I spy Alef Bet, a homemade compass and sandpaper letters

I got this great idea from another awesome homeschooling mom over at Counting Coconuts- but tweaked it with Alef Bet "beads" which are made from white beans. I used a Sharpie to write each letter on a bean and dyed the rice blue using food coloring.

Munchkin uses her Alef Bet chart to mark off the letters she "spies" until she finds them all! We use the same white beans as "markers" for the Alef Bet chart which I laminated for future use.

We also made a compass, just to satisfy The Little Guys curiosity... it was super easy and such a great learning experience.

Just take a saucer or bowl and fill with water. Then take a piece of cork (we used a cork wick holder left over from our oil Chanukah menorah) and place a needle on it, very carefully. Make sure to stroke the needle on a magnet a few times to activate its magnetic energy. Just place it on the cork and watch it automatically face north.

We turned the saucer around, only to watch the needle stay put. We also carefully turned the needle to face south and it automatically turned around by itself to face north. The Little Guy was AMAZED!

My sister in law gifted us with a set of Montessori Sand Paper Alef Bet letters. The kids love lining them up in order as well as feeling the letters.

I went one step further and made script Alef Bet letters out of sand paper and glued them to the back of the corresponding letter to get the kids familiar with script. So far, so good- they love them and its a GREAT introduction to Hebrew writing.

Here's the front:

and back:

Have a wonderful week,