (Not maariv, but shacharis.)  So he is becoming familiar with them.  I don't know that making him sit with an open siddur would help, and it can definitely pain him and make him miserable.  And if, at bar mitzva age, E finds he cannot focus on the whole thing and have kavana, and he hates it, then what do we recommend for him?  Just Shema and Shemona Esrei 2x a day.  Mincha just Shemona Esrei.  Bare minimum halachic requirements. 

Ari wants to make sure that E can count at a minyan.  To that end, he will need to know how to respond (amens, kedusha, kaddish, etc).  I suggested Ari go through that with him.  Is it better to do that at the minyan or outside the minyan?  (As I don't know, I leave that to Ari's discretion.)

Ari also felt that he had pushed E too much during Avos U'Banim.  I told him that I had discovered from my learning with E that he enjoys learning trope outside the context of reading and translating.  And he enjoys translating when he doesn't have to read (meaning you read the word to him and he translates) and he enjoys understanding the pesukim when you tell him the general translation but it loses enjoyment for him when he has to sit and decode a lot.  He'd rather each word or phrase in the pasuk be read to him, ask him what the words mean and have him answer/guess, then tell him generally as a whole what the pasuk means. 

I said that I think that not pushing reading and translating makes sense.  Because he enjoys other aspects of learning Torah.

• If you read it to him, he likes translating some of the words if he knows them
• If you sing him the trope, he likes learning and repeating the trope
• If you tell him what the pasuk means, he enjoys thinking about it

He does NOT like reading.  He does not like going slowly and translating it.  Will having him do that increase the likelihood that he will learn Torah in the future?

Will having him read and decode increase his future ability to learn Torah because he will have the skills?

These are important questions.  (Wish I knew the answers!)  It seems to me that focusing on the parts he enjoys and not pushing the parts that pain him will keep his learning positive and enjoyable.  This will increase the probability that he will learn Torah as an adult.

But what about his lacking skills?  Either he will be motivated to gain skills, or he will learn using translations.  My sense is that pushing the skills will more likely end up (in E's particular case) with him avoiding future Torah learning.

I said to Ari that I think focusing on the 3 types of learning that he enjoys above and avoiding what he dislikes will make him more likely to learn Torah by himself at age 25.  Ari said, "Really?"  

It's kind of scary to not do the "classic" educational stuff.  Will we be providing him with the education necessary to be a ben Torah?  

On the other hand, traditional education would be a disaster for this particular child.  We are already out of the box.  It's a tough line to figure out what is "pushing too hard" and what is "avoiding our responsibility to make sure he is capable of fulfilling his responsibilities."  What is he capable of and what is he truly not capable of?  What will foster a joy and love of Torah and what will push him away?  What can he really handle and what is a good idea for him to handle?

With so many kids who have gone through the school system being disinterested, not halachically observant, not having a strong emotional and spiritual relationship to Torah, and lacking skills, at least I feel I can't do worse than that with alternative education.  That's not a very high bar, though.

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.

our current rashi efforts

I still do not have a handle on the best method to gain rashi skills.  Right now, in 8th grade, I go through the rashis every day on the pesukim we've done.  I keep an eye out for pshat oriented rashis or famous rashis or rashis with straightforward vocabulary.  I underline them to begin them the next day.  In Parshas Baha'aloscha she is doing about 30 or 40 rashis (I'll count tomorrow if I remember).  Chana and I have evolved, via bickering negotiating, that I read it and translate it for 4 days.  By the fourth day she is familiar enough with it that she knows the general idea of the rashi, and she is comfortable enough to read it herself.  I'm finding that she generally does not learn the vocabulary of the rashis.  She relies on knowing the general idea.  There are phrases and words that she can't translate and that she can't pronounce.  When I brought that up to her, she agreed that when she reads and mispronounces a word, I should interject and correct her pronunciation.  But I'm not finding that it's a really efficient way that helps her remember it.  She is getting decent practice reading rashis and she'll probably remember a lot of the general ideas of the rashis.  I don't know how much of the actual words she is learning, and how to improve on that.  It's just that there are so many skills in doing a rashi-- reading the words correctly, translating, understanding the main idea, understanding the different phrases.. and that's not even analyzing the rashi itself, thinking about what rashi's question is and how this answers the question, and what this adds to the understanding of the pasuk.

Sfasenu Dalet

Chana is on pg 76 out of 94 of the 4th grade Sfasenu.  I am less and less satisfied.
There are 2 strengths in this series.

