what a difference a meal makes

today we didn't do chumash until after chana had ample play time in the morning, and she had eaten 2 plates of mac n cheese. also, i decided to just do spot word definitions. so i picked out a few words from revi'i, and words from chamishi until we got to the pesukim from yesterday and the day before. so she was in a fine mood. she asked why rivka had to dress yaakov and why couldn't he dress himself. her mouth opened wide when yaakov said he was eisav the bechor. she said, "ha! i knew it took too short!" when yitzchak asked yaakov why he was so quick. she asked what was going to happen when eisav finally came. i said she would find out. she asked when. i flipped two pages ahead. she is looking forward.

rashi: we did a rashi with the nekudos (it is too darn tempting to use those nekudos rather than have her hack through it w/o. i'm selling out on my principles). she had numerous questions on why a person would think about his own death within 5 yrs of his parents' deaths. i kept saying it's just the way a person feels. she said, "what if he didn't have time to think about his own death?" and i said he will think about it within 5 yrs of his parents' death. and she asked, "what about if the parent died in a car accident?" i still think a person would think about it. but i agree it's not as compelling as if they died from a disease or age.

after chana did it once, i told her to mentally prepare herself to be very angry and then let me know when she's ready. she took some deep breaths, closed the chumash and turned to look at me. i told her i'd like her to read that rashi 2 more times. she protested mildly, but then read it again. the second time was much better. she wanted to just do it next week, but i said too much time passes and it's too chopped up. then, for the 3rd time, i suggested that i read each phrase and she translate it. she said absolutely not. she'd much prefer to just read it again. i was delighted that she was so willing to read it a 3rd time. i asked her if she wanted me to translate each phrase, and she said yes. and that's how we did it.

i truly have to be more on top of rashi if i want her skills to improve, though. on the up side, i think she still remembers some of the rashis we have done last year.

so how many times am i going to attempt chumash with a hungry student before i realize it's a BAD IDEA. the difference before eating and after is marked. which always gets me thinking about how much bechira a person has.

that aside, chana was waiting to go out to pizza w/ her cousin and i wanted to do chumash first because jack is napping. but she wanted to do it later. i insisted, and there was a lot of crying. finally she ate, and whizzed through the last 3 pesukim. i think she did them in 30 seconds. i think the crying was 100x longer than the time it took her to do the chumash. if i were better at math, i'd tell you for sure.

chana noticed today that the text calls yitzchak's son eisav "his son" and rivka's son yaakov "her son" even though they were both both of their sons and we already knew they were their sons. she asked why and posited that it's because they were the respective favorites.

so we did rashi today, finally. i'm such a bum about rashi. chana is trying to hold me to the once a week commitment when i wanted to do it more frequently and i just give in. and i let her read it with the nekudot, even though she really needs to learn to do it w/o if she wants to have the skills to learn from any chumash. soon enough school will start and we'll hopefully do it more often. definitely doing it w/ nekudot lessens her frustration. hopefully next time we'll do it w/o vowels.

i had her do 5 new pesukim this morning. she got upset we were doing more than one new pasuk, but then admitted that she thought i would make her do 8. anyway, she whizzed through them.

you know it's not going great when in the middle she says: "and DON'T blog about this!"

we did one rashi, the one we did last time. she remembered the content. our next 2 wks work will be to work on the pronunciation of the words.

it's rashi day again. we've been doing chumash in the car a lot, which doesn't lend itself to blogging but makes both of us pretty happy. today we finished shlishi. and i have to figure out a rashi. we shall see we shall see