how much does a 5th/6th grader cover?

let's see, we started shmos on may 15.  we started va'era the day after she went to great adventure, june 19.  we did 36 rashis in shmos, that she can read, with nekudos, and with knowing the general meaning when she reads the hebrew (she doesn't 100% know all the words exactly).  so it was about 3 wks to learn shmos plus a week of chazara.

chana has been complaining a lot about rashi recently.  maybe i'm working her too hard.  it seems like she is capable, though.  she also mentions that she dislikes it.

as always, i wonder if i would get better results waiting until high school and taking only 3 years to build up the skills instead of 12.   i was having a minor bout of anxiety about not teaching her math.  and what if she goes through high school with NO MATH. 
(until i calmed down and realized she would a. have no math except for that which she needs to figure out her financial affairs, which is fairly extensive or b. she would learn math when she got interested.)

anyway, it's been busy and we have not done any more navi.  one of the things i worry about with unschooling, too.  though the summer has barely even begun.  no need to worry yet.  i would let at least a few years go by before worry is warranted.

navi day 1

so today chana came home from a full day of work.  yup, she's working.  what else are homeschooled kids supposed to do?  we're going to the circus tomorrow so she can't work.  disappointing.  she was upset that she came home at 8:50, which was only 10 min til bedtime.  i told her she can stay up and chillax (heehee, i love that word) and i went out for a walk.  when i got home at 10, she told me she was going to sleep in a few minutes (we did double chumash yesterday when we found out she had an early call time this morning).  i asked her to say shemona esrei.  (by the way, in case you are wondering, she says the entire shemona esrei every night and has gotten fluent enough to say it in 6 minutes, which is the time it takes me to say it if i have kavana.  she still says it sitting down, and she still does not know what she is saying.)

then i decided it would be a great night to begin operation: navi.

so i asked her if she wanted a story from navi.  she was kind of reluctant, so i said, ok, never mind.  she decided she did want one. 

now one of the things that happens in chumash, and i wonder if it happens to all homeschoolers, is that when i officially sit down with my child and concentrate attention on her in the guise of doing schoolwork, she has extracted her attention from whatever it is she is doing all the rest of the day and suddenly realizes that she has my attention.  so she has many, many things to tell me.  all sorts of feelings and thoughts. 

sometimes i think that it is foolish to distract her from talking about what is in her heart for the secondary accomplishment of feeding her some information or skills, and that this blossoming of our relationship and of her communication is what homeschooling is all about.

anyway, on a night like tonight, when the littles are asleep and ari and sarah aren't home, and i have nothing to do but follow her lead, it's easy to do chumash or navi when she pauses, and for me to pause to hear what she has to say when she begins to talk.

i decided to start with ehud.  to do that i gave a little background of shoftim.  as i anticipated, she didn't know who was in charge after moshe.  she guessed his son? (she was quite surprised that it wasn't.) aharon?  she didn't know yehoshua (we are still in the beginning of shmos).

so i opened to ehud and said that eglon conquered yericho.  then i realized she didn't know the story of yericho.  we will perhaps do that next.  and she said her mind kept wandering.  which is how she gets when she's very tired and we try to learn.  we talked about his withered hand.  i wondered about google imaging it, but i figured that would probably be uncomfortable.  (actually, i just did and there aren't any good images.  ah, there we go: hand disfigurement.  maybe i'll show her tomorrow if she seems interested.)  her mind kept wandering.  so i said, ok, we'll pick it up tomorrow.  his withered hand is important to the story.  that got her all excited and she started begging.

a long time ago i read a chinuch newsletter, and the author quoted a gadol who said, "you should stop learning five minutes before the child is done."  i thought that was very deep.  because you want to leave the child wanting more, not leave the child wishing it was over and that s/he wanted to stop 5 minutes ago.  but it's tricky--how do you know before the child is finished?  it's something to think about.

anyway, begging for more is definitely an ideal way to stop, because it leaves her eager for the next time.  i didn't give in, and hopefully she'll be excited next time.