• simple to understand stories that have nice Jewish themes
• intuitive exercises that increase grammar understanding

Suddenly, though, I'm finding these stories have whole swathes of vocabulary that Chana doesn't understand.  

I think I may have mentioned this already.

I was planning to head over to עברית שיטתית after this.  I have one from my sister, though I remember there being a blue, red, and purple one and think the blue one is the most basic and I'm not sure if that's the one I have or not.  I'll have to dig around and see what I can find.  We have another month of this anyway.  Assuming we remember to keep doing it.  I forgot that we were working on her writing longer stories.  There are so many skills I want to work on with her!

• reading comprehension
• writing stories or essays
• basic grammar like masculine/feminine, singular/plural
• spelling...

My main focus is really reading comp and writing.  I'd love speaking, too.  But I'm not so worried about that, since when we were in Israel, at the end of 2 weeks, she was beginning to want to speak.  If she were ever to spend any length of time there, I think it would come easily enough.  

I used to worry a lot about when I would see children my kids' age who were reading and writing and doing all sorts of things that my kids couldn't or didn't do at that age.  Now that Elazar is in first grade, I'm beginning to see it again.  The children who write such beautiful lower case letters (I mostly see that in little girls).  The children who can read.  The children who know so much davening.  I am mostly beyond that nervousness and insecurity, though I do get a little jolt of "kids that age can do that?!" kind of the way I used to feel when I saw 2 and 3 year-olds identifying letters.  

But I just remind myself that in 7th grade, with some focus, they can easily learn the skills they need to know.

skills

A big part of my thus-far largely untested unschooling philosophy revolves around teaching content to an interested youngster, and waiting to teach skills until he asks.  One hopes that as he gets older, particularly as his bar mitzva approaches, he will become interested.  A motivated adolescent should be able to learn the aleph beis in a few weeks, and from there, reading is pretty easy.  In a couple of months he'll be able to read fairly fluently, if he's interested in practicing.  Hopefully, he'll be familiar with the content of whatever he's been interested in until now (Elazar, age 6, likes learning about mitzvos, halacha, navi stories, and chumash stories), so some of the phrases and words will be familiar to him.  (Additionally, I speak very American Hebrew to my kids, which gives them some familiarity and some vocabulary.)

But clearly he will not be knocking back pesukim translation, mishna translation, rashi translation.  I hope he will get to it, but it seems to me entirely possible that I would have a 14 year old who isn't translating very much.

This morning I read a paper by Martin Lockshin: Teaching Judaica without Teaching Hebrew.  The gist is that he is opposed to it.

It might then be possible, admittedly, to inspire our students to love some Torah classics even if they do not really follow the Hebrew well. But our students will not be able to participate in the enterprise of interpretation, they will fail to appreciate what is at stake in half the disputes between ibn Ezra and Rashi, if they don’t have strong Hebrew skills. And the problem is particularly acute in Jewish classical texts where so many texts represent arguments about interpretation. So much of tannaitic literature centers around the true meaning of words of the Torah, so much of amoraic literature concerns the true meaning of the words of the tannaim, and so much of rishonim literature consists of disputes about the true meaning of the words of the previous classics. Our students who have weak Hebrew are shut out of all of these discussions, which constitute a significant percentage of Torah study.

I don't disagree with him.  Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing my children a disservice.  I, personally, have very strong skills.  It's true I went to schools that developed these skills (and I'm not sure if elementary schools today are up to par) and that I was in a very high pressured academic environment that I'm not sure I want for my children.   

I do think that not being able to learn in the original language is limiting.  I do think that a lot of nuance will be lost.  There is a lot of deliberate ambiguity in the Torah to leave open the possibility of different interpretations, and reading a translation closes that off.  The commentators are not usually deliberately ambiguous, but you often lose something in translation.  

Unschooling does not mean that your children automatically won't have good skills.  It does mean that they will very likely acquire them much later than is standard for kids in yeshiva.  My goal is not for my kids to lack skills.  However, it feels like unschooling is a risk in the area of skills, and I'd be foolish to not consider what my child's life will look like if he fails to acquire them, and to take that possibility into consideration when deciding how to educate him.

(I must add that if you look at the statistics of students coming out of our day schools, you will find a high percentage of their skills being pretty dismal these days, so perhaps I can argue that sending a kid to day school yeshiva also runs a risk of poor skills.)

