Kedoshim Tehiyu

It's 8pm.  I was out all day with the boys visiting their great grandmother.  When we got home, Chana went to trapeze.  Now it's late and we are just getting started.

Chana asked me for a few words.  She's quite grouchy.  When I reminded her that the word "rei'ei'hu" is "re'ah" not "ra" (bad) but "re'ah" (friend) she said she doesn't remember that at all.  I said we did it a few times.  She said we didn't.  I said back in Bereshis.  She said, "How am I supposed to remember that?!"  Grouchy.

She told me she was grouchy and I asked her why.  She said she doesn't know.

When she came over to do new pesukim, she requested that I sit next to her, not be distracted, and not look at Rashis (that's often how I "prepare": I sneak a look at Rashi as she does the pasuk and see if it will be suitable).  I felt this was a mature and straightforward request.

She couldn't remember which pasuk she is up to.  She complained that this is taking a long time, it is very boring, she can't understand it, she doesn't remember the words, and it is boring.  (Did I mention she's finding it boring?)  For the first time in... maybe ever, she asked me to just read the pesukim and explain them to her.  She said she knows so few of the words she's finding it incredibly frustrating.  I did 4 pesukim, reading Hebrew and translating phrase by phrase into English.  The first pasuk was so confusing to her I did it twice.  The second time with no Hebrew, just pointing to each Hebrew word as I translated it into English.

She grudgingly said she can do the last pasuk of the aliyah.  She zipped through it after a brief complaint about how the letters were very squashed.

I think this interaction demonstrated remarkable maturity and restraint on her part.  At one point, when I asked her to please speak to me nicely, she changed her tone immediately.  Considering that she's operating under extreme grouchiness, I am really impressed.

The derech eretz we practice in our interpersonal relationship while we learn Torah together is as important as the pesukim.

Vayikra

I don't know much about memes, but Chana suggested this one today:

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.

comment on the vocabulary of sheni of tetzave

This is the kind of vocab that she is not going to remember.  Unless she does it many many many many more times.

But i guess the idea is that she remembers what they generally look like.

As I was writing this, Chana said, "I have no idea what's going on!"  Which is actually the goal, which is what I was in the middle of writing.  So I translated the bunch of pesukim for her all together so she could grasp the flow.

how is chazara going?

we are on day 3 of chazara.  it's been a bit disappointing.  like when i used to teach in a school and i would give a test and the students wouldn't do so well.  i remember going over and going over pesukim with chana, and yet she didn't remember them in chazara.  (though she did remember the rashis we did over and over).

so this is what we've been doing: every day we have been reviewing one parsha (making chazara about 10 days).  every page or so, i choose a pasuk that reviews the flow of the story.  if there are pesukim that she won't remember but they are important to review, then i read and translate it for her.  so she's getting a review of the flow, and some of the words, even though overall she's not reviewing milim.  whatever she learned by repetition, she learned.  we haven't had that many rashis, since she didn't do so many rashis on that parsha. 

it was ridiculous today because even though aharon finally fell asleep, jack was asking me to wrestle and kept trying to smack the chumash out of my lap, and elazar was shrieking about i'm-not-sure-what-anymore.  i also had the take a toy fishing rod away from him a bunch of times because he was using it as a weapon.  when he used it as a fishing rod and he "caught" me, at least that kept him busy.

RELAX

we did an hour and 10 minutes of chumash with a couple of breaks (nursing etc) plus chana could chat as much as she liked.  for some of it, aharon was sleeping.  the other 2 were playing--elazar had this plan for coloring popcorn on paper towels or something.  this was how homeschooling idyll is in my head, when i envision it.  the boys playing something creative, chana asking questions and chatting, and keep returning to chumash.  intimate conversation, relaxing, enjoying each other's company, enjoying the learning. 

for chazara, i read the pesukim expressively (yesterday's 6 pesukim) and she slowed me down or asked me about words she didn't understand.  she enjoyed that so much, she said she wishes we could always do it that way.  i balked, because i think her reading and translating are skills that are important, but i did think in terms of unschooling and pleasure, her idea has merit.  i should try to incorporate that whenever i can.  let's see if i'm able to.

anyway, in this relaxed environment (with the inducement of finishing bereshis because her computer is rapidly declining), she did til the end of the aliya, 10 fairly difficult pesukim.  (a problem i have with covering so many difficult pesukim in one day is that she doesn't really learn the new words so well, or the flow of the translation, and then we need to do a lot of chazara, which is boring.)

