One surreal thing about schooling all year is that there’s always this feeling that you’re “partway” through the year. Nowhere near the beginning, but not approaching the end either. I don’t mind it, we’re definitely not in the doldrums, but it makes it tough to figure out when to stop and evaluate what we’re doing and whether it’s working.
Here’s what we’ve got going on for Limudei Kodesh (Jewish Studies) these days:
Parsha:- Copywork, my own (download printables here)
- Reading, questions and narrating from My First Parsha Reader
- Safa = Hebrew Language:
- Currently Migdalor, but I’m not thrilled with it anymore… see below for future plans.
- Chumash = Torah in depth:
- Leshon HaTorah, still plodding through book 1
- Bright Beginnings Lech Lecha workbook
- My own cut-apart sheets for individual pesukim
- Bekius = Breadth of Torah:
- Reading sequentially through Seymour Rossel's A Child's Bible books: Lessons from the Torah / Lessons from the Prophets and Writings,
- Interspersing these readings with Eric Kimmel's Be Not Far From Me, which I bought very cheaply at Value Village.
- Intermittently, we also read from "Yesh Lanu Llama" - just for fun
Things I plan to start fairly soon:
- Being better at davening!!! We haven’t done it with any regularity since the summer. Something about waking up too late in the mornings… :-(
- Safa = Hebrew Language:
- Shalom Ivrit Book 2. I have the book already and it looks good. Far more contemporary and the graphics are more normal-looking and less flashy. It has less writing than Migdalor, but I think that’s okay, because we’ll be working on script handwriting in a different book.
- Handwriting:
- Handwriting Without Tears Hebrew (Ktav b'Kalut)
- History:
- Seymour Rossel’s Introduction to Jewish History – I have the book, just need to figure out how to work this into our busy days…
Are you at the midpoint of your year yet? When do you sit back and evaluate what you’ve got going on and whether or not it’s working for you???
4 comments:
As an educator, I recommend AGAINST doing English and Hebrew handwriting at the same time. A little light copy work is fine, but actual handwriting instruction in two languages in opposite directions causes interference. Also, because English has lower case/upper case and letters of vastly different heights, you will inevitably end up with spacing/height problems either in English or Hebrew.
I recommend waiting until a child writes well in one language, add 2-3 months, and THEN get working on handwriting in the second language.
Interesting... we had a ton of reversals last year, but this year, she seems to have sorted things out for herself quite nicely. We definitely started English first, and have not done a formal Hebrew handwriting program yet. So I guess this is a good time to begin... :-)
We are at the same midway point. Since we have closer to a year round schedule, I don't really have a set time that I stop and take stock. Right about now when we've been at our current curriculum for awhile is a good time for me to do that.
We re-evaluate constantly. Changing as the need arises. We really like the Shalom Ivrit book. We are only in Book 1 and only on Chapter 4 because we are moving slow.
Going back and restarting the Chumash really helped. We are now back to Passuk 4 using pretty much only Bright Beginnings and flashcards.
We loved My First Parsha Reader but after 3 years switched to The Parsha with Rabbi Juravel. The jury is still out on our opinion of it though. Each portion is much much more in depth weaving in commentary without designating it as such.
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