so in summary, i picked a story that i remember positively from my elementary school days.  i started at a time when i was extremely relaxed and had absolutely nothing else going on.  i went in with zero agenda except that she enjoy herself.  i stopped fairly quickly.  i think she enjoyed it and is excited for more. 

summer plans and navi

chumash is chugging along.  chana is planning to go to daycamp this summer.  she'd like to go to sleepaway camp, but it's expensive.  perhaps if she ends up being homeschooled for high school, we'll send her to sleepaway camp.  i know a lot of homeschoolers (myself included ;) get a little itchy about the socialization question.  but i can tell you, it's not the ability to socialize that is a problem.  and it's not the opportunity to socialize.  what does become problematic is 1. close intimate friends and 2. a large social group. 

as 6th grade approaches, there are a lot of social/physical/emotional changes going on for girls (and presumably for boys, but i have no idea yet).  girls who were friends for years switch allegiances and interests. 

i'm hoping chana will meet some local girls this summer.  she's old enough to walk to their houses by herself on shabbos.  it will be luck of the draw if she clicks with any girls and becomes close friends with them.  both she and sarah went to local daycamp at various points.  they had absolutely no trouble integrating, socializing, and making friends.  but they never clicked with anyone enough to keep the relationship going.

anyway, in past summers when chana chose not to go to camp, we kept our schedule the same as during the rest of the year, including chumash.  but she will probably not have enough time to devote to chumash.  though i would not like to drop it completely.  i have to figure out how to do chumash over the summer.

but a project i would really like to pick up is navi.  i really think chana would enjoy it.  however, i tried getting the little midrash says and it was both too difficult and too boring for her.  she didn't enjoy reading it.  i think she needs it to be more personalized.  i need to tell the story on exactly her level, and choose which stories to tell. 

this is going to take some preparation.  you may or may not know that i'm not a "prep" type homeschooler.  i sit down and whatever happens, happens.  but i think regarding navi, like the pesach seder, a little thought about

- where my child is at
- what approach would be enjoyable
- what specifically i'm going to teach and how

will go a long way.  i particularly would like to attempt an "unschooling" approach here, as a prototype for the future with the boys.  i don't have to worry about skills, because chana is getting skills via chumash.  i just want to make this really enjoyable.  i want her to love it.  i wonder if i'll be able to do that.  i'm imagining that i've been hired to teach a course.  that the child will remember and love for the rest of her life.

the day has come

surely most days will not be like this.  but this morning, chana is going to see a show with her bubby.  so last night we agreed that chumash would be 10am.  she woke up early so she would have time to do what she likes to do before chumash.  at 9:55, of her own volition, she went to eat so she wouldn't be hungry for chumash.  then we started.

we started with chazara.  we have been doing chazara of one aliya per day, plus chazara of some of the pesukim of the aliyah we are in the middle of.  naturally, as we were about to get started, aharon woke up.  i told chana to please do the aliyah on her own.  she is at the point where she mostly knows it and felt comfortable running through it by herself!

then, even better, i told her to please review the rashis by reading them in hebrew aloud if she feels comfortable.  since she is at the point where if she doesn't know each word, but she overall knows the meaning of the rashi, that's good enough, she felt comfortable doing that for all but the more recent rashis.

when i came down, she was just finishing up.  then we reviewed the new rashis and did a little review of the end of shishi, and she whizzed through the rest of the pesukim til the end of the aliyah.  granted, these were pretty easy pesukim.  but she did them all with almost no help. 

it's really nice to see how much she's grown in her skills.