we talked about yosef's interview techniques, how he asked them about their family.  i told her to imagine she is yosef, and me and my siblings were accused of being spies.  and her putting us in different rooms and asking us if we have any other siblings.  she said, "and you'd say, malkie."  i said, yes, but if we were actually spies, i wouldn't be sure.  is there another sibling?  is jj going to say there is?  should i say we have one?  should i say we don't?

she remembered "hitmahmahnu" (delay--sorry, i'm not sure of the actual shoresh) (also sorry for my mixing of ashkenaz and israeli pronunciation; maybe one day i'll post about our journey with that, the decisions we made, and what ended up happening) by when i sang it with the shalsheles, referencing Lot delaying leaving s'dom.

we were talking about chazara of the entire bereshis when she's done.  she asked if i was going to make her go through the whole thing, "because i would DIE."  i said i would die, too.  which sadly is a testament to the pain that it is to acquire these skills.

on a tangent to that, in the beginning of today's learning, we were doing the pasuk: "and they said, "the man interrogated us (really asked) and to our birthplace, saying, 'is your father still alive; do you have a brother..."
and chana asked: what does that mean?  he asked to us and to our birthplace?  how do you ask our birthplace?
so i popped her over to rashi, who says it is asking about the family: "l'mishp'chosenu."  she had trouble with it; she kept reading it wrong (and we are using rashi w/ nekudos).  i kept gently telling her to try again, and she kept fuming that she wanted me to tell her.  as she was getting pretty upset about it, i remembered my mother telling me that it annoyed her when my uncle told her to look it up; she just wanted to be told.  and i wondered if i should just tell her.  the other side of me felt like it is satisfying for her to have the experience of reading it and seeing it and discovering what it means.  but if she is getting so annoyed, doesn't that mean she is not having the satisfaction?  or does it mean that i'm having her exercise right past her comfort point and this is good stretching?  (yes, i know, i ask this a lot.  i imagine any serious one-on-one educator does, and i think it is an important question to keep asking.)
when she finally figured it out, she was mentally exhausted.  happily, we were pretty relaxed today, so she was able to recuperate and nobody was interfering or demanding and we weren't rushed.  so it ended up being just a very minor blip and not affecting the rest of the learning.

back to chazara on the entire sefer.  i asked her what she hoped to get out of sefer bereshis.  she said, "a computer."  (she did thank me for pressing her to finish so that she can get her computer more quickly.)

the fact is, she has no particular interest in gaining chumash skills.  she has no interest in reading, translating, insists that she already knew the story (though admitted that she knows it better now and in more detail--but again, she had no yearning for that, so no great gain in her mind). 

i told her my goals were that she can read and translate, and read rashi, and know rashis, and know the story.

she did point out to me last week (with some satisfaction) that she remembers when it took her weeks to do a pasuk.  and now she can do so many pesukim so quickly.

i wonder what my goals actually are, so that i can decide what kind of chazara to do on the sefer.  i would like to think of a chazara that is interesting and fun, and cements some of the skills and vocabulary.

after all that, we haven't done rashi today yet.  it's going to take a while.  probably 8pm we will get to it..  maybe before?

neufeld "collecting"; comparison w/ sarah; rashi

we skipped yesterday. this morning chana didn't want to go to ceramics. she was tired, she doesn't want to go, etc. we battled about that and therefore i felt it would not be a good idea to bring chumash in the car. as per neufeld, i decided to use the time to emotionally attach to her. especially considering that one of the things she said to me is, "i feel like you don't care about me!"

i said in the car, "i want to be doing chumash." and she said back, "well, now we are even. because i don't want to be doing ceramics." (just quoting this exchange for those of you who may be reading this and feel that you are the only ones arguing with your children. and this was not even a bitter exchange, and didn't even escalate ).

anyway, for some reason she didn't have her ipod with her (maybe she also wanted to connect with me) so we spent the time there and back conversing. then we agreed on a general time for chumash.

when both boys went down for naps, i told her let's do it now because they are napping. because of the numerous times in the past where she asked to wait and then someone woke up and i felt very annoyed, she agreed immediately. she settled down into revii, which we finished today. she did it to herself except for the new pesukim. and she asked me for the words she doesn't know.