I think this really comes down to my educational goals and also has to do with whether or not immersing a child in learning for hours a day at a young age is a value.  Post on that pending, hopefully.

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.

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.

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.

the weekend

on friday we finished the parsha.  chana was delighted.  i'm feeling a little rushed.  she is rushing to finish so she can get her computer by pesach.  i'm feeling like we are rushing and she is not grasping the material as well as i'd like.  we were in the car for almost 2 hrs on friday round trip to elazar's bio class, so we finished it then.  it was a bit tricky since i wasn't looking at the pesukim.  i noticed thusly that chana is great at translating the words but less great at grammar, tense, prefixes.  usually i'm on hand to correct her but i was driving.

friday nt we did some rashi.  shabbos she was still raring to go.  and motzei shabbos we did more rashi (the new ones i didn't have a chance to choose because i was driving and therefore could not choose them as we were doing chumash) and she did some new pesukim. 

chana did some math and figured out that she has to do 3 pages a day if she wants to be done by pesach.  frankly, i don't think that's doable.  the pesukim are too hard.  it would be ok if i were doing chumash like i used to do with sarah--just go through the pesukim and translate.  but it barely registers that way, without chazara.  hard to believe i did it that way with sarah.  the faster we go, the more there is to review, and the harder it gets.

tonight (sunday) i told her at 7pm that when aharon goes in, i'd like to do chumash.  sof kol sof, we started at 7:30.  we worked until 8:50.  we were leisurely, which i've really been striving for as i've noted this past week how much more relaxed and pleasant it is.  when i'm not trying to get it over with, and we don't have a small block of time to fit it in, chana can talk about all sorts of things and it becomes pleasant spending together time and pleasant learning torah time and just pleasant.  (chana mentioned tonight that she spent a lot of time talking about her feelings because this is the time we spend together). 

as i've mentioned numerous times, chana prefers working in the evenings.  and now that aharon has a pretty early bedtime, it's been a good time to relax and get her work done. 

we did chazara of maftir.  she did it well.  (we still have a lot to do in shvi'i, but i didn't want to bog her down because after a certain amount of time, she runs out of energy and the whining starts, which is a signal to me that she's reached her limit.  even if i push her past that, it's really more than seems to be ideal for her.)  then we did rashis.  there are so many rashis that we didn't get to do the new rashis that i chose on friday.  by the end of reviewing some of the older rashis that i felt she knew okay but i wanted her to know better, she had had enough.  so i didn't do the new rashis with her, feeling that would push her past her limit and would dim the excitement she felt about new pesukim.

when we got to vayigash, i realized that she had done new pesukim already on friday night (or last night, i don't remember) and she barely remembered them, because she is rushing to cover as much as possible.  she very much did not want to do chazara, because that was boring.  but i was hesitant to go forward while she didn't really remember what happened previously.

i asked her if i could read it and translate it to her.  at first she was reluctant, but she agreed.  i read it with a lot of expression and translated what she didn't understand.  just like the last time i did it, she really enjoyed it and wistfully mentioned that she wished i would do that more.

again i felt that pang that if i were unschooling her, i would do it that way.  and then i felt again that tug of if i would do it that way, how would she acquire the skills.  but i am planning to do chazara of miketz that way.  i hope she enjoys it.

onwards

forgot to mention that last week chana did work at night, and she is ON at night. she works so so so much better at night. it's a pity that i'm all wrung out at that time, and usually still putting the littles to bed. she remembers the vocabulary better. she makes connections more easily.

anyway, this morning she did a new pasuk. frankly, i'm not even sure what the pshat was. 9:5. the basic idea being no killing people. but some odd stuff about animals killing ppl. it didn't bother chana that she didn't understand it.

that's kind of one of the sad things about working on skills. it is so enormously consuming that there is little intellectual energy left to think about nuances of the pesukim. but i guess this is building the foundation, and later, if she has the skills, she can process the nuances.

chazara is dragging. dragging dragging. but we slog through. chan's been pretty good natured about it.
here's an oddity. although i've been having her read the hebrew, she recognizes the words visually and based on their location on the page. if i read her the word and ask her to translate it, she doesn't remember it. she has to see it, and see it in it's home. i wonder if she would recognize it in a different chumash. i think perhaps tomorrow i might try that.

i also would like to do a grand chazara of words from the beginning of the parsha. i told her i want to, but this week is a busy week with trips. and if we do that she may need a lot of breaks.