on homeschool tantrums

An example of why talking to other people is so important.  I dropped by a friend's house on Shabbos.  While I was there, I took the opportunity to ask her husband his thoughts on a question Chana had on Rashi.  In the course of conversation, he asked if Chana enjoys learning.  I paused.  She enjoys the thinking, she enjoys the questions, she enjoys parts of it.  But overall?  I don't think she enjoys it.  I think she finds it something to get through, something she dislikes.  Something she tolerates.  That gave him pause.  He told me about his son, who is in school, who really enjoys gaining the skills.  His son doesn't find it painful to acquire the chumash skills.  He is enjoying it.  Is it his son's nature?  No, he thought that the Rebbes make it fun for the kids.  He suggested two possible and related reasons.  1.  These Rebbes focus all of their educational energy on imparting skills.  It is their craft.  They hone this ability and their main goal is to make learning skills pleasant and achievable.  Whereas I am trying to do a whole bunch of things, one of which is teaching skills, and that is only a small subsection of my concept of "learning."  2. These Rebbes are EXCITED about teaching skills.  They love it.  They look forward to it.  They enjoy it.  They think it is wonderful.  They live for it.  Whereas I... I dread it.  I view it as a necessary evil.  Something to get through in order to get to the real "meat and potatoes" of learning.  Obviously, this attitude gets transferred to Chana.

This gave me plenty to think about (in addition to the last few weeks, as I have been ruminating about the boys' future chinuch).  I often find that having a conversation with someone can really open my mind to a whole new angle.

But homeschoolers, let's admit.  Our kids tantrum more than kids at school tantrum.  I rarely hear about an elementary aged child who tantrums about work in school.  The combination of social embarrassment, peer pressure, and being used to doing things they dislike make it an unusual occurrence.  Whereas homeschoolers are quite vocal about work they don't want to do.  If it's painful and they don't see the benefit, they will complain.  Loudly.  Often.  Since you are the mom, and a safe person, it can and does degenerate into tantrums (youtube: don music sesame street).  There are no peers around to cause embarrassment.  As a student, your opinion about the work you are doing is taken into consideration.

Supposedly unschooling eliminates most of that.  Though it still petrifies me to throw myself into that route.  However, I have a lot to think about regarding making skills work exciting and fun.  And thoughts are crystallizing..

why are we doing so much rashi?

we had the nice experience of doing the rashi on "call him and he'll eat bread," as a reference to marriage, and chana remembered the rashi about potifar putting yosef in charge of everything except his "bread."
it's nice when she remembers an old rashi and makes a connection.

chana also got overloaded in the middle of the rashis and started complaining.  she asked why we are doing rashis that are obvious from the pshat.  i started to answer her, then stopped.  then she said, a bit rudely, 'you won't even answer me.'  and i thought to myself that it is my opinion that what i teach should be defensible.  meaning i should be able to lucidly explain to my 10yo why we are learning something.  and if i can't, maybe i should rethink it.

i said, "i want you to have a lot of practice reading and translating rashi, so i pick ones that have easy meanings so that we can work on you getting better and reading and translating."  and she muttered some more about how she doesn't want to learn to read rashi.  and i said it's for future in case she will want rashi skills.

i've been ruminating a lot about love of learning.  i'm still ruminating.  i love homeschooling because there is so much time for rumination about how you want to run things, and so little red tape for change if you think it's called for.

Unschooling and Limudei Kodesh (Judaic studies)

My son is 4, almost 5.  He is perfectly happily being creative with markers and scissors and has been for the last few weeks.  He's working on his English letters.  He had been interested in the aleph beis for a while, but his attention turned.  I began to think, what would happen if I let him unschool everything, completely?  (I've been wondering this for a while ;)

From the two unschooled yeshiva bachurim I've spoken to, as boys approach their bar mitzvas, they begin to show an interest in learning to read Hebrew.  So theoretically, he will eventually learn to read.  I feel fairly comfortable that my husband will be able to tantalize my boys with some learning, so they will probably pick up halacha and some mishna and eventually gemara.  (And I'm very excited about the Artscroll gemara app... My husband and I were discussing how we are planning to handle learning on Shabbos for the years they are reliant on the app until they [hopefully] gain skills.. but I'm getting ahead of myself, as I sometimes do when I think about homeschooling).

