A Sampling of Hebrew Letters -- Hebrew Alphabet Flashcards

I have always been interested in foreign languages.  When I was a teen I wanted to learn at least some parts of every language in the world.  Now I know that's a starry-eyed dream that will never happen; there are just too many languages :)

But languages are still fascinating, and whenever I hear someone speaking in a foreign tongue my ears perk up.  I know some French and Spanish, and a smattering of bits and pieces in a few other languages.  The most recent foray into another language was when my son James and I took a look at the Hebrew alphabet.

Besides the word,"shalom" we don't know many words in Hebrew at all.  But we learned some things about the letters.  This ancient language was one of the earliest to have a written alphabet; the letters were developed from those used by a neighbor to the Jewish people, the Phoenicians. 

The Greeks had also borrowed the Phonecian letters, and the Romans adopted use of the Greek letters --- so in a roundabout way, Hebrew and our modern English alphabet have a common origin.  The word "alphabet" itself comes from "alpha" and "bet" -- the first two letters in the Greek alphabet.  In Hebrew, these are "aleph" and "bet."

Each letter name in Greek or Hebrew (or Phonecian) is actually a word that starts with the sound associated with that letter.  So if we said our ABC letter names like them, we might say "apple, butterfly, car . . ."  In Hebrew, the first 3 letters go with "ox, house, camel").

For our study, we practiced saying and writing some of the Hebrew letters-- focusing on just the first 10 letters-- these were also formerly used as numbers (modern Hebrew has changed to using the western digital numbering system).  So number one would be represented by the letter aleph, number two would be bet, etc. up to ten.  The next 9 letters were used for writing 20, 30 . . . to 100, and the final three alphabet letters were used for 3 more hundreds (to make hundreds larger than 400, they would put these together-- 200 and 300 together would be used to write 500 . . .)  

I think it would be interesting to memorize all the letters and how to write them, and then practice writing some different numbers.  It was fun to learn even just up to 10, though.

For this short intro to Hebrew letters, we used two resources-- one was a book we just happened to have on our shelf.  Don't know where it came from, but it was perfect for a study like this . . . called A Hebrew Readiness Book, by Joel Lurie Grishaver, this is a Hebrew alphabet workbook for kids.  There is info to read about each letter, along with a picture of what the word is that goes with the letter.  They also show some simplified versions of Hebrew letters, for writing.  Here is a page with my son's writing of the first 10 alphabet letters (which are also numbers 1 - 10).  

He wrote them left to right, which isn't how Hebrew is written-- but for a first try it's just a minor mistake.  By the way, this alphabet workbook is totally "backwards" for an English speaker-- It begins at what we would consider the back of the book, with pages progressing from right to left (although English sentences on these pages are typed left to right).  The publisher for this workbook is Torah Aura Productions.

Another resource was a colorful set of flashcards, designed by Dinah Ely of The Traveling Classroom.  

Dinah offers these through her Teachers Pay Teachers store.  The artwork on these cards is beautifully done in full color.  Aleph shows an ox, bet has a house, gimel a camel, etc. Letters are shown as block text and cursive, as well as the way the ancient Israelites would have written them (called "paleo letters'-- how Hebrew looked at its beginning).  Down in the lower right corner there is the numerical equivalent for each letter, along with the Hebrew word used to say the number (although alphabet letters can be used to write the numbers, they still have their own number names).  The flashcards come as a printable ebook, with four cards per page (6 pages).

The same images on the flashcards are available in full-page size, too-- you can use the larger cards if you'd like to have a bigger image to present when learning/practicing the letters.  

There are some other Hebrew language items in Dinah's TpT store, too (her Passover Bingo game uses pictures along with Hebrew words), and she has a wealth of interesting Hebrew pins on her "Ancient Hebrew" pinboard:

http://pinterest.com/dinahely/ancient-hebrew/

If you're interested in doing a larger study in Hebrew (expanding to more words, grammar, etc.) you might like this website with free downloads of study materials: 

http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Grammar/grammar.html

Have you been curious to learn more about Hebrew?  What do you think about doing a short (or long) study of the Hebrew letters?

Making Matching Cards from Dollar Store Flashcards

Using dollar store flashcards is an easy way to make a set of matching cards.   You need to have two sets of flashcards.  At left in the picture below is the flashcard set I used, along with a set of blank jumbo playing cards, on the right.  Because these flashcards have occupations on both sides, I needed to glue them onto the blank cards (for matching cards, there needs to be nothing on one side or the same design on all the cards on one side).

Because I wanted to make Spanish practice cards (for occupations), I cut off the words at the bottom that named the job and told about it.

Then the pictures were glued onto the blank cards.

I always like to laminate matching cards, because we use them a lot, and when the backs get dirty, it's harder to use them to play matching card games (!); so I had these cards laminated, and then cut them apart, keeping the rounded corner appearance.

We have made several different sets of Spanish vocabulary card games, from different flashcard sets-- it usually involves gluing onto blank cards (because it is rare to find flashcards that only have pictures on one side); this takes time to do, but the finished result is very nice, and when laminated they will last a LONG time!

Da Vinci, in Words . . .

What would it be like to be a 15-year-old apprentice, living in Florence, Italy in the 1400's?  What kinds of art and learning would you encounter?  What would you hear about the Medici family, and the other families who were contesting for power in Italy?

Catherine Jaime's book, Leonardo the Florentine, paints a picture of all of this, with details that portray what this time period (Renaissance) was like.  This book is about Leonardo da Vinci, who spent much of his life as an artist and inventor in Florence.  Towards the end of his time there he began work on "Adoration of the Magi," his first large painting (about 8 feet square).

