a bit of humor

I am having the durndest time explaining to Chana that the onyx stones were in settings on the ephod.  Despite google images "jewelry settings" and me describing it, she keeps thinking of settings as something on a computer that you can adjust.

mizbeach

I sat with the artscroll rashi book open today.  But that wasn't nearly enough.  I'm google imaging right and left.

http://www.utom.org/library/pictures/tabernacle/copperalter2.jpg

That's the picture that I found most useful.  My favorite is that it labeled all the different weird Hebrew words like border and netting.  I did this with Sarah and I don't recall a lattice netting.  (google "lattice" for Chana, but then I ended up pointing to our radiator cover that also has a metal lattice.)  Guess I learn something new each time.

I did peruse rashi in English to discover what it means to put something under from the bottom.  Superfluous and saying the same thing twice.  Chana wanted to know why.

PS.  Chana had her bas mitzva and we still haven't finished all the meanings of the brachos in shemona esrei (though she can fulfil her technical chiyuv of tefila without it).

PPS.  I had been wanting Chana to work on writing Ivrit and I told her to come up with an idea for a story but so far that's all we did.

PPPS.  I'm not impressed with Sfasenu 4.  It's getting that I pretty much need to sit next to her when she reads it and I'm not sure she's actually improving in her Hebrew.

google images

chana asked why the plishtim covered up avraham's wells if they could have used them. good q. r' hirsch does not address it. nor does a quick survey of mikraos gedolos.

google images are really valuable for showing pictures. we've used it for brimestone in sedom, fiery furnace and pillar of smoke in bris ben habesarim, dew in the brachos of eisav/yaakov, monument, and to show parsha ptucha and stuma.

chana zipped through shlishi of toldos. she resisted doing rishon of vayetze, since we are already up to sheni. but i think she needs more chazara. so we argued about that and i insisted, and her mood became dour. then we took a break before doing the 4 pesukim in rishon and the new pesukim, since she was getting bad-tempered. i put 10 min on the timer. then she got upset because for some reason she thought we were doing only 1 new pasuk. the one new pasuk had 3 new words, but the next 3 pesukim were easy so i wanted to do them. she fought that. i persisted again. she kind of cried a little but overall contained herself well. then i gave her another 10 min and we did rashi. she just read it and didn't translate it. even though i saw from the way she read that she needs a couple more sessions of translation, because she didn't pause at the right places which she would have done if she understood it. ("how do you know if she knows it if you don't give tests?")

all told i think chumash and rashi took about a half hour. but i didn't time it. calculating, i think it took about 45 min. when i asked chana, she said she felt like it took her 3 hrs.

don music i'll NEVER get it NEVER NEVER NEVER

so chana and i haggled a bit over what to review today. she wanted rishon or sheni. since she knows them pretty well, i insisted on any of shlishi - chamishi. she chose chamishi (the easiest and shortest). she did well with it (especially as it's recent). then by the time we were nearing the end, she was getting short-tempered. and we still had the pesukim in shishi to do.

we took a break and i had an inspiration. i showed her youtube videos of don music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er_dDJDAPU0

he says "i'm NEVER doing to do it NEVER NEVER NEVER" and he bangs his head as he flops down on the piano. chana quite enjoyed it and we watched a few of them.

shishi was pretty screamy, though chana masterfully tried to contain herself. she remembered all of the phrases (so i'm happy to report that the paper visuals worked beautifully). i thought translating it would be tricky, but she did pretty well. she wanted me to read it and translate it first. but when it came down to it she remembered quite a lot of it.

i was hoping she'd ask questions like why is hashem telling avram to do different details. her main questions have been why hashem would put avram in a deep sleep. how can he drive off the birds. and why oh why does hashem want to enslave the jews in a land not theirs?

then we did rashi. i started a new rashi, inspired by my own post this morning. chana was not happy about that. i said we were having a break so i could go upstairs and nurse jack, but chana did not want one and followed me up with the chumash. i isolated 3 major phrases explaining about the parts and how it follows the way they made covenants in those days. i read and translated all of it for her. i left the 3rd part, about the fire and smoke being hashem's representatives, for after we do those pesukim (that will be in about 5 pesukim).

bris ben habesarim

so chana keeps having trouble with the pasuk where avram says "bameh eida"

with what will i know.

she keeps translating the "with" as "in" (it's a beis) and for some reason the "i will know" doesn't come naturally to her. so we went through that a few times.