But I was thinking about how Chazal say that when a child learns to speak, you teach him Shema (or maybe I read that in the Mishna Berura?).  Or when he is 5, he starts chumash (or 6 or 7), or when he is 10 mishna (That's a mishna in Pirkei Avos, at the end of chapter 5).  This is not the unschooling spirit.  And although unschooling speaks to me as an educational philosophy, I also respect Chazal's understanding of human nature and when a person is capable of making certain cognitive steps, the kind required for each different type of learning.  While I feel comfortable that unschooling would not be in contradiction with my husband's obligation to teach his sons or make sure they are taught, I wonder about approaching chinuch differently than Chazal recommend.



I have been thinking a lot about this point.  My thoughts make me nervous.  I hesitate.

I just took a break before I write down my thoughts to do some more procrastination, because I'm afraid to flesh this out research.  I was looking for the statement that when the child learns to speak, you teach them to say shema and "Torah tziva lanu Moshe."  Ah, Rambam, Hil. Talmud Torah 1:6: From when is his father obligated to teach him Torah? When he begins to speak, he teaches him *Torah tziva lanu Moshe* (Moshe commanded us the Law, an inheritance of the congregation of Yaakov) and *Shma Yisrael* and then he teaches him a few verses until he is 6 or 7, all according to his ability. Then he brings him to a teacher. 

This is probably from the gemara, then.  Because I was perusing some of the Rambam's halachos (2:2-3)

ב  מכניסין את התינוקות להתלמד כבן שש כבן שבע, לפי כוח הבן ובניין גופו; ופחות מבן שש, אין מכניסין אותו.  ומכה אותן המלמד, להטיל עליהן אימה.  ואינו מכה אותן מכת אויב, מוסר אכזרי; לפיכך לא יכה אותן בשוטים ולא במקלות, אלא ברצועה קטנה.

ג  ויושב ומלמדן כל היום כולו, ומקצת מן הלילה--כדי לחנכן ללמוד ביום, ובלילה.  ולא ייבטלו התינוקות כלל, חוץ מערבי שבתות וערבי ימים טובים בסוף היום, ובימים טובים; אבל בשבת, אין קורין לכתחילה, אבל שונין לראשון.  ואין מבטלין התינוקות, ואפילו לבניין בית המקדש.

You bring the children (lit. "babies) to be taught at around age 6 or 7, according to the strength of the child and his physical constitution, and under age 6, you don't bring him.  (Then there is some advice as to what type of corporal punishment should and shouldn't be used.)
And he sits and they are taught all the entire day, and some of the night--in order to teach them to learn during the day and the night.  And they shouldn't take off (lit. "be mevatel" i.e., waste or make idle) except for erev Shabbos and erev yom tov at the end of the day, and on yom tov; but on Shabbos (*i'm not sure of the translation of exactly what the children learn on Shabbos--pls help).. and you don't give the children off, not even to build the Beis Hamikdash.

Strong words, and they seem to be seriously against unschooling.  The sheer number of hours for a 6 or 7 year old child is daunting.  When do they play?  When do they be children?  (Note, though, how old these children are when they start school!  Presumably they have been running around and playing until age 6 or 7, which is basically unheard of in today's school system.)

So this gave me some hesitation.  And then I found the gemara that this is based on (I took this from a fascinating article on Jewish Sudbury Valley School  (Democratic School) by Rachel Cohen Yeshurun):

Remember the name Yehoshua ben Gamla for praise. Were it not for him, the Torah would have been forgotten by Israel. It used to be that fathers would teach their children, and those children without fathers would not learn Torah. Schools were then set up in Jerusalem based on an interpretation of the verse: 'Torah comes from Zion and the word of G-d from Jerusalem'. But still, those with fathers would bring them up, and those without fathers would not go up. He enacted that local authorities should install teachers of children in every district and town and they should bring in children of ages six and seven to be taught by these teachers.

