something to work on

and we finished amongst some crying and bad tempers. she kept ripping the plastic tablecloth (we were sitting at the table) in frustration and i got annoyed that for the 20th time she still has trouble with sadeh and ma'ara (field and cave). i should drill her or something except that many times i drilled don't really seem to work all that well. but i dislike about myself that i give her the impression that she is stupid or defective for not remembering it after a number of times. it's not like she's doing it on purpose. this is, i think, one of the nastiest and most insidious things that i do as a teacher. and i would hate it if a teacher in school did this to my child.

overall, though, i did manage to keep my voice fairly even keeled. perhaps i should have let it go for today. but would it really be better tomorrow? i have to change my attitude.

sometimes there are days like these

who is responsible for the snarling dynamic that sometimes ensues? me or chana? we had a half an hr to do maftir of vayera and rishon of chaye sorah. neither of them difficult. chana had eaten and had plenty of notice.

i get irritated that she whines and has a headache and eye pain, even though i know from yrs of education that this is a common ailment that afflicts children who feel that the work they are doing is too much for them. i am irritated that the pesukim we have been doing and doing are still not sticking in her memory. what can we do to "make" her remember??

my negative expressions and implied disappointment are surely horrible in terms of a pleasant learning atmosphere.

then i asked if she wanted a break. she said no, then yes. then she went back to the tv and elazar started crying because his show wasn't over. and i said never mind, let's do the 10 more min until his show is over. and she grew furious (i'm being inconsistent, aren't i? completely). and i sent her to timeout. neither of us feels good about how this went.

there is still rishon to do. and new pesukim. i have a wedding today. who knows if we will get to rishon. let alone rashi.

today has left a bad taste in my mouth. it is unfair that chana is feeling bad about her own loss of control, and about her inability to remember the words (which surely is not her fault), when i am the adult in this interaction.

chana noticed yesterday during chazara that hagar was wandering around in beer sheva before it was named beer sheva in the bris between avraham and avimelech. good catch.

regarding the efron-avraham dialogue, chana said: "he listened to him but he gave him money?" yep.

chana reviewed revi'i today which is VERY long. and pesukim in chaye sara.

so we finished vayera and started chaye sora. chazara has been reviewing the aliyos of vayera. today we did shlishi. she actually remembered most of shlishi. rishon and sheni were a little more disappointing. she remembers the story but not really a lot of the words and phrases that originally gave her trouble. it feels like she remembers about 50% of the tough words/phrases. it's a little disappointing. i was thinking about what my goal is for her. ideally, i'd like her to remember these things. but despite our chazara, a lot of them are not sticking in her head. otoh, a lot of them are...

today's chumash went pretty uneventfully, though chana didn't want to do more than 3 new pesukim and i would like to push her. we only did shevi'i, no review, so she didn't spend so long on it, but she was still burnt out. then we did a 2.5 hr break, and headed into rashi. she acquitted "b'asher hu sham" admirably. and was furious through the new one. she got through the words fairly easily, but didn't really grasp the concept. i'm not sure i'll go back to it.

i got annoyed when she started whining and negotiating how much of the rashi to do and jack started waking from his nap. i said firmly that i had been asking to do rashi since 1, and now it was 10 to 2, and we don't have time for this since jack is awake, and she knows that i get annoyed when she pushes it off and pushes it off and then jack is awake. so she was so furious she couldn't even read, and said she was waiting until she could do it w/o screaming. i appreciated that she was controlling herself. but in the meantime, minutes are passing and jack is wanting to come out. so i then said that jack is awake and she has to do it.

this is one of the tough things about homeschooling. all this talk about individual attention is great, but sometimes the siblings interfere and you can't give the attention you want. or the mom is frazzled because of something going on with the siblings, and it affects the learning interaction and it's not the student's doing. (well, this time it was a bit chana's doing. but if there were no siblings, there would have been no issue).

afterwards, chana stomped upstairs to sulk. she did a nice job, though.

she asked today if hashem would have killed avraham if he would have refused to kill his son. also, the classic question--how was it his "only" son when he has yishmael? this irks her.

we've been zipping through akeidas yitzchak. a lot of the words are familiar, and even with the new words, i've been supplying them and in context they are fairly easy to remember. i see that a number of words that she had trouble with in the past are now part of her basic vocabulary, which is nice. such as "bno/bni" etc his son, my son. she had so much trouble with that in parshas noach, and it's finally sunk in. also the plural of mountains used to throw her off, but now she knows it. things like that.

naturally there are still words she doesn't know despite our numerous reviews of previous aliyas. today i decided to just do shevii, even though she really doesn't know shishi or even parts of chamishi to my satisfaction. but i'm not sure that her putting in the extra hour really makes a difference in her long term memory, and it definitely makes things unpleasant.

i think it's like a pendulum. sometimes it feels right to let go, take it easy, keep it pleasant. and then enough time goes by and it feels like it's time to tighten up, get more serious, hit the books more.

anyway, chana wants a loooooooooooong break before we hit rashi. as usual, i'm wishing i had more of a plan regarding rashi.