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[foxrje]

My daughter seems to pick up languages rather quickly. I would like to start teaching her the Alef-Bet. She is not enrolled in any supplementary Jewish education outlets. I am an educator, yet, I know NOTHING about teaching her age group.

Help?!

--Debra Fox, RJE

[AlizaShap]

You can start familiarizing her with the letters by singing an Alef Bais song  as part of a daily structured activity.  This way she will recognize the names of the letters and the order.  In addition, you can choose a letter per week or month (depending on how much time you devote to it daily) to focus on.  Then you can do activities and games relating to the letter of focus.  There are many coloring pages and pictures on Chinuch.org that could help you with this.

[csbarrocas]

Make learning alef beis interactive. Use 3-d letters (peices from an alef beis puzzle) and make up stories about each letter.Play with them together and have them"interact" w/ each other.
ex.Alef is waving her hand- she has two feet, she is going to learn Torah sshhh! She's very quiet and shy. she doesn't talk

[dascenter]

What do you mean by your daughter "seems to pick up languages quickly"?

We don't teach reading as a first step in language acquisition.
We teach vocabulary followed by grammatical structure.
This then gives the child something to base the learning of reading off of.
Think about how a newborn is exposed to English for years before letters are introduced.

Additionally, one of my daughters was having trouble because her school used a program where you jump into words right away rather than waiting to learn all the nekudos (vowels).  When they got up to words of 4 sounds, most starting with hay hayedia (= article "the") she was having trouble because it was too much for her to hold at one time to read. I tried explaing to the teacher that if the girls had more language knowledge she (and others would know that the hay can stand alone which would allow her to read the word in two managable parts.
The other problem I bumped into was when they learned the cholum (oh) which they were taught to pronounce as (oy) her reading wasn't clicking becuase in Parsha she was learning about parshas Bo with makas bechoros but when asked to read it she was saying boi and bechoyroys so the connection wan't being made.
Educators MUST understand that language knowledge is the basis for reading and that consistancy is crucial.
There are enough genuine reading problems out there without creating artificial ones.
Only after your child has sufficient Hebrew or Yiddish vocabulary should letters be introduced.  Then you won't feel forced to use those convoluted programs that use English words e.g. bais - ball.
I find years later these children still get confused because of this saying things like "red and rosh both start with "R""!(it impacts spelling as well as language purity and fluency)
Hope this helps,
Chanie Monoker
Educational Analyst
732-272-8509