Can't believe our school year is over.

Image : dumpaday.com

Well, wait no longer.  Bottled water...and...and...the last letters / vowels we learned this year!

I hope everyone has enjoyed the beginning of their summer vacation.  School was so fun and busy in the last week of classes that this newsletter has being laying in wait.  LOL.

LAST LETTERS WE LEARNED


The letter פּ Pay : The letter pay makes a "p" sound and has a penny. A great way to remember it is to think. "You have to pay a penny."

 PAY

The letter פ Fay: The letter fay is pay's fraternal twin. They are almost identical, but have a key difference. Fay makes a "f" sound and "fay is free". No penny.

FAY

The letter samech makes a "s" sound and looks like a stomach or circle. Even though circle begins with a "c" we are still able to hear that "s" sound.

                    SAMECH

ג gimmel makes a "g" sound like grape. It also happens to look like a giraffe, complete with a long neck and front and back leg. 

                      GIMMEL

Sin makes a "s" sound like the word Yisrael.  The best way to distinguish sin from shin is to remember that a sin is never right.  A shin is always right.

Zayin makes a "z" sound as in mezuzah.  It can be remembered by looking at its zainy (silly) hair style.

LAST VOWELS WE LEARNED

This vowel makes an "eh" sound and can be found underneath Hebrew letters. There are 2 easy ways to remember this vowel sound.

1.) The 3 dots look like a bunch of eggs.

2.) The 3 dots look like the eyes and mouth of a t"e"ddy bear.

This vowel makes an "ay" sound, as in play, and can be found underneath Hebrew letters as well. To help the kids remember I told the story of 2 friends asking each other if they want to go play.

Dot 1: "Hey, you want to go play?"
Dot 2: "Yeah, let's go play."

Both:" We can go play today!

I cannot express how incredibly proud I am of every student's accomplishments this year.  HAVE AN AMAZING SUMMER! AND...STAY COOL!



מִזְרָח Mizrach means East

This week, we continued our learning and celebration of Yom Ha'atzmaut.  

We also made our own mizrach. You place a mizrach in your home on an east facing wall to remind you of which direction points to Israel, Jerusalem, the Kotel.  It was beautiful teaching about both Israel and this concept together. It also connects to our Tefilah (prayer).Think of how we turn to the East during the Amidah.  To help you locate an eastern wall, most iPhones are equipped with a compass in your Utlities app.

SHABBAT SHALOM

More Letters, More Vowels

THE LETTER ח

The letter ח ( Chet ) makes a "ch" sound, just like כ (chaf). Although they look different and have a different name, how great is it that they make the same sound! There are lots of great ח (chet) words. Here are the ones we learned.

Challah חַלָּה

Milk Cha-lav חָלָב

Cat Cha-tool חָתוּל

Life Cha-yeem חַיִּים

Window Cha-lohn חַלּוֹן

Hot Cham חַם

Chanukiah Cha-nu-key-ah חֲנֻכִּיָּה

THE LETTER ט

The letter ט (tet) makes a "t" sound. As we have ת (tav) that makes the same sound, here is how we remember which is which.These little stories are very important when it comes to our sound alike letters.

                                                              ט Tet has a tear

but

ת Tav has a tail

Here are some words we learned that start with a ט 

Phone Tel-eh-phone טֶלֶפוֹן

Hike Tee-ul טִיּוּל

Ring Ta-ba-at טַבַּעַת

Good Tov טוֹב

Tallit Ta-leet טַלִּית

Nature Teh-va טֶבַע

Tennis Teh-nees טֶנִיס

A NEW VOWEL

I am excited to announce we have officially added a new vowel to our growing Hebrew knowledge.  This new vowel makes an "O" sound and its dot can be found Over its body.  Get it, OVER. 😊

It also has special super powers that can make its body invisible.  If the body disappears but the dot is over a letter we still say "O",  

Here is an example :   לֹא The body is gone, but the dot is still over. In this case, it's with a lamed so we would read this as LO.

These Kid's are Hebrew Rock stars!

The Letter ע (AYIN)

The letter ע (ayin) is very similar to the letter א (alef) in that they are both silent unless paired with a vowel. Below are some useful words that start with ע (ayin). Many of the words are already in our vocabulary.

Pencil    e-pa-roan       עִפָּרוֹן

Eye      ah-yeen         עַיִן

Eyes    ay-nah-yeem     עֵינַיִם

Tomato   ag-va-ne-yah     עַגְבָנִיָּה

Ten           eh-ser            עֶשֶׂר

Hebrew     eve-reet     עִבְרִית

Cake       oo-ga       עוּגָה

The Letter נ (Nun) and ן (Nun Sofit)

The letter נ (nun) makes a "n" sound and is very small in size. It's like there is "nun" there. Here are the nun words we learned.

candle      nehr       נֵר

candles     nehr-ot    נֵרוֹת

Snake       Na-chash     נָחָשׁ

Shoe       na-al      נַעַל

Prophet    Nah-vee       נָבִיא

Miracle      nehs          נֵס

ן (Nun Sofit or Final Nun)

The letter נ is one of 5 letters that I refer to as transformers.  When a nun is the last letter in a word, it transforms into a different form.  When נ nun is the last letter in a word it becomes a final nun ןor a nun sofit.  If you look at the picture above, you will notice that a final nun is longer and goes below the writing line,  In class, we really focused on understanding that NUN SOFIT ן can only come at the END of a word.