Rav said to Rav Shmuel Bar Shilat: Do not accept children until the age of six. Then stuff the child with Torah, as you would fatten an ox. If you hit a child for disciplinary purposes, hit him only with a shoelace. If he studies, he studies, if he does not, let him remain in the company of his friends. (Baba Batra 21a) To the words 'let him remain in the company of his friends" Rashi adds "and eventually he will pay attention to the lesson".

So it would seem that this method was enacted b'dieved, after father-to-son learning was no longer optimal.  Then there is the gemara in Avoda Zara 19a:  A person does not learn Torah except from the place his heart desires.  Rebbi finished teaching a Sefer to his son Shimon and to Levi. Levi wanted to learn Mishlei next, and Shimon wanted to learn Tehilim. They forced Levi to agree. As soon as Rebbi expounded "Ki Im b'Toras Hash-m Cheftzo" as above, Levi said 'you have given me permission to leave.'

So now that I have a few sources under my belt, let me attempt to formulate my opinion about unschooling from a Torah perspective.

***

There is the raging debate about how important skills are in a society that has google and wikipedia at its fingertips.  My personal opinion is that knowing facts is basically unnecessary, and if I were at a job interview and the interviewer asked me a fact question, I would whip out my smartphone (ok, I admit I don't have a smartphone) and look it up.  However, as a homeschooler, I have thus far made it a point to (pleasantly) drill the multiplication tables into my kids until they are fluent.  I feel similarly about skills (i.e., somewhat conflicted and contradictory ;).  I think, despite the plethora of translations, it is preferable for my kids if they are comfortable with the Hebrew (and Aramaic).  However, if I raise a generation of lamdanim who use a wide range of websites and translations while they excitedly look things up and think about and analyze chumash and gemara, I'm going to call that a win. (Stay tuned for my learning goals for the boys.)

Therefore, it is with hesitation, that I posit that maybe the recommendations of 5 for mikra, 10 for mishna, 15 for gemara refer to cognitive developmental phases (with some leeway, as the gemara says 6 or 7) and not to the age where they need to begin to acquire the skills necessary to read them (and I point out that gemara was written in the vernacular of the time).  So following those guidelines, we will plan to introduce those subjects at those ages.  However, it might be possible to not drill and not push the skills until the child is interested in acquiring those skills.  

(I fully respect that many people vociferously disagree and feel that imparting the skills is vital, and imparting them at a young age is vital.  This is a philosophical point of debate between unschoolers and other educators in general.  Remember, the beauty of homeschool is that YOU get to do what YOU want.)

Further, with the current technological availability of text and translation, it seems like more than ever we are not forced to spend hours focusing on that.  Just as before the printing press, MUCH focus and MANY hours were spent on memorization, and that has currently faded in importance (much to the dismay of those people who felt that memorization is good for the brain and that it is extremely useful to have large amounts of text memorized in the case of lack of availability, all of which I agree with in theory).  So, too, perhaps the hours and hours of drudgery that we spend learning to make a laining will become less in vogue as every school age child has the translation of torah and gemara at his or her fingertips.  And perhaps the skills that will be taught (as I maybe plan to teach my children) is to start with the sefer in pure original, and then use whatever resources at their disposal to understand it.

Again, translation is never as good as original.  And a person who is seriously involved in learning will need the skills.  I have noted before that the average yeshiva day school students spends 1st-12th grade banging his or her head against text, is frequently still unable to make a laining, and then goes to Israel for a year or two and learns skills there.  I say, unschool, have fun, skip the drudgery, and pick it up over the course of two years when you are older--IF you've been motivated to do so.  

**

Another issue that I wondered about is the Rambam's assertion that the children should learn the entire day and some of the night.  Maybe serious Torah study requires that many hours.  Is this really the standard for all children?  Even the less inclined??

He does give a reason: to teach them to learn in both day and night.  I think of the words of Shema, that certainly apply to unschooling: 

And you shall love Hashem your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words, which I command you this day, shall be upon your heart.  And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.