I recently started teaching an adult learn-to-read Hebrew class .  Very quickly the students found themselves caught up  in The Aleph Bet Story pictures and language surrounding each letter.   From the beginning  you have to look for ‘corners and curves, openings or closings, letters on the line or dropping below it, dots, arms, legs, toes or tails” in order to learn the letters!  One of the students commented that he hadn’t known that there were so many details to attend to just to learn the letters!  “But”, he added, “that is exactly what I needed, since I half know the letters and don’t really know the vowels”.

The idea behind each letter story is the challenge to really see “What’s special about each letter?”  The goal is to remember the letter’s special features forever and cure from the outset, the classic confusion between similar look letters like dalet/resh, mem/tet, bet/caf, hey/chet/tav.

So ‘dalet has a dark, dirty, dented corner that creepy things love’ and ‘resh is round like a rollercoaster’ and please don’t ever forget it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

‘Mem (or Molly) is open on the bottom and is losing her marbles (or m & m’s) .  Mem sofeet (or Mort) is closed and gets to keep his marbles (or m & m’s)’.   ‘Tet (which looks very similar to mem)  is open on top and can’t keep all of the popcorn inside!’ so that helps us keep mem and tet in order and bring along the m & m’s and popcorn for good measure to help learn those letters.

‘Bet  is open on the left, has a belly button, is square on the bottom and has a tail on the right’.  ‘Caf  is open on the right, can catch (it also has a dot on the inside) and plays baseball!  Caf can catch, chaf can chit and chaf sofeet has a homerun!’

‘Hey has one leg that connects to its top but also has a broken leg’, chet  has two legs that connect to its top and looks like a ‘choopah’ (or wedding canopy), and tav has two legs that connect to its top, but has toes on the left and loves to wear toe polish!’

There are more Hebrew letter adventures in The Aleph Bet Story.  And you thought you were just learning the aleph bet!!!

Brainstorming with teachers is one of my favorite activities.  New activities always result from the conversations.   Most recently, I was speaking with a second grade teacher who uses the five-book Read Hebrew program.  In addition to teaching a new letter in each lesson, she wanted to include more conversational Hebrew.  We talked about using the picture words on the “I Can Speak” pages.  In addition, there are flash cards and the “Picture Book” which also teach vocabulary through the same simple pictures.  The Picture Book organizes the picture words by topic.

We talked about building a story on the black (or white) board using the flash cards.  There are great magnets (rather than adhesive) one can use to hold up or move the flash cards around.  We came up with the following idea.

Students can create a real story in English adding the picture words that they know or they can create a ‘Silly Story’.  In Books Four and Five there are ‘Silly Stories’ that use Hebrew words connected to the letter being learned.

Another possibility is working on real conversational Hebrew.  A phrase can be repeated with each student introducing a new noun .  For example, the teacher could introduce a ‘Yaysh li’ story and students could use the phrase and then pick a flash card and put it on the board, saying the full sentence in Hebrew.  Other Hebrew conversation could be built around, ‘Ani ohev/ohevet’ or ‘Ani rotzeh/rotsah’ or ‘Ani ochel/ochelet’.   The teacher could offer the students only the appropriate nouns in order to focus on them, or let students pick the words they know to create a ‘Silly Story’.

With the Flash Cards the students will be speaking, moving around and reviewing the words they know.

I had a call last week from a mom outside Chicago who is working on her synagogue’s Book Fair. She told me she and her friends loved The Aleph Bet Story and wanted to see about carrying some Sarah and David Books at their upcoming Book Fair. We went through all the possible options and then she let me know which books to send her. Then we got to the logistics.

Well, it turns out that this Book Fair is taking place at my first synagogue which was in Deerfield, IL. I was born in Highland Park and my family went to Moriah the years we were living there. I told her, “we’re almost like local authors”. How fun.

She’s setting up a whole Sarah and David Corner at her Book Fair. It’s a great way to go “home”.

Sunday before Sukkot, I visited with Erez and spent the evening making sukkah decorations.  He showed me his lulav, a paper towel tube painted green and a styrofoam etrog painted yellow which he made at pre-school.  For Erez, still in the Rosh HaShanah mood, the lulav also served double duty as a shofar. Tooooooooooot! Then we got busy making sukkah decorations in his kitchen.I had brought a pad of construction paper and crayons.  We worked with scotch tape and scissors.  I started to cut strips for a paper chain.  The evening quickly turned into a negotiation for the one pair of scissors that his father Ori could find in the house.  From there, we both chose the colored papers we needed and ripped away.

He became very engrossed in working with the scissors, tearing sheets into all sizes and from there succeeding in cutting little pieces with the scissors.  Cutting the scotch tape strands down to size rather than mushing up long strips became the challenge of the evening. 

By the end of the evening, he knew how to handle the scissors, angling them correctly with two hands in order to cut strips in half as I held the tape taut in front of him.  Needless to say, I had lots of scotch tape at my fingertips for making a paper lulav, etrog, paper chain, apple and honey jar. We created a Sukkah corner showing a paper chain, a paper lantern, apples and honey, a collage of Erez’s cuttings, a ‘Bruchim HaBaim’ (welcome) project from his pre-school and pictures of  the seven species of Israel (grapes, olives, dates, figs, pomegranate, wheat and barley).  These seven species or ‘sheevat hameenim’ are cited in Deuteronomy and decorate sukkahs and Tu B’Shevat (Jewish Arbor Day) seders. The next day I added some colorful fall leaves and strands of dried wheat.