(oh, first we reviewed 2nd half of chamishi just words she needed to review).

then i drew 3 baby cows, 3 goats, 3 rams, and chana drew a bird and a baby bird. and i drew some birds of prey and a fire and a pillar of smoke. (i took pictures but 1. they are line drawings and 2. they didn't come out in the pics).

the lashon of the pesukim was pretty complicated and chana was getting frustrated (for example: "and he put a man's part to greet his friend" is an idiom for "he put each piece opposite its other half"). i explained to her that that is why i drew her all the pictures--because the pesukim are difficult.

she liked the part about the bird of prey and avram driving them off. we acted that out with the papers. then she wanted to know why hashem would put avram in a deep sleep, and why he is so scared. (and she noted that in a deep sleep, avram would no longer be able to drive away the birds). i said to her to read the next pasuk to find out what the nevua is that caused those feelings. (though i'm not sure if the feeling was a separate part of nevua from the information in the next pasuk). she was quite curious, but feeling finished so we'll read it tomorrow.

we didn't get to rashi today. but i want to run to the library. maybe when i get back i can chap some rashi.

mneumonics

did all but the last 8. the last 8 are the newest so are the most unfamiliar. i think we'll stick with all the others til she gets them. basically we have a hand motion for just about every one. so i tell her what each word is with the hand motion. (they're actually very cute).

for island i point to my eye with my fingers in the shape of an L
for split i make a split with my fingers
for lashon i stick out my tongue
for goy i make an N with my fingers (for nation)
for palag i roll my hands around each other (mixed up)
for east i point to the right
for safah i stick out my tongue
for travel i mime a basketball and the ref signal for "travel"
for split i make 2 mountains with my hands and move them apart
for re-ehu (his friend) i just tell her :-P. oddly, i think she's beginning to remember that one (with sarah, i used to say "you think it's ra [bad] but it's not")
for hava, i make a "come on" gesture
for bricks, i say "brickettes" which is a joke from the rashi we've been doing
for chomer, i make an M with my fingers for material
for migdal, i gesture high up
for spread out, i put my fingers together and then expand them
for city, i touch my ear (for some reason this works ;)
for am, i make an N
for "hachal" i say "hitchil"
for now (ata, she knows achshav), i point "right now"
for stop, i hold my hand up
for plot, i make a little evil plotting gesture with my fingers (if you know what i mean)
for "nerda" (we will go down) i tell her to identify the shoresh, which she ALWAYS says is r.d.h. groan. instead of y.r.d
then i tell her

and then there are the last 8

i wonder how many times of reviewing these til she actually learns them.

another day

i took a lot on today. first, i wanted to review the 2 phrases from yesterday that chana had difficulty with. she translated them literally again easily, and again had trouble figuring out what they meant. i told her, and she remembered from yesterday. then i decided to do 6 pesukim, since 5 were fairly easy.

chana looked at all the pages she had covered and was impressed with how much she had done. but she still fought me on the 6 pesukim. the first pasuk was a bit unwieldy and we went through it and then took a break. (also, i gave her a white board and a marker and although she scowled, she has been writing the shorashim and that's been going well). then after the second pasuk, she wanted a break even though i thought it was quick. i denied her a break, and after the third pasuk pasuk she was squirmy so she's off having a break now. i hope the next 3 will be quick and easy. (i wanted to work without break because jack is asleep and elazar is playing with his cousin; but chana prefers to spread the work out more).

3 words came up that i feel are worthy of review, so i'm going to drill chana on them:

אות sign
בלתי not
לכן therefore

i think chana got squirmy after one pasuk thinking about all the ones she was going to have to do. i don't think that one pasuk in and of itself was enough to make her antsy; it's the thought of all of them that got her antsy. as an adult, i also feel overwhelmed not by the inherent activity, but by the thought of doing more than i feel capable of, even if what i'm doing at the moment is doable.

good props are so important

loving the white board. because chana can do very small segments every day (currently we are doing about 1 line a day, since the pasuk is large) and just refer back to the board to see what the previous phrase or phrases mean. also, when elazar steals her purse and throws it behind the couch and she goes haring off after it (even numerous times), it's all laid out there on the board and she can easily pick up right where she left off.

chana has been able to mostly guess the words she doesn't know from context. as much as this bothers me a bit because i wish she would learn new vocabulary, and i suspect she's not processing these new words at all, i tend to think she wouldn't be learning much new vocabulary the 2 other ways i would do it:
1) writing it down in a notebook. i doubt she would learn it better that way, and it breeds resentment, as she finds the whole process of writing in the notebook and looking it up to be long and difficult and unecessary.
2) review. i could have her just review and review the new words. i did not do this with sarah, and her vocabulary ended up being adequate, though not spectacular. she very much doesn't want to review, so probably this would breed more conflict and reluctance (haha, unless i bribed her for it, but i have not noticed her personality responding overmuch to incentives like that). hopefully the words that come up over and over will become familiar, and if not, she is gaining confidence by guessing via context. and today, she couldn't guess so she looked up a word.

