the neverending battle

sometimes i think every homeschooling teacher must ask herself at one point: what am i doing wrong? she would NEVER carry on like this at school in front of a bunch of her peers and a different adult.

so as per plan, i was doing one pasuk today. with 5 new words. so we started off amiably enough. i told her i wanted to do a pasuk, she picked a time, we started. i got out the dictionary because there were a couple of nouns i had the gist of, but didn't know specifically, and figured i'd see what would happen if i had the dictionary out and i didn't know the word either.

so we hit the first new word. i wrote it in hebrew and left a blank. she wanted me to tell her. i said, let's do the rest of the pasuk and then you should be able to guess from context. she started whining that she wanted me to tell her. i said i want her to guess. she started crying that she never guesses right (which is not true). i said let's wait and see and then i'll tell you if you don't guess right. then we got to the first verb i didn't know. i said there are 2 i don't know, so you do one and i'll do one. she agreed. she decided to do the first word (ably remembering the prefix "i will"). so i wrote down שית on the white board. she asked me to open the dictionary. i said nope. she opened it to shin. interestingly, she didn't look for shin yud, but turned to the end of the shins. i scanned the page and saw that שת was there, and had the right definition. great. i said, oh, there it is! this was a mistake. she then wanted me to point out the column. i said no, which was perhaps another mistake coz why the heck do i need her to be able to use the dictionary? i thought i decided a month or more ago that all adults can pretty much use a dictionary, so why torture her now?

anyway, she went into full blown tantrum. literally lying on the floor and rolling around crying. seriously. she's going to be 9 in a few weeks.
the new me, confident that asking her to do this amount of work is reasonable, said, "here's the white board and the marker. when you find the word, write it on the board." and i left the room.

do all homeschoolers tantrum? coz i have taught in school. they don't do this.

soon i hear her calling me, that it's all shins and no sins. then i realize that she misread the yud that i put for the shoresh as a dot on the left side. i called back that it's a shin; check the pasuk. she does, and begins berating me for writing a sin. i told her it's a shin and a yud in the shoresh, and show her in the dictionary how the shoresh is written with a yud. she says she thought that one was it. and how come i wrote a sin. and how come i wrote a yud looking like a dot. ya know what? next time i'll have her write the shoresh.

she did nicely on the rest of the prefixes and suffixes, but the whole thing was a nonstop whinefest. i could tell she was strongly controlling herself, because she was softly whining instead of screaming, like she wanted to. so i didn't call her on it. because from experience i know that if i told her she's whining, she'd start crying harder about how upset she is. so i let it go but it was pretty unpleasant.

the pasuk says "between you and between the woman, and between your seed and between her seed." chana felt all those betweens were annoying. i felt happy that it was repeated so much and maybe she'll learn the word.

she found confusing the translation "he will crush you head" meaning "he will crush you (on the) head."

after translating the pasuk, she didn't want to read the whole thing to see if she could get that first word from context. again she cried.

(and she was away for shabbos and surely did not get enough sleep, but again, if i would wait for the perfect storm conditions she'd be grown w/ no education).

i was planning to walk away again until she calmed down but she grabbed onto me, so i asked if she wanted to read it while i sat next to her. she did. she read it, and it was tricky enough to follow everything and figure it out so i did tell her the word.

the end.

i'm wiped. why is this so hard? why so much energy? why so much unhappiness? what am i doing wrong? i am NOT doing things beyond her capability.

maybe i'm doing nothing wrong. maybe translating is hard work. maybe i'm guiding her through the frustration of putting in hard effort for a valuable goal.

there were a lot of days like this with sarah, too. and we survived. and she can translate chumash.

same old

today we had to leave early for art class, plus chana was grouchy. she had just spent a frustrating while on her art, and she wanted to relax. i decided we would do just one pasuk today. i was wondering if it would have been better to just skip it altogether. she hadn't eaten breakfast, either. sometimes i wonder why i try to do chumash like that, but i feel that if i waited for ideal conditions i'd be waiting for godot.

interestingly, as far as parenting goes, i wanted to be harsher to her (and indeed, when her tone hit a certain level i warned her). but i was kind and told her that i'd make her food, and this gesture of love calmed her down. i was pondering the irony that harshness breeds more stubborn behavior and love breeds bending, and the line between that and necessary discipline, but back to chumash.

i told her the word arur. she did decently with the suffixes though she complained greatly. the yud at the end of yemei--yesterday she remembered that was ...s of, but today she didn't (because she was cross). and she didn't remember the end of chayas (chayat) was 'of.' i imagine if it keeps coming up she will eventually.

