Aleph Bet

Silver Member Joined: Jan 22 2009 Posts: 855

How do u teach aleph-bet to a 2-3 year old?
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Posted: Sun, May 15 2011, 2:42 pm Post subject:

2-3 year olds don't need to learn alef beis. You can expose your child to alef beis because they are holy.
Read alef beis books a picture of an object and a picture of a letter to your child like "Good night my friend alef".
Play with magnetic letters or letters from a wooden puzzle, " I'm b-b-b-beis can I come play with you alef" See alef is waving his hand in the air, he can't talk, but he wants to play....
Form the letters out of clay or play dough

Posted: Sun, May 15 2011, 3:02 pm Post subject: re: Aleph Bet

Tiale, are you a Lubavitcher? (for some reason I'm under that impression). It's a minhag by chassidim to teach the letters out of the sefer haTanya (to show them to the child on the shaar blatt of the Tanya). The Frierdiker Rebbe notes in his reshimos that when he was a child, he was shown the letters from the Alef Bais from there, and the Rebbe explains the meaning and importance of this in a sicha.

The famous Gaon and chossid, (whom the Rebbeim call HaRav Hatzaddik!) R. Hillel Paritcher said that the segulah in this minhag is that a child who learns Alef Bais from the Tanya will never become an apikores!

(All this and more is printed in the sefer "HaTanya Kadisha Vkoichoi Ho'eloki", compiled by R.Moshe Nisselevitch z"l.)

When I taught kindergarten, we had a large, poster size Tanya shaar blatt in our classroom. When introducing a new letter, I used to call over each child separately and help him find the letter we were learning in the Tanya. I'm pretty sure that many classes still have this, and now that printing is so easy, some teachers send home a laminated shaar blatt yearly.

I learned about this minhag from my husband, who was taught this way as a child. He remembers his father holding him, and showing him the letters; although he didn't read at the time, in particular he remembers the impression of the words in the beginning of the Perek, in larger type, which later on he could identify as "והנה" Smile

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Posted: Sun, May 15 2011, 3:34 pm Post subject: re: Aleph Bet

If a child is interested, s/he can actually be taught aleph beis at 2, 3 or 4. I have done it and think it's a good thing - if the kid loves that sort of thing.

1. Create flash cards.

2. Show the child just an aleph and a beis. Play with identifying these correctly.

3. Slowly add more letters, each on its own flashcard. Maybe one a week. Play the identification game with all the letters your child recognizes so far.

Note: Don't talk too much. Just show the flashcard and say 'aleph". Don't add explanations. Certainly not about the dot being in the beis but not in the veis. Just let your child see for himself/herself.

4. When your child knows all the letters, start over one by one with the sounds. Show aleph and say "aleph". Show beis and say "beis...bbb". Gradually add all the letters one by one, making sure your child knows the difference between all the sounds perfectly before adding a new sound.

5. The next step (this may be a year later) is to make flashcards of the vowels. Teach them one by one. Place the kamatz flashcard under the aleph and say "uh". slowly add another letter (place the kamatz flashcard under the beis and say "buh"). Move on only when the child differentiates perfectly.

6. Then you can combine flashcards to make two-syllable 'words".

7. Eventually you will be combining letters and vowels of varying types.

8. Time to move on to the siddur!

Remember: This can take like two years. But your child will really know how to read correctly.

I would only work with the kind of young child who begs for more and more.

Additional readiness tips:

9. First see if your child can learn to pick out an aleph from a page with triangles, circles, squares and alephs.

10. With one of my kids we started by cutting cheese into squares. When the child was used to the cheese shapes, I introduced homemede aleph beis flashcards of the same shape.
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Posted: Sun, May 15 2011, 7:45 pm Post subject: re: Aleph Bet

my kids learned a great song from their online school teacher that helps them remember which letters have dots etc. and has great hand motions to go with it. my 22 month old goes around singing it as well
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