(by the way, comparison with sarah: 1. sarah looked up every word and either wrote it down in a notebook looked it up in the heb/eng dictionary every time. i tell chana the words she doesn't know. i almost never told her a word. 2. sarah did not do chazara. 3. sarah translated half of every pasuk and i did the other half, and chana does the entire pasuk.)

so that was about 3 new pesukim.

then we did rashi. i had her do 3 rashis, 2 reviews and 1 new one. she didn't want to do the 2nd review one in the harder chumash (bli nekudot). so she did 1 in the harder chumash and 2 in the easier one. aharon woke up in the middle but i didn't feel annoyed with chana because she started chumash immediately.

i feel pretty good about rashi today. she covered a nice amount. "and it isn't even rashi day..." she cited as her reason for trying to refuse to do it.

rosh hashana

we reviewed sheni of vayetze. then shlishi the ones she did yesterday. then i wanted to do new pesukim. chana was arguing with me about how many (i ventured maybe 7) and i said i will put the timer on for 15 minutes. she began to argue that this is too much. i said it seems to me that 15 minutes is not too much for anything (though now that i'm thinking about it, perhaps 15 min of straight contractions or 15 min of bleeding copiously can be too much). and she said, i'm not used to that much. and i said, really, 15 minutes is not a large amount of time.

anyway, sach hakol she did 17 pesukim. after 7, she said she should have just done 7 pesukim. at that point we had over 8 or 9 minutes left and i reiterated that 15 min of chumash was not unreasonable.

most of the words were pretty simple. she got annoyed at me when i asked her to not just translate but to make sense of the pesukim. and she got annoyed at me when i asked her to translate the shoresh of the names of leah. she said, why do i have to? and i said, coz it's cool.
but i guess it's not that cool if i'm "forcing" her.

btw, her shoresh ability is improving. when she reviewed sheni, when she didn't know the word she was able to break down the shoresh and look at surrounding words to give her clues. it was nice.

now she's having a 20 min break before rashi. frankly, i would like a longer break. i may do that. i doubt she'll complain. i have to figure out which rashis to do.

on a rosh hashana note, i was thinking what i want for each of my children, and what i want in terms of my relationship with each one. ie where are my challenges and where do i need divine help. with chana, thankfully we are in a fairly amenable phase and not having too much conflict. i realized what i would like is for her to love and enjoy learning torah.

and that got me thinking about how this skill work is not so conducive to love of torah. or at least the way i'm doing it is not. as you know, i always go back and forth over this issue. do we push skills and figure it will not affect the love of learning, as long as learning is enjoyable in other venues (in which case i must make an effort to provide some of those other venues). or does every little drop affect the overall attitude? i guess these days i lean towards the first one.

i also was thinking about how what we daven for is both based on and also affects the future of our assessment of the situation. i assess my relationship with chana. i ask for things based on that understanding. and that act of standing before hashem and asking for that particular thing affects how i act in the future.

today chana translated the rashi. then we started with shishi. she did it nicely. then she did that last bit of chamishi. she still gets stuck on a about 5 or 6 words, but i have a feeling that she's going to be stuck on those for a while and it pays to just move on. i was reminded how much trouble she used to have with "your son" "his son" "his father" etc and happily she seems to have gotten a decent grip on that.

we did one new pasuk (we were doing all this in the car, which i love to do). then chana felt the second new pasuk was too hard and since i hadn't looked it over, i had her read it to me in hebrew and i said she could do it at home. which we did.

i think it's time to move on to the next rashi. she doesn't know a few words "shema" (lest), "hareni" (here i am--which i think she ought to know but she never does), "samuch" (close--she never remembers it), and maybe another one i can't remember offhand. but she learned some of the numerics of the letters (kuf = 100), and perek and da'ag. and she'll remember the concept and the general flow of the rashi. so overall it's a success.

i used to feel that i wanted her to get it 100%. why move on until she remembers all of it perfectly? but there is a point of diminishing returns in terms of her enjoyment. it's demoralizing to do the same thing over and over and it is interesting to the mind to do something new. so at this point, when i see those last few words that she keeps missing, i'm inclined to move on. even though the perfectionist in me wants to linger.

today we finished sheni and instead of reviewing rishon i decided to review half of shishi from lech lecha. we put the timer on 15 min and chana finished with 26 seconds to spare. she remembered 90% of it (though that's my feeling, not an accurate mathematical assessment).

sheni is still like pulling teeth but i think it's getting a bit easier. chana still has trouble with the shoresh נ.ש.א always mistaking it for "asa" make/do. also כ.ל.ה being "finish." i showed her that in onkelos so maybe that will help. i should probably underline it in pencil so her eyes will go there faster.

of course "ho-alti" came up and she didn't remember, and i had to flip back and show her in rashi.

i wish these words would stick. but i feel like i just don't know how many repetitions it takes to stick. and she is frustrated that she doesn't remember, and i wonder if that's because i'm giving off a vibe of "you should be remembering." which is unfortunate.

need to change the pace

feels like we've been doing chumash for hours... which we have. with lots and lots of breaks. did only 4 new pesukim. chana agreed to do 7, but it's really too much with not knowing all the new words. and the chazara takes a LOOOOOONG time and there are so many words that she doesn't remember.