ויפח
she correctly got the "and he" and the פח of the shoresh. a quick glance at onkelos showed that the beginning was a נ. she could not guess from context, and i had her look it up. she did this reluctantly. i opened to the נ section of the dictionary for her. and helped her find it. because it is still overwelming.

chana is curious how hashem breathes into someone's nose.

jubilation

the white board is working great! one hr ago i was about to write:

"too darn tired to think about chumash tonight. fretful baby and clingy toddler. forget it. try tomorrow."

but jack went to sleep and ari was around to distract elazar for 10 minutes, so chana and i hit the book.

so our new process (note how it has changed from even last month, based on her input) is currently: no writing things in her own dictionary. looking up to be haggled over (and acc to chana, done as infrequently as possible). i will write down in english as we go on the white board, for her to refer to as needed in order to keep the thread of the pasuk.

i glanced at the pasuk first, to see how it would go.
וְכֹל שִׂיחַ הַשָּׂדֶה טֶרֶם יִהְיֶה בָאָרֶץ וְכָל-עֵשֶׂב הַשָּׂדֶה טֶרֶם יִצְמָח
i saw three words she doesn't know. i warned her about it. she said she'd rather do double chumash tomorrow. i said double tomorrow means looking up all 3 words and translating the 1/2. looking up 3 words in one day is apparently too much, so she agreed.

(now secretly, i'm telling you that i myself was not sure what the pshat of this pasuk was. i don't even remember this pasuk at all. was this talking about what happened already? what was going to happen? so i peeked at the english. teacher's prerogative: trying to teach a student how to translate while ironically needing the english to make sure she doesn't teach it wrong...)

so chana translated "and all" beautifully, not missing a beat with the chaf and immediately saying "v'kol" after "v'chol."

siach she had no idea and i wrote it on the board in a different color:

And all שיח

it turns out she doesn't know the word "sadeh." who knew that i never use the word field? i just told her what it was, and she said, "is that because otherwise there will be FOUR words i don't know?" yup.

i wrote sadeh in hebrew and then parentheses (field).

the next word terem she didn't know, and i wrote it in pink and then in parentheses wrote (לפני).

wouldn't you know, יהיה gave her a ton of trouble. i used it in a sentence, still she had trouble. finally i wrote it on a 2nd white board (always good to have a bunch--i happen to have 4 student sized white boards and 1 larger one) and asked her to find the shoresh and then r' winder for the yud prefix.

then she pretty easily translated "and all grass the field before it will צמח"

she forgot "before" but i pointed to the white board and there it was. yay!

then i asked her to read it as a whole to get the feel of the whole thing. i introduced her to onkelos, telling her that he was a convert who wanted to be jewish who was closely related to the king (i think he was the nephew, but i can't remember) and the king sent soldiers to bring him home him, and twice he talked them into converting. chana liked that. i told her that he wrote a translation of the chumash, and showed her the word "אילני" and asked her if she knew what ilana means. she knew it was a girl's name, so she was intrigued. i told her it was עץ. so on top of שיח i wrote (ilan--etz) (forgive the english; i'm getting lazy. i wrote it in hebrew; i'm just sick of alt shifting back and forth).

then it said "and all tree the field"
so i made a little blank space and asked her what was missing:
and all tree __ the field
and she said "in" which i wrote in (haha)

so now it said and all שיח
(עץ--אילן ) _in_ the שדה (field) טרם
(לפני) it will be in the land
and all grass _in_ the field before it will צמח

hmmm... looking back, i should have put sadeh in pink, too. oh, well.

anyway, i had chana review it, and asked her to guess what tzamach meant. and she lifted her arms like a plant sprouting and said "grow." and i said "right" and put it on the board.

and all שיח
(עץ--אילן ) _in_ the שדה (field) טרם
(לפני) it will be in the land
and all grass _in_ the field before it will צמח --grow!

please take note: she didn't look up one thing in the dictionary.

breakthrough

so today i went in with the whiteboard. chana was hungry, and i ought to know better. a fed kid is a less easily frustrated student. but as usual, the temptation to do chumash while she agreed was too great. jack was sleeping but elazar didn't like what was on tv, wanted to color, colored on chana's whiteboard, and on chana, and on the chumash... (i finally took the markers away, and then he had nothing to do but stand on the chumash..)

so the whiteboard is working well. i wrote down each piece as she said it. i left a blank for "toldos" since after chana found a familiar shoresh (yeled) she still wasn't sure what it was exactly. when we got to בהבראם she remembered the prefixes in and the (the ה isn't exactly the, but the quirk of grammar i let go) and absolutely melted down screaming at the ם suffix. me trying to remind her about r' winder or give her choices was not flying. "I CAAAAAAN'T REMEEEEEEMMMMBBBBEEEER r' winder!!!"

i had a brainstorm. "do you want me to bring down the r' winder book and you can find the different parts?" absolutely. i got it down, she found the suffix easily, i plugged it into the whiteboard, she read the whole thing and it made sense.

ta,da!