Erez woke up the next day very pleased with his colorful sukkah corner in his kitchen.
                                                 

I just bought three wonderful books, two for the Jewish holidays and one a Bible story for young children:

Celebrate:  A Book of Jewish Holidays  by Judith Gross.

Illustrated by Bari Weissman.  Grosset & Dunlap

In a few concise pages with charming family scenes for each holiday, parents and children are introduced to the Jewish holidays.  Shorten the text a little for children under three.  This one has been around for a while but is fun, informative and fresh in its appeal.

Celebrate!  Stories of the Jewish Holiday by Gilda Berger.

Paintings by Peter Catalanotto. Scholastic.

This is a more advanced book on the holidays, but the rich, engaging stories will appeal to all ages above five.  Each holiday story opens with artwork depicting a scene from the story and concludes with  recipes, craft activities and a ‘How We Celebrate’ section. For each story, the author cites the source and includes a timeline.  A great review for parents and invitation to look more deeply into the history and the sources on which the stories are based.

Noah’s Big Boat:  A Lift-the Flap Bible Book by Allia Zobel-Nolan.

Illustrated by Steve Cox.  Kregel Kidzone

I saw this book and knew it was perfect for Erez.  As a two year old, he’s a master flap-lifter, a skill he’s been honing since he was five or six months old.  As the cover announces, it has 45 fun flaps distributed through five two-page scenes.  Flaps in each scene also hide pictures that feature numbers, colors, shapes, animals or animal sounds.  All ages will enjoy the details, the rhyming text and happy energy in each scene.

The table was set with all the foods we use for New Year’s blessings:
apple, honey, pomegranate, butternut squash, dates, carrots, beans, beets,and fish with fish head and a round raisin challah. For the holidays, we pull out a special kiddush book we bought in Jerusalem which includes a kiddush and set of blessings for each holiday. Each kiddush and blessing is labeled and decorated with colorful borders.

We were a small group,Eva (my youngest), Ori (my eldest) and his wife Mara, and their two children, Erez (2yr. 4 mon.) and Maya (5 months).  Lily (my middle child) was making her first Rosh HaShanah dinner for friends.

Erez has been with us for many Friday night dinners, so he’s become familiar with the silver cup (he has his own), and sweet wine (Maya has already had a taste!) and blessings said for wine, washing and challah.  Even at this early stage, he’s a confirmed English speaker and the ‘cha’ sound in challah gets stuck and comes out as ‘k’.  We’re working on it.

Often he asks for a copy of the book that we are using. Erez usually sits across from me and my husband Avi, and between his parents. As we began to sing, I was thrilled to see Erez in the classic pose of very young Jewish boys sitting engrossed over their first Hebrew book. With the blessing book open, his kipah on and his finger on the words, he proceeded to chant in a kind of jibberish or Hebish he uses to signify Hebrew. The blessings however, were loud and clear, ‘Baruch atah adonai eloheynu melech haolam …………….’. amen, and Shanah tovah’. He loved the apple and honey.

For Erez (and now Maya), learning to be Jewish began with the first silver cup, the songs (Avi loves to sing) and that sip of sweet wine.  Beginning around six months and with every week that’s passed, Erez has been taking it all in and now, he’s joining in!

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy New Year. L’Shanah Tovah.

I just came back from an evening workshop that I led for a few schools in Northern California. What an eye opener for me. I’ve been presenting the curriculum to schools for a while now but it’s still always so refreshing when the curriculum gets such warm reception from teachers and educators.

In tonight’s workshop, I presented to a couple of schools that had determined they would be using the Sarah and David Curriculum this year, but hadn’t figured out yet exactly which books would be used in which grades. The educators wanted their teachers to see the materials to get their buy-in and help them make final determinations. Well, needless to say, the teachers were excited. One educator said to me, my teachers were sitting around the table getting really excited. They even commented that “now we’re excited to start school…and to use these new books”. I thought that was a great outcome.

Another educator commented to me that she was impressed that her Israeli teachers liked the Read Hebrew curriculum so much. They could appreciate that the Sarah and David curriculum was designed to work for American students and liked the approach. And they liked the conversational Hebrew parts of the curriculum as well. They could introduce lots of everyday topics in simple Hebrew and the pictures would make it easy for the students to understand, without translation or the need to read Hebrew.

It’s nice to interact with the different schools

We’re excited to introduce our new Bar/Bat Mitzvah Book. We’re putting the finishing touches on it now, and to do that we’ve enlisted a team of rabbis, cantors, parents, teachers and friends to provide feedback.

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We had a brainwave this spring. We know we’ve done things a little differently in our curriculum, and since we’ve introduced the company, we’ve constantly been thinking about the best ways to communicate how our curriculum works. (more…)

The Aleph Bet Rock Video is Live on YouTube! All year long people have been telling us how much their children are enjoying The Aleph Bet Story and CD. Teachers have told us that their class has gotten out of their seats to sing and dance to the Aleph Bet Rock. And parents have told me that the CD has become an every night listen…even an in the middle of the night listen. One child woke up in the middle of the night to hear the CD. Needless to say, I was thrilled. (more…)