we have not gotten the right ratio of new pesukim to old review such that she learns the old ones pretty painlessly and then we are ready to move on to the next batch. maybe we need to slow down until she knows the old ones very well and then we can move on to the new ones.

where did the memory go?

and why was chumash so tough today? not because chana was contrary. she wasn't. she was pretty good-natured about it. but she didn't remember most of the vocab words. words she's remembered pretty easily, she didn't remember today. that just shows you how much of it is about "being in the zone" vs not. we did chazara of words from rishon and sheni, and it was ridiculous how few she remembered. so we did only 2 new pesukim, with difficulty. i hope tonight i'll have a chance to review these words again with her (maybe just sheni) and the 2 pesukim we did.

it was nice that she wasn't screaming :-)

good news and bad news

the good news is that chana happily acquiesced to running through those 30 vocab words from noach.

the bad news is that i still have to provide her with the mnemonics! how long will this take?? i have hope that if we keep doing it, eventually they'll stick...

we are swimming in vocabulary

it took us a while to sit down to do chumash today. well, it took me a while. chana rarely jumps up with glee to do chumash, and when she would say, "not now," and i would say, "ok," that's not a way to get it done. but we finally sat down after a brief tussle over who got the blanket (that's her and elazar, not me).

and we made it through 4 pesukim with a decent number of new words, plus a pretty thorough review of the words from yesterday. i don't feel like there is a full handle of some of the main words in noach (maybe i'll orally review them in a bit) and here we are, piling on new words. i'm going to count how many we have to review in 9 pesukim which is 2 days of work.

20 words from yesterday (many of which she is familiar with but needs review, like ishto, her old nemesis). and 8 from today, give or take. it's tough to go forward when i really want to get these down.

we haven't done rashi in a while.

the screaming was there, but not as bad as it's been, considering chana's dislike for not instantly remembering things. she still refuses to use the white board to identify shorashim. considering that bana in "vayiven" is missing the "hey" and nasa in "vayisa" is missing the "nun" and considering she yells about not knowing it, i feel like insisting but that is a whole 'nother battle. it disturbs her that the nekudos are not universal. i tried to explain to her that the nekudos are not essential; she just has to learn to identify which are the shoresh letters and that's the clue to the word. but that drives her nuts. interesting because i think sarah picked up that concept and its application pretty painlessly. every kid is different. sarah also never minded writing down the shoresh on the white board.

chazara IV

chana did about 1.5 pages of shlishi before hitting total meltdown. she was just fine until she hit things she didn't remember. it's a bit sad to me. i remember reviewing and reviewing and reviewing these pesukim, and yet she just doesnt' remember.

and if it's sad to me, it's infuriating to chana. she gets very angry when she doesn't remember words immediately. i am not sure if she gets upset because she feels i am pressuring her to remember, or if she has an idea that she should just know everything, right away. i think that's a bit her personality. i don't remember sarah getting so furious when she didn't know a word or couldn't remember words. but chana has plenty of stamina to keep going as long as she knows the translation. if she knows the words, she'll translate and translate and translate. but as soon as we hit a few in a row that she doesn't remember, the shrieking starts. then she went on about not wanting to do chazara, sarah never did chazara, why can't we move on to the next parsha, she's never going to finish, it will take 5 yrs to finish, etc doomsdaying all over the place.

in the meantime, i'm not sure what to do. so now we have a bunch of pesukim, phrases and words that chana doesn't remember. is there a point to me reviewing them again? do i move on? do i drill her some more? the sheer unpleasantness is making me want to just move forward. but maybe that's not fair. because there has been plenty of unpleasantness until now involved in reviewing those pesukim over and over, and drilling words, and i think she has made really nice progress. i guess i want perfection, which is maybe crazy. (maybe?). i want it to come easy. i want to ignore my daughter's nature. i want it to come without shrieking and without pain.