i'd love to do another pasuk but shabbos is coming and the next pasuk has 4 new words and one that she's seen a couple of times but won't remember. 5 unfamiliar words is a lot. we'll probably have to do that slowly. the pasuk after that has 3 unfamiliar words.

it's a holiday weekend, so maybe we'll do one on sunday and one on monday. we'll see.

easy pesukim

so today i decided on 4 pesukim. chana balked at the thought. i said she can take as many breaks as she wants. she said but she'll need like 5 breaks! i said sure. she said she'd rather do 2 pesukim. i said yup.

she did the first pasuk easily. (all 4 were pretty easy today). i'm happy to report that ממני comes easily to her now. we noted that adam ran away because he was scared because he was naked, not scared because he ate from the tree! then she did the first half of the next pasuk, and needed a break.

then we did the second half of the second pasuk and she needed a break. i asked her to guess what adam would answer to the question of if he ate from the tree.

after she read the next pasuk (after her break), i asked her if adam said he did eat or did he deny it. and she said yes and no. because he blamed the woman, but also said he ate.

then she needed another break.

then she did the pasuk about the woman.

then she did a little dance and sang, "graduaaaaation!"

ps today were words like צויתיך which need a shoresh breakdown, and the 2 suffixes. the white board makes these a dream.

צ.ו.

then she adds a ה for צוה

and we isolate תי and ך

then she just has to figure out i commanded you or you commanded me.

much pleasanter

today was remarkably smooth, especially in light of yesterday. chana did 2.5 pesukim, starting with trepidation. she didn't want to do so much, didn't we agree yesterday we would do less, she's nervous she's going to yell at me.

but i took a look and it was 6 lines whereas yesterday was 8.5 lines. also, i went through it to see if she would need review of the prefixes and suffixes and there wasn't even one i needed to review. the couple of new vocab words were easily mimed or drawn.

zip zip zip.

chana asked some good questions. the classics, like "if hashem knows everything, how can they hide from him" and "why did hashem ask where adam was if He knew already." and she came up with an interesting one: if they ate the tree and now they knew stuff, how come they didn't know that hashem knew where they were?

breaks and tantrums

it's been a half an hour and it's been basically nonstop tantrums and timeouts. it's hard to know whether i've been pushing too hard and that's a problem, or if i've been pushing legitimately and she's protesting but ultimately will agree. sort of like the month when i decided she'd have to get her own bowl and spoon when she was 4 yrs old and the tantrums were unbelievable but ultimately she did it and it's not an argument anymore. growing pains.



i must say that i prefer (for myself) doing less work because the days are more chilled and pleasant. for all of us. otoh, she learns less. what is my goal here, anyway??

more work with breaks

so today i went through the pesukim and wrote down all the prefixes and suffixes beforehand and asked chana what they were and we used r' winder to look them up. i had decided she would do 2.5 not very difficult pesukim. it seemed to me the 3rd pasuk had a word she was unfamiliar with and that would upset her, so i decided to stop after 2.5.

the list ended up as:

כם- you.
נו- (with dagesh in nun) him/it
ו-(with dot in belly) they
נ-passive
תם-you
י-...s of
ת-you/she
ו-(w/ dot above) him/his
ה-her
י- he will
ת...נה-they will
ם-their
י...ו-they

turns out i forgot the prefix כ as "like" coz i thought she knew it but she didn't.
anyway, with all that to reference, she made it pretty easily through the first pasuk. then the further we got into the second pasuk, the more whiny and screamy she got. she doesn't want to do so much. it's too much. the phrase "כי טוב העץ" is too much, she didn't want to review all the words together to make sense of it, it's too hard, it's too much. i gave her a break. i wrote this. now i'll see if she can get back to it.

and she did the first half of the second pasuk and asked for another break. even though it's pretty simple, i think it is too much for her at this point and will go back to less tomorrow. but after this break she will do the next half. i'm curious if she will remember the word arum. likely not.

**

so the rest of the translating went off without a hitch. but then she had a question about the nakedness. so i asked her to say it so i could write it down (i used to have her write it down, but that was too much for her so now she dictates). she is currently tantrumming that she doesn't want to say it again, that she doesn't understand her own question, why does she need a question anyway.

i want her to be able to ask the question clearly and simply.

as she is carrying on, i am wondering if i am causing negative associations w/ questions. but questions are a natural result of natural curiosity. walking the line between making learning pleasant and not spoiling and disciplining when necessary. hard to know when to do what. intuition and teshuva are key.

still thinking about rewards

i'm reminded of alfie's point that if the work isn't too much for the student. and if the student understands the long-term goal of the activity even if the work isn't inherently interesting. then you get the same result out of a promised reward as you do if you gently remind the student to focus/continue working.

and you have the benefit of not turning the child away from the intrinsic properties of the activity.