Worth the wait...

The one and only א (ALEPH)

We have learned the most famous letter in the Aleph-Bet, א (aleph). Aleph is different from the other letters we have learned because...א is silent unless it has a vowel. Here are some very important and interesting א words.

Red        Ah-dom        אדום

Lion        Ar-yeh        אריה

Mom          E-mah           אמא

Dad              Ah-ba              אבּא

Spring        Ah-vev          אביב

Letter (in a word) Oh-t       אות

The letter  (vav)

Vav makes a "v" sound, and looks like a ורד (vered: rose) It has a bud on the top and a thin stem.  Be careful...it looks like reish ר but the roof is very small in comparison. The following are the ו (vav) words that we learned. 

Pink       Va-roh-d   וָרֹוד

Forever Va-ed        ועד

Curtain Ve-lon וִילוֹן

Rose Veh-red וֶרֶד

Say "Shalom" to.....ק (KOOF)

 ק (koof) is the second letter we know that makes a "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. Great words we learned included:

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

The letter צ (TZADEE)

The letter צ makes a "tz" 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

Can you believe we learned our third vowel?!

Our new vowel is so Easy to remember.

This week we learned the Hebrew vowel known as a "chirik". The vowel makes an "e" sound. For example, the sound that is created by the letter "e" in the the word key. Like our other 2 vowels it is found underneath the letter. Here are the ways I teach the kids to remember its sound.

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

2.) Also, it looks like a single pea.

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