To help reinforce our new knowledge, we made a נָחָשׁ (snake) that is both a נ  and ן depending on how you move it.  It was really neat seeing their excitement about learning a final letter,

Who? What? I. 

Last week in class we focused on some question words.  We also learned the very useful pronoun "I."

    מַה means What

    מִי  means Who

אֲנִי  means I

Birthday of the Trees

Not only does Tu B'shevat celebrate the trees, it also signals the blooming of the first flowers in Israel.  To celebrate this special chag, in our class, we learned the brachot (blessings) for foods that come from the tree and foods that comes from the ground.  To reinforce this concept we also sorted fruits and vegetables on our very own trees.  

In addition,  we learned about the Shivat Ha'minim (Seven Species) that we eat on the chag. 

AND DID A TASTE TEST!!!!   

Red = Solmson

Blue = Weiser

Green = Shell

Judaics: Mitzvot and More

Tzadik : A righteous person.  A person that does the right thing no matter what.

A few weeks ago, in honor of MLK Day, I taught a lesson about what it means to be a tzadik.  We spoke about Martin Luthur King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel being tzadikim, righteous people.  In addition we spoke about the ways that they can be a tzadik everyday, despite the fact that they are little.

Kippah

Contrary to popular belief, it is not a mitzvah to wear a kippah.  It is however a special act that allow many Jews to connect to G-d and mitzvot.  In class, we discussed that some girls don't wear one and some do.  Also, that some Jews wear them all day, everyday. While other Jews may wear one only to study or pray.  

Mezuzah

Last week, we learned all about the mezuzah. From what it is to what the scroll inside says.  Here are some important things to know about the mezuzah.

• It is a sign that a house is being dedicated as a Jewish Home.
• The ש shin on the mezuzah case stands for שדי Shadai (Another name of G-d) and not for Shema as many people believe.
• The parchment inside contains the Shema: including the V'ahavta.  It is called a klaf.

The mezuzot your children created were so beautiful.  Due to  excitement from parents and students to put them up, I will be sending home a photocopy of the klaf to place into the mezuzah cover your child brought home.  That way it can be put up and you can take your time getting a Kosher scroll, if you wish.

I have placed the copy of the Klaf along with pictures of our other treasures into your child's HW folder. Please be on the look out today or tomorrow, as they can be added to your child's treasure box.

We are on a roll...

גן  has been working hard on new letters and vowels.  They are reading so many words and having so much fun doing it.

The letter צ (TZADEE)

צ makes a "ts" sound. A way to remember צ is to look at the triangles that the letter creates. The triangles look like pizza slices that were removed. When you say the word pizza, the sound that is created by the "zz" sound is identical to that of the letter. Here are some words we learned:

Color     Tseh-va      צֶבַע

Bird      Tsee-por      צִפּוֹר

Turtle        Tsav           צָב

North     Tsa-phone     צָפוֹן

Frog    Tsfar-day-ah   צְפַרְדֵּעַ

Tzedakah                   צְדָקָה

Yellow        Tsa-hov       צָהֹוב

HOORAY!!! WE LEARNED A NEW VOWEL

We learned "chirik". The Hebrew vowel that makes an "e" sound. Think of "e" in the word "be". This vowel is found underneath our letters. There are 2 main ways to remember what sound this vowel makes.

1.) It's one dot so it's so "E"asy to remember.

2.) It looks like one "pea"

Sometimes this vowel is followed by the letter י (yud). Despite the addition of the י (yud) we still say only "e".  

קָטָן  and גָּדוֹל  

Little and Big

We have also spent time recently learning the words for little and big in Hebrew.  This is important working vocabulary to have, so we practiced hard and even did an object sort.  This activity also tied in with their Koof knowledge.  In Hebrew, we say the adjective after the noun.  So in the picture above, you would say דב קטן (Dov Katan). Where Dov is the noun, bear, and katan is the adjective describing the bear.

Say "Shalom" to.....ק (KOOF)

The first letter of 2017 is the letter ק (koof). ק (koof) makes a "k" sound and is the second letter we know that makes the "k" sound. We remember this letter by thinking of the top part as a קשת (keshet) rainbow. We also learned that קשת means headband. They do look a lot alike. Here are some great words we learned:

Rainbow    Keh-shet    קֶשֶׁת

Community  K-he-lah    קְהִלָּה

Monkey       Kof        קוֹף

Small          Ka-tan       קָטָן

Summer       Ka-yetz        קַיִץ

Cold               Kar             קַר

    Holy        Ka-dosh        קָדוֹשׁ

SHABBAT SHALOM