the king of sodom went out to greet avram-- chana asks: doesn't that mean hashem will bless the king of sodom, if he blesses avram? because hashem will bless avram's blessers?

chana also asked how the kings of sodom and amora got out of the wells of material that they fell into.

chana did revii and one new pasuk and the rashis (she was pretty burnt out by the time she got to rashi, and didn't do great). i want to do rishon of noach today but she doesn't; nor does she want a break (i want to give her an hour break; she's been working for an hour straight minus one 2 minute playing with elazar break). but jack is awake so an imposed break is coming. will we get to rishon of noach? tune in...

today we just did revii with the map. we google imaged "plain" so chana could see "the plains of mamre." she asked about the survivor's motivation for telling avram. was he bad? good? so we did the little piece of rashi about him hoping avram would die in battle so he could marry sara. i read it and translated it.

then we did 2 new pesukim. chana is still having some trouble with a lot of the vocab, so i guess it needs more review.

we still have to do rashi. chana feels she worked too hard today (48 min no break except for 2 min toothbrushing) (she thinks it was 50) and should not have rashi. i'm going to give her a long break.

it took about 15 minutes to get through shlishi, though chana kind of ran out of steam for the last 2 pesukim. then we took an hour break, then did some highlight chazara for the first 10 pesukim of revii, then did the next bunch. then the rashis.

chana asked how k'na'an was a slave of slaves (and the kna'ani was then in the land). good question. they were not appearing to be the slave of slaves.

we did rishon today. chana complained about having to go through it pasuk by pasuk, instead of just words here and there. i said that the fact that she was having trouble with it indicated that she needs to do it. she got through it nicely, and then we did revii starting from pasuk 10, then did one new pasuk, since the new one and the last one have enough new words and phrases to keep her busy. then picked out some tough words from the beginning of revii. then did rashis.

i brought up the idea of doing an aliyah from noach. she yelled, but not as loudly as one might think. i'll probably bring it up a few more days and then, when we are having a leisurely day, have her do it.

chana ripped through shlishi today. yesterday she reviewed the parts of revii that we have done, plus rashis, but no new pesukim and no chazara of other aliyot.

after shlishi, a small break, then we did rashi, then the first 10 pesukim in revii just by vocab words (which chana didn't really remember out of context), then reviewed 3 pesukim completely, then did a new pasuk.

the new pasuk is really confusing about rather a lot of information. the runaway came and told avram. chana was not clear what he told avram. she didn't understand that "ivri" was avram's "last name" (coz he came from the other side of the river) (i just wrote that because chana is reading over my shoulder). then it says "he" was living in the plains of mamre, which chana did not recall was referring to avram, and that mamre was a person and an emori, and emori is a nation, and he was the brother of eshkol (big kick out of his name being "grapefruit) and aner, and they are people in a bris with avram.

we translated, then i explained it in english. hopefully as we keep reviewing, it will help.

chana was a delight today. this morning i wanted to get in a bunch of pesukim before i dashed out to the science museum. so i reviewed orally most of the pesukim of the 4 kings. then i did insist she point out the things on the map, which she did reluctantly. then we did 2 new pesukim. if we had more time, we would have done it more thoroughly and would have done more pesukim. but this way it wasn't too rushed and we did a bit and we'll do more tomorrow. i showed her the names of the 5 kings and showed her the puns we had discussed in the car. i had forgotten about sinav--sone av. hates his father in heaven. chana didn't realize that 'father in heaven' means hashem. she doesn't think of Him as a father, nor in the sky.

then when i came home, i asked her if she wanted to review rishon, sheni, or shlishi. she picked rishon. and she did a nice job. she still doesn't know all the words. she doesn't know all the words from noach either.

i'm not sure what exactly my goals are. if i want her to know 100% of the words, i'm not accomplishing that. and the chazara gets too boring for her. but the way i'm doing it she gets a decent review of the flow of the pesukim, many of the words, and the storyline. so i guess my goals are kind of half-hearted. we're not striving for perfection, we're striving for familiarity, i guess. and i think that's what we're getting. one of these days i'm going to have to go back over noach and see how much she remembers. i'm afraid to bring that up because of the tantrum that will engender. and then i think to myself, what kind of a parent am i. afraid of my own child. but it does pay to be strategic. she does want to earn money. maybe some parts of noach in small increments.

ooh, that reminds me, i totally forgot to do rashi today. oh, well. tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow.

maps

so today we had very little time before the US history movie club. 20 minutes. maybe a bit less. so we orally reviewed the pesukim, and i showed her the map and told her the 4 kings were from the north, and they attacked all the tribes on the way down, and circled back. then when we did the pesukim inside, i had her identify each thing on the map (btw, chori is NOT the same as horite in chana's mind). so tomorrow we will do the 5 kings coming to meet the 4 kings. she doesn't know who is going to win yet... or what this has to do with avram...

in the car i discussed rashi's comments about the names of the kings. she enjoyed that. and i think she enjoyed it more doing it outside the text because she wasn't bogged down with reading and translating.

tomorrow is science museum, so it looks like chumash is going to slow down a bit the rest of this week.