hebrew writing

I've been feeling like Chana needs to work on her Ivrit writing recently.  I mentioned it to her last week, she wasn't thrilled, and she said she thought her writing was fine.  I said I thought she probably needs to practice it a bit.  Then tonight I told her to write and she said okay.  She asked if she could write on the white board instead of a notebook.  She wrote a couple of sentences.  I asked her to finish the story and she said I'll have to wait for tomorrow to see what happens.  Ari read it and he was able to understand it.  Her vocab, spelling, and grasp of Ivrit were actually better than I expected/remembered.  I find that happens a lot.  Weeks and months go by, and they make progress even though they haven't been practicing.

we used the whiteboard a lot today because chana really needs work dissecting shorashim. this was intuitive for sarah, but not for chana. i love the white board and it really makes things clear. chana doesn't like not knowing things automatically. the word "yarash" came up in a bunch of different forms today.

shishi is very long...

nice

today we started with shlishi, then did the rashis and the new pasuk. then i convinced her to do the last 2 pesukim in shlishi; they weren't hard. then break, then sheni. it went pretty smoothly. i still had to tell her some of the words, but i think she's improving. definitely the nasa (lift/carry) from the white board went better. she's still having trouble with nasa (travel) in all of its many forms. l'masa'av. vayisa. etc. all in all a smooth day and we only used 1hr 10min of the 2 hrs i allotted for it. rest of the day we chill.

chana worked very hard today. we did rishon, which went pretty well.

we used the white board a lot. i finally wrote down the 3 shorashim she keeps confusing. nasa. travel. asa. make/do. nasa. lift/carry. they keep showing up. i also drew a map with east and west (and the yam on the west) and south and where avram was and lot. and sedom. and mitzrayim.

then we took a break and did shlishi. i probably should have given her a longer break. coz she had a bit of a hard time going through what we were doing. but as far as jack napping and just waking up now, it was the right timing. we did 2 new pesukim today and one rashi.

we'll have to review shlishi tomorrow. i was going to review sheni also, but it's a lot. we'll see. anyway, about 1.5 hrs straight of working. with one 10 minute break. good job, chana!

chugga chugga

another successful evening with the white board! i kept yesterday's white board intact, and took out a new one for today. she did it easily. found the shoresh of the one new word (himtir) (had some trouble that the ה means "to make happen" but i know this shows up often so she'll get it eventually). translated smoothly and then had no desire to see what it meant as a whole.

i cajoled her, so she read the board a couple of times until she figured it out. she didn't want to see what the first half had to do with the second half. but i asked her, and she reviewed yesterday's english, which was right there, and then went smoothly to the second half, and then summarized.

i did not have her look up "matar" in the dictionary (which she thought was "to let," like mutar, which was a good association. i wrote מתר and מטר down one underneath the other, and in classic 8 yr old obnoxiousness she said they look the same. i circled the tes and the taf) and told her i would draw it for her. i had the white board right there, after all. i drew a cloud and raindrops and she got it immediately.

sweet.

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.