If you'd like to read about Renaissance times, or about Da Vinci in a historical fiction format, this book is a perfect fit.

There is also a sequel to this book, that tells about Da Vinci's further work in a different Italian city-- called Masterpieces in Milan (see earlier blog post about it here).

We used both books as read-alouds.  We read them out of order-- the Milan one first-- but it didn't seem to matter; both were books that held our interest, and we enjoyed learning more about Leonardo da Vinci and the culture of his time.

There is a third book available in the series-- we'll have to start on that one next . . . it is called To Mantua and Beyond, and picks up where the Milan book left off, through several more years of Da Vinci's life.

Catherine's books are available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle editions.

A Pinch of Salt . . .

Have you ever painted using salt?

I hadn't . . . and didn't really know what to expect, but this Friday when we did some watercolor paintings this one had salt sprinkles add in; you can see where the small "star-like" white spots are-- those are from salt that dissolved in wet paint.  It was a good fit for this picture, of ocean waves.

If you'd like to try painting with salt and watercolors, just remember that the effect doesn't happen instantly . . . it takes awhile to see . . . but after about 10 minutes the salt dots will be evident, and you can brush off any excess salt.

Math Without Writing . . .

Number Tiles! guest post on Dinah Ely's The Traveling Classroom blog: http://thetravelingclassroom.blogspot.com/2013/04/math-without-writing.html

 

A Preschool Big Bead Abacus

Here's a 10-bead abacus I made when my kids were younger.  We really enjoyed using this.  See the info below for instructions on how to make one.

Making a large-bead abacus is simple, but can be a little tricky.

First, find a wire hanger (this part is not always easy, as there are so many plastic hangers now). We did have quite a few wire hangers, so finding one was easy.  Also, you'll need some large wooden beads-- the kind that are used as lacing toys. They need to have a fairly wide hole.

Then, untwist the wire at the top, so both ends are open. Straighten out the end without the hook, so you can put the beads on.

Slip beads onto the wire, and past the curve so the rest on the bottom of the hanger. If you make 5 beads of one color and 5 of another color, this makes it easier to recognize larger numbers shown on the abacus.

Then retwist the wire at the top (the trickiest part; once taken apart sometimes it doesn't go back together exactly like it was before-- but if you work with it a little, jiggling and bending as needed, the two wires will twist together).

One more thing-- the hook needs to be bent inwards, so it won't be poking out, as a safety precaution.

Voila!  Now that the abacus is finished, you can try it out; your young preschooler will enjoy moving the beads one at a time, to count from one to ten. You can also work simple addition and subtraction problems by sliding the beads.

If you'd like some easy, extra-large-print math problems that are all ready to print out and use, take a look at   Preschool Math: Number Tiles.  In this one e-book, there are 4 sets of 20 pages each-- half the pages are for adding, and half for subtracting. Once printed out each set can be reused as needed, so this is a resource that just keeps going!

How to Make a Gigantic Hand-Dipped Candle

Once a month a homeschooled kids group meets at my house.  And in a recent month, we made candles!  They weren't all as gigantic as this one:

But still, they were an interesting craft to make, and also could be put to use, lighting our home tables!  My son James made this big one (23" tall).  Here is how to make a regular-sized dipped candle.  After the instructions, I can tell you how to modify them to make the really tall one.

How to Make Hand-Dipped Candles:

You will need: paraffin wax (available in the canning section of grocery stores), and a tall container to melt it in (we used an old ice cream maker's metal cannister-- you could use a metal coffee can or anything else you don't mind getting full of wax).  To melt the wax, start early-- It took about an hour for ours to melt-- We used two containers of wax, cut into smallish chunks.  Never heat wax under direct heat; use a double-boiler set-up, so the container holding the wax is inside a larger pan with water.  Wax is flammable, and in fact, if it gets too hot after melting and starts boiling it could burst into flames-- SCARY!  So be cautious and make sure you heat it until melted but then take it off the heat.

To get the color you can take the paper off crayons and add them in while the wax is melting (we used all the reddish tints I could find from our crayon collection-- you might want to try a candlemaking dye instead if you are short on crayons . . .)

The other thing you will need is wicking.  Alas! Our local craft store had no candle wicking available, but I did some research and found that you can make your own wicking string from ANY STRING that is 100% cotton, using a simple recipe.  It's really very easy to make, and probably a lot less expensive than getting pre-made wicking.  I found 100% cotton twine at a local kitchen store, sold for lacing up turkeys (synthetic blends could be a hazard or not work well when lit). You just cut the string in whatever lengths you'd like the wicks to be (ours were about 24" long-- keep in mind that one string will be used to make two candles), and let them soak overnight in a solution of  2 T borax, 1 T salt and 1 C water.  Then hang them up to dry.  We put ours on our clothes-drying rack and they became dry later in the day.

After the wax has melted, it's time for dipping the strings.  Because we did this as a group project, we took turns dipping, forming a long line that had a continuous change in "dippers."  With the middle of the string around a forefinger, the two ends were dipped quickly, and allowed to drip for a moment over a plate. then the person dipping would carry their string and go to the end of the line.  The next dipper would do the same, etc.  We put on some Christmas music (it was in December) and kept going for about 1/2 hour or so, until everyone was satisfied with the size of their candles.  Midway through, we even had an impromptu group song while dipping-- Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  Though music and singing are not actually necessary for making candles, they were a great addition, and added some extra festive feeling (!)

OK-- Now maybe you want to know how the giant candle was made . . . well, my son had two fairly large candles on each end of his string.  Then he got the idea to hold each candle by an end and dip into the middle (where there was no wax).  After dipping repeatedly to coat the middle section, he was able to create an especially long candle.  Here's another picture of it, with a flame: