Our Jewish Homeschool Preschool Curriculum 5776/2015-2016

My babies are officially Preschoolers and want to 'do school' like their older siblings.

So here is our Jewish Homeschool Preschool Curriculum for this coming year, hope you find it helpful!

I will go through each subject in more detail:

Davening

We use The Chabad  Children's Siddur. They have a boys one and a girls version. We love it because there are beautiful colorful pictures on almost every page and the letters are nice and big for little ones to learn to recognize the words and letters. Click Here to buy it Online.

We used to use My Sing Along Siddur with the CD to go along with it and my kids absolutely LOVED it. But as they got older, they wanted to be like their older siblings and have 'big kid' siddurs, so there we have it.

Hebrew Reading

Click Here to Buy Alef is for Apple

I have used the above books with ALL my kids and they have loved them.

Click Here to see a Full Review I wrote a while back on Alef is for Apple.

Hebrew Writing

I don't like to do a lot of writing with my preschoolers as I prefer to build up their fine motor skills so they will be ready to write by 6-7.

Here is a great book I made on ways to Explore the Hebrew Alphabet through fun fine motor skills and activities:

Click Here to Download and Print it, its FREE!

Parshah

We love love love these books! I print a lot of coloring pages from www.Chinuch.org and feel free to search my blog for ideas of projects and sensory bins for the Parshahs of each week.

Holidays

And depending on the month, I like to read story books, cook and bake foods for that holiday with the kids, print coloring sheets and do fun hands on projects which you will find here on the blog.

Now remember- at this age, it is really not your job to drill facts into their little brains. This is the age for them to explore and play and develop a love for learning. In my opinion, playtime should be more of a focus then school time at this stage. After davening, go play outside on the swings. Do a page of Alef Beis under a tree on a blanket. Read about the Parshah while all snuggled up on the couch before bedtime. While baking honey cakes for Rosh Hashanah, let the little ones help.

Preschool is a time of magical growth and discovery- don't stunt it because of your personal agenda to have your child reading Hebrew by age 5. And if they are reading Hebrew by age 5 because it is something they LOVE to do, by all means, read away- but every healthy child will learn to read and write at their own pace, trust them and trust yourself.

Good Luck with the New Year and I look forward to posting a Review on what looks like an incredible Davening Curriculum very soon!

Enjoy your week!
Always,

Elul- Helping our Kids connect to Hashem

Its that time of year again, where we teach our kids about The King in the Field and how Hashem is so accessible to all of us during this month.

We read stories and color pictures but how do we actually teach our kids how to connect to Hashem when He is so close to us?

This was something I was personally struggling with and after speaking with someone very wise and close to me, she suggested I write a letter to Hashem. Thank Him for all the things I am thankful for. Tell him what you are doing to connect to Him. Ask Him for what I need. And don't be shy about it.

It sounded a bit strange at first, but I did it. And it felt amazing.

And so I figured, why not give my kids the chance to do it, on a very simple level.

I made a template for them and we all sat down this morning and discussed ways to connect to Hashem. They all got their paper and for about 20 minutes were very deep in thought writing down or drawing (depending on their age) what they were thankful for, what they are doing to make Hashem proud and then their personal requests. I told them it was their private letters and gave them each their own folder to keep it in. I made a bunch of copies and decided to use these this month, before we daven.

They really enjoyed it and I think they really felt the connection in a very real way.

Click Here to download and print out my template or you can make your own.

Happy Elul,

Always,