Hebrew Vocabulary Unit Lessons

Teaching our girls Hebrew is one of our highest priorities. 

Luckily, my husband and I are fairly competent in conversing in Hebrew. 

I try to set aside a time every day where I only talk in Hebrew. Unfortunately, it doesn't last too long. In order to help myself stay focused on speaking Hebrew, I have decided to think about Hebrew in Units/Categories.

Right now we are working on a unit study on clothing. So whenever anyone is getting dressed or clothing comes up in conversation/books, I talk to them about the clothing in Hebrew. 

If you don't already know about chinuch.org, you should definitely check it out to enrich your child's Jewish/Hebrew education. It's a free site where teachers share their own Judaica Material for all to use. 

Here is a fun activity I got from one of chincuh.org's contributors:

Print out the girl and clothing articles and stick on Velcro.

Make a dice with clothing articles drawn on. Make the rules however you like, but make sure to continuously name the clothing in Hebrew.

You can do the same with:

Mr. potato heads and rolling a die to learn body parts

Toy house and rolling a die to learn the names of rooms in a house

Colors

Numbers

Food

I should also mention that we have a lovely young woman come to our house once a week to talk to me and the girls in Hebrew. 

We also use our local library to find simple Hebrew books.

Mirik Snir writes simple Hebrew books for young children to enjoy.

Another book we enjoy is:

Here is a great site to visit that has hundreds of free Hebrew stories. In order to view it correctly, your browser must be set up to  read Hebrew.

The Well Trained Mind and Early Reading

The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise is often referred to as the homeschooler's "bible". It is written by a mother daughter team and outlines a classical approach to home education.

Since my girls are so young, I only got as far as the first few chapters. The later chapters are geared to educating older children. However, one of the best features of the book is its extensive list of tried and true resources for every subject. 

Anyone can access their resource list on the The Well Trained Mind website. Here is the book list/resource list that is relevant to early learners (birth to 5).

From this list I have purchased:

Here is some of our 3.5 year old's work:

It's very workbooky, but she like it. She is excited to do "work".

We also purchased:

My husband does these with her at bed time and her ability to blend the sounds is improving steadily.

An fun extension activity -Sentence Scramble Blocks:

Wooden blocks covered in painter's tape and words from the Bob Book set are used to make a sentence scramble activity. For directions, check out this fun kid activity site. This activity is far from independent work for my little girl, but it's just another way to practice reading in a fun way. 

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During car rides and other quieter times, we practice blending (putting together) and segmenting  (separating) sounds. We take turns making sounds for the other person to blend into a word. We started with two sounds and are now up to four. For example, I say the sounds p-a-t, and ask my daughter what word is that. When it's her turn to give me a set of sounds, she is working on her ability to segment the sounds in a word. She has to be able to say a word like pat and realize the three separate sound in that word in order to play correctly. Watching this development in her has been really exciting. 

Here are some other fun early reader activities we plan to do:

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Disclaimer: There are many different  homeschool philosophies out there some of which may strongly disagree with the above activities for a 3.5 year old. But, I promise you all that we do not spend more than a few minutes on these tasks and whenever my daughter shows us that she is done, she is done. We are also new at homeschooling and playing around with different approaches/methods and our methods will change over time and with each child. That is the beauty of homeschooling.

Now, just to get a little technical:  I also believe in Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development.  Vygotsky believed that an educator's role was to provide children experiences that were within their zones of proximal development (almost there, but not there yet), thereby encouraging and advancing their individual learning. My daughter knew her letters and their sounds at 18 months from pressing buttons repeatedly on a Leap Frog Toy. I believe reading is within her zone of proximal development, if I didn't we definitely would not be working on reading at this point.

Unique sukkah decorations

Sukkot (Sukkos) is a Jewish holiday of giving thanks for the harvest, as well as the commemoration of the forty years of traveling in the desert after Sinai and living in temporary dwellings. 

 Here is a look at some sukkah decorations I have been working on to donate to our shul's sukkah. 
Confession: since these will be hanging in our shul's sukkah, my perfectionist side took the better of me and I didn't let my girls help me. Hopefully, we will have some time on Sunday for them to make their own fabric hangings for our sukkah.

Much of my inspiration came from this lovely site.

I spray painted the canvas fabric with glittery gold spray paint. Makes for a really nice effect in the sunlight, but used 2 cans of spray paint on one 30in x 30 in canvas and wasn't going out to buy anymore.

Here's another one:

 And one more:

 I am not an artist, far from it. So how did I get such perfect lettering and images? By using my new best friend, the Silhouette Cameo Cutting Machine: 

This machine is pricey, but educators do get a 20% discount and that includes homeschoolers as well. 

So with the help of my husband we figured out how to get the Cameo to work with Hebrew fonts and viola perfectly printed signs. 

I printed my text/images on freezer paper then ironed it down onto the fabric and used the stencil for painting.

I should also mention that I glued the hems down on my fabric with fabric glue- so easy and no sewing required.

I then used acrylic paint, glittery gold and silver spray paint, and wooden dowels to create the signs. 

Another great idea: Ribbon Sukkah Chains

Not sure why I haven't seen or heard of this before, but it's genius.  Your choice of colors and styles is limitless and it will last through any possible rain showers. 

I was inspired by Birkat Chaverim who posted about cutting up fabric to make sukkah chains, I then decided to go with ribbon instead since the width is already pre-cut. I used fabric glue to attach the chains.

              Lastly, here is a site with a comprehensive list of sukkah decorating ideas:  http://www.amotherinisrael.com/guest-post-easy-inspiring-sukkah-decorations/

                       Would love to hear about other people's unique 

                     Sukkah decorations. Please share in the comment    

                                            section below: 

                                   

Jonah and the Whale Activity and Craft

Since we read the story of Jonah (Yonah) on Yom Kippur, I introduced my girls to the story today.

We started with this coloring book that includes a simple overview of the Jonah story:

Available at The Judaica Place

We targeted these concepts:

-teshuvah means feeling sorry for something and trying your best not to do it again 

-Hashem loves all his creations and wants every one to do teshuvah to get closer to Him.

I then made this milk jug whale for them to play with:

The girls loved snacking on these:

They are kosher and a pretty appropriate snack for your little ones on Yom Kippur.

We then did a quick and easy math activity:

Place the appropriate amount of whales into the ocean.

Check out this cutie pie telling the story of Jonah:

                    

FYI: If you do a search in youtube for any Torah/Jewish story, you will most likely come across a nicely put together cartoon version of it. Many made by Christians and many staying true to the p'shat (the literal meaning).

Hebrew and English Phonics

We are spending a few minutes each day on some phonics work. Using chalk board paint, magnetic letters, and a cookie sheet (use one without a coating or bare metal from a hardware store), we created our phonics work station.  

I bought this paint, but check out this super easy way to turn your favorite color paint into a chalkboard.

Right now we are at the phonemic awareness stage which is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds in a word. 

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Check out this site for some simple activities to target phonemic awareness.

Here ares some things we did:

Match the beginning Hebrew sound. Worksheet source

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Btw, this is a Hebrew reading program I have heard good things about, but have not personally seen or used  

Circle the word that starts with... or ends with...

Matching letters in sight words (not exactly phonemic awareness work). Got these worksheets from this great resource for teacher made materials 

Working on word families by changing the first letter and practicing reading the word. Also taking turns making rhyming words.

On my to do list:

Word family eggs

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