לפם צערא אגרא
according to the pain is the reward (benefit).

how much i put in, is how much she gets out. (assuming, of course, that i'm not pushing too hard. but there is no way i'm pushing too hard).

although many of the words she doesn't remember, there are an at least equal amount of words that she now knows smoothly enough that they seem to be (halleluja) part of her long term memory base. i see her easily translating some words that i remember her shrieking over, and that keeps me going.

it's working...

we started with chazara of the 22 of 30 words. i asked chana to please do the pantomimes with me. she remembered more than i thought she would. so we are on our way.

we'll probably finish up noach this week and then we'll do chazara if i can figure out how.

daunting list of words

so i just copied out of the chumash a list of the words chana's been having trouble with. there are... drumroll...in addition to the 7 words/phrases we've been working on... THIRTY new words to work on. groaaaan

i think that's too much to drill chana at once. gotta figure out what to do about this.

almost done...

i haven't posted in a few days. we have been doing chumash. we are up to names (oh happy joy) and avram was born today. we are still having some trouble with a whole bunch of new words in the last few pesukim of the tower of babel. chana decided to write a graphic novel depicting the mixing up of the languages, with a few humorous scenarios that she keeps envisioning in her head.

i wanted to make flash cards, but chana requested forcefully that we learn the words the way she is most comfortable--verbal drill throughout the day. sigh. we aren't really done with the last batch. and now add on another 10? 15? i'll make a list this evening. the truth is, she does find this way the least painful and she is willing to do it at random points throughout the day. so who am i to say no?

and i have to figure out how we are going to review noach. i guess i'll ask her how she wants to handle it...

the last couple of days there wasn't much to say, just the usual. today, too. chana came in after parkour and was ready to work. we did the 2 pesukim easily, and discussed why bricks have a shoresh of "lavan" even though they are red. we looked up making bricks online, and apparently they use sun to dry, not libun. i suppose we could have kept looking for oven roasted bricks. then we checked out rashi who talks about bricks being made in a furnace and he said it's called something-or-other in french. chana got a big kick out of rashi being french and when we do the rashi, instead of reading it as whatever word he uses, she says "bonjour."

she did run out of steam during the rashis. she is sick of the ones we are doing, and she remembers the translation as a whole, but she is still having trouble with 1. the pronunciation and 2. the translation of specific words or phrases. i would really like her to get that down, but it seems like no matter how much review we do, unless i specifically force her to do it that way (which invariably sparks some tantrumming), it doesn't register in her brain. advice from anyone is welcome.

it just seems like every way i turn, acquiring skills is boring drilling and review, review, review.

that didn't set the stage so great for chazara. i did a bunch of the words orally and outside (which she doesn't mind). i actually find that orally promotes more versatility. because when she reads a word, she searches her brain and knows it if she has learned it orally. but if she is asked it orally and she has only seen it, she doesn't know it. i think i've mentioned that before. perhaps it's only in her, and in more visual students it would be reversed. but she is not nearly as auditory as sarah is. sarah is an extremely auditory learner.

anyway, we limped through chazara. chana is finding the new batch to be wearying and challenging. i wish i could think of a way to make it less so. i think maybe because i didn't give her enough break. she had been active all morning, so we did it in one sitting, and maybe she would have been more mentally able to do it if she would have had more breaks or if we did it in different sessions.

oh, and i forgot to mention. my rabbi had sent me pictures of this fundamentalist christian who actually built a life sized replica of the teiva in real life. so i showed chana pictures of it. and that was pretty darn cool. (by the way, if i were teaching in a school, that is exactly the kind of thing i'd be using the smartboards for).

the ants go marching 2 by 2 hurrah, hurrah

today went quite nicely. i still don't have an answer as to how to get chana to remember these vocabulary words long term. with sarah, i always just figured the ones that show up the most are the ones that get remembered, along with whatever quirks make the brain remember some words and not others.

but at any rate, chana has become quite amenable to me drilling her at random points during the day. plus it has the benefit of accessing more modalities. when we do it in the chumash, she recognizes it by sight, but not by sound. yet if she knows it by sound, when she reads it in the chumash she knows it. (kind of like comprehension of a foreign language is easier than speech, i guess in the mind things go one way but not the other. so if she knows it verbally, then she knows it visually, but if she knows it by seeing it she doesn't necessarily know it by hearing it).

we were pretty busy today, doing a science class and parkour (which is incredibly cool, if i can digress off of chumash for a minute) and then we went to pay a shiva call and then visited my fil after he had eye surgery yesterday. so not much time for chumash.

but chana did 7 pesukim today, with no new words, though she kept getting annoyed that only the majority of them were names and there was still some simple translation to be done. she zipped through her rashis, though she still doesn't pronounce them perfectly and still cannot translate certain random phrases. she does know the translation as a whole, which is a good step. and we are currently working on 3 rashis. which she can do in under 5 min when she's in a good mood.

then i futzed around a lot and forgot to do chazara, coz i don't like it and it's a little depressing sometimes. but chana asked me to please drill her on the words. and then eventually we did it and i picked a random pasuk from a while back and she remembered it after a closer look. and the pasuk that's been soooo slow she's gotten almost 100%. and so we continue to make progress.

she asked me when the tower of babel is coming up. pretty soon!