yesterday we did chumash in the car on the way to gymnastics. my favorite, because it's a finite time with not too many distractions (other than feeding jack when he asks). i asked chana why she thought after avraham agreed to the bris with avimelech, he lectured him about the well.

she guessed an interesting answer (i should've written it down yesterday because by today i've forgotten). i said a good try. she asked me to tell her. i said no, keep thinking. she said, you're never going to tell me? that's right.

today instead of doing major chazara, we just started from shishi w/ avimelech making the bris with avraham. because i made her do 8 new pesukim today. which she was not thrilled with. but they weren't very hard. she rightly said, "but then i have to do them all again tomorrow, plus more." true dat.

i was thinking of doing the famous rashi on "he planted an eshel" but i don't know that she'd really grasp it. and there is a very long, not so difficult rashi, about how many years avraham spent where. so i said we'd do part of that. but we had to review yesterday's rashi (for the first time with no nekudos), and chana then asked if we can do only part of the new rashi, since it's so long. since she asked nicely, i agreed. and now she is on break. i hope to get to it today. i'm hosting playgroup for elazar in 15 min, so hopefully some time early afternoon.

we started off innocuously enough with doing the milim from perek 21. for the last 5 or so, i asked chana to do the full pesukim. we are in the middle of 2 new pesukim in shishi, and chana neared her limit. she forgot the word "chessed" so i showed it to her in 2 places where we had done it previously. she still didn't remember it. this got me thinking about how she probably doesn't remember a lot of the previous material, and i want to see if she can translate the entire pasuk with the word "chesed" in it (from shlishi). at this point chana stormed off to cool down. we've been working for about an hour and a half. jack was pretty distracting today. elazar is out, but jack's been both adorable and demanding. ah, and from the rustling i hear in the kitchen, it seems chana is hungry. though she did eat before we started.

for rashi, we went through the large rashi again of "b'asher hu sham." i told her today is the last day w/ nekudos and i'd like to try tomorrow without. i think that she'll generally remember the overall content of this rashi (judged on now, not the future). (chana made a good point that it's not even yishmael's future actions that were being judged, but those of his descendants). and she'll be able to read the easy parts of the dialogue. but the difficult parts will not stick in her head.

i'm fantasizing about unschooling chumash again. though i honestly cannot see how a child would ever be motivated to put in the hours it takes to build decent skills. when i spoke to a young man who had been entirely unschooled, he said he and his siblings expressed interest in learning to read and understand torah between ages 10-15. chana is currently 9; she'll be 10 in june. maybe if i left it alone she'd be motivated to work on it. i've made my choice and i'm going to stick with it, but it is tempting to just leave the boys alone until they beg me. if they do.

anyhoo, we still have 2 more pesukim if chana ever makes her way back here, and i will insist on that pasuk from shlishi, and then chana has about 20 minutes to review revi'i. it's a lot.

so today we did 3 new pesukim and all the rest in perek 21. when we got to review, chana, though reviewing to herself, got very frustrated and begged not to and said she remembered it and cited many pesukim's translations by heart. it's very nice that she knows the translations, but i'm also interested in her knowing the hebrew words and their translations so that she'll know them if they show up again.

for example, in rashi today was the word "maasim." deeds. and in the pesukim she was supposed to review, avimelech says to avrahama "you did deeds that are not done."

anyway, today's rashi was a doozy. i decided to actually introduce it with the nekudos. chana definitely had an easier time that way. after a couple of days of doing it w/ nekudos and punctuation, we will transfer over to the other chumash so she can do it w/o.

yesterday's rashis didn't go so well. we reviewed one from bereshis and 2 from noach, and they were almost completely unfamiliar. in both content and syntax. kind of depressing. we'll do them again today.

for pesukim, we did perek 21, 14 pesukim (1 new one) and i want to go back and have chana do just milim in revi'i. revi'i is VERY long. we won't have time to do it because we have to go to gymnastics. hopefully she'll do it in the car. and i'd like to review those rashis. but she's eating breakfast now. we'll see what we get to.

"the learner will"

ok, let me drag up my memories of the one education class i took a million yrs ago.

by the end of 8th grade, the learner will:

read rashi correctly (letter recognition and reading without nekudos)
translate rashi decently

and possibly

know some of the more common abbreviations

****

how have i been trying to achieve this? i pick a rashi that is pshat oriented and whose language is fairly simple. then either i tell chana what it means outside, or i read it to her and explain it, or she reads it and tries to understand it, depending on complexity and her mood.

then we review it and review it until she knows it pretty fluently.

***

what is the problem with this method? i have been a bit lax at finding rashis. i have been using them to enhance chumash--to provide more explanation of the plain meaning of the text. while this is nice, it is not giving us sufficient practice at rashi reading and translation.

i wonder if i should construct a rashi curriculum on its own, aside from chumash, for chana to work on the skills i would like her to acquire. i need to find rashis that stand on their own and are pretty simple. the down side of that is that rashi really is best in the context of the pasuk.

today took 35 min for chana to do perek 20, because we just did the words she didn't know. we are making our way into chamishi, and chana started getting whiny. we just finished yesterday's new pesukim, and now i'd like to do 5 new pesukim that i think are not too bad. chana is sulky at the thought. so we are taking a break. jack is just waking up. elazar is out of the house. chana's preference is to do those 5 pesukim this evening. evenings are so crowded that i prefer to do it now. if only we could just do those 5 pesukim now, when it is quiet and nothing else is demanding my attention. but chana doesn't have the mindset for it, after working so hard. i asked her how long a break she would like, and she said 10 min. by then jack will be out and about.

we didn't do rashi yesterday. i'm often wrung out by the time we finish chumash, since i'm pushing chana to the limit, and i don't have the energy to push for rashi.

bli neder after this i'm going to draft a "goals" for rashi and figure out how to meet those goals.

it took chana 1.5 hrs to do chumash today, including a half hour break. she wants to know why avraham made a party for weaning yitzchak. she's taking a break before doing rashi. i just don't know which rashis to do. i have a feeling that asking for help in rashi curriculum won't be so helpful because i am so specific about what i want. then again, it can't hurt to ask for input.