we reviewed the rashi on lo yishbosu, which she is having trouble remembering the pronunciation but not being difficult about reviewing it more than once, and added on a phrase in the rashi about hashem knowing the future.

and so it goes

went through 2 pretty big pesukim today with minimal fanfare. chazara of words went well. had to take a 10 minute break before rashi. we are slooooowly working our way through the rashi.

chana has been working really hard at reigning in her temper.

we did find an oddity in today's pasuk. it says the animals left the ark "l'mishp'choteyhem" according to family. first chana surmised that meant all animals were one family. then she figured it was with their babies. i said the midrashim say they didn't have babies on the ark. (though now that i think about it, some animals whose lifespans are shorter than the time of the flood would need to if they were going to survive the flood. the more you think about this, the more complicated it seems. noach had quite a task).
chana suggested i daven and ask hashem for the answer.

there is a veeeerrrry long and complicated new pasuk for tomorrow.

i wonder if when we finish the parsha, if it would be worthwhile to take a few weeks and review the whole thing. we aren't even halfway done, so maybe it's premature to think about this.

so for rashi, i wanted to do 1 1/2 lines which chana thought was an outrageous affront. and she always attempts to negotiate. i told her i would translate it for her, and i said it to her in english. she screamed that she had no idea what i just said. i said i would say it again, and again, and again until she understood what i was saying. it was at this point we decided a break was in order. when i came back, she was used to the idea. she read it pretty smoothly (again, i try to choose rashis specifically that are pshat oriented and that have easy words in them). she got stuck, believe it or not, on ששאל. she insisted she didn't remember the shin prefix. i had to use it in a sentence before she sullenly figured it out. then sha'al was no problem. and ro'eh gave her trouble. she wanted me to translate it for her. i wanted her to read it and then i thought she'd be able to figure it out. she didn't want to read it. (this is one of those things where i wonder if maybe i should just tell her because she is SO adamant, but i feel like she ought to know it and i don't mind waiting while she figures it out and i think it's important for her to push through the frustration and through the feeling that she can't do it and see that she can. who says in homeschool there is no training of this sort?). she begged me to tell her. i kept saying that i know she knows it. (in the past we have had blowouts where she INSISTED that she doesn't know it and i am positive that she does. finally, it happened enough times that she saw i was right and i pointed it out afterwards and told her that she yelled at me but she really did know it, and i finally built up some credibility that when i say she knows it, she doesn't stubbornly dig her heels in that she doesn't know it). she kept saying, "i can't read it, mommy, i can't read it. please tell me." and i asked her to tell me letter by letter. which she finally did, and then realized she knew it. whew. this is her personality.

and stuff

so i told chana to do the whole pasuk today. it isn't very complicated. she said 1/2 now, and half this evening. which was much less argument than i thought i'd get. i agreed.

it was a review of a previous pasuk. before, it said hashem formed all the animals and brought them to adam to name. this pasuk says and adam named all of the animals. so chana kept getting annoyed that she read it already.

she almost remembered that קרא was called and not happened, when i mimed it. she still didn't remember that the saf at the end of chayas (chayat) hasadeh was "...s of." but it will come up again. sadeh she didn't remember, but when i said, "don't say 'meadow'" which is what she called it last time, she said field. :-)

then she asked for the computer. i said if she does the second half of the pasuk. she started whining it was too much. i said she doesn't have to do it, but i want the computer and i was willing to trade it for the second half. she opted to not trade.

she is amenable to doing the second half of the pasuk later. that assumes i have time.

unrelated, other hebrew curriculum information:

i showed chana the rashi letters this morning. we divided them into easy, medium, and i-never-would-have-thought-the-letter-would-look-like-that. she seemed to enjoy seeing the rashi letters.

chana can now speak 4 out of the 10 words on the first vocab list i compiled.

i made a list of skills i'd like chana to work on in the long term:
reading fluency, a prerequisite for
tefila
writing hebrew better
speaking hebrew decently and confidently
copying hebrew into script (my homeschool neighbor said she was going to do that and i think it's a great idea to get better writing fluency and speed. but it's too much for chana now).
reading without nekudos (this because sarah's reading is a step above atrocious. so i'd like to ramp that up)
reading rashi (as opposed to translating rashi).

i'm still thinking about how to approach rashi. goal: to be able to read and translate rashi. i was thinking the other day that maybe just practicing reading rashi would provide some fluency without the additional translation pain. (in addition to the translation work)