ChinuchAtHome

This article is written hopefully to address some of the questions that have arisen regarding homeschooling the younger Jewish children around pre-K and K. Having home schooled a handful of Jewish children at this age myself, I am summarizing my experience to benefit others, if any. This is by no means an answer for everyone as each family dynamic is different.

Learning Torah through music

If we follow the advice of our Sages that when a child can speak we teach them the Torah verse, "Torah Tziva Lanu Moshe, morasha kehilas Yaakov" (The Torah that Moshe commanded to us is an inheritance of the congregation of Yaakov), and from there continue with other verses from the Torah, we will not go wrong. These verses can be sung and be ingrained in the neshamas of our kinderlach like second nature. There are many other verses including "Hamalach HaGoel", "Dovid Melech Yisrael", etc. that one can find in a bencher. The NCSY bencher compiles a list of popular verses and stanzas that can be sung, as well as zemiros. This is a fine way of teaching Torah to our young children, so that when they grow older they won't depart from it.

Uncle Moishe is another resource for Jewish lessons taught through song, some in popular secularized tunes, others in original tunes. One of my favorite music source is Dveikus volume 5 and 6. I find the rendition of popular Torah and prayer verses such as HaMalach Hagoel, Lecha Dodi, and Shalom Aleichem, to be very inspiring and soothing to the soul.

Learning Torah through stories and plays

There are so many good quality reading materials that are colorful and inviting read-alouds for parents to their young children. Pitspopany's series of Jewish stories and Artscroll's series to name a few.

Make puppets to represent various characters and construct a play with your children. Use household materials, such as egg cartons, popsicle sticks, egg shells, paper plates, and embellish with construction paper, glitter, crayons, markers and glue. No wonder on Pesach, our favorite holiday, the Plagues Bag is so popular as it is filled with symbols that represent the ten plagues.

If you are comfortable with Jewish audio tapes, there are parasha stories narrated by several Rabbonim, such as Rabbi Juravel. I personally haven't used this source, but I have heard others do. There are also Jewish videos out there depicting Jewish themes, but since I haven't watched any, I cannot recommend one way or another.

Learning Torah by example from parents

Parents who want their children to adopt mitzvos obviously have to undertake the mitzvos themselves. This includes the daily requirements (prayer, blessings, Torah study, etc.), the weekly and seasonal requirements (Shabbos, Yom Tov, mourning and fasting), circumstantial (bikur cholim,etc.), life cycle requirements (pidyon haben, bris milah, bar/bas mitzvah, chupah, etc.), and all time requirements (shemiras haloshon).

What I personally find important for my children is that we are living in galus and that we long to return to Hashem to serve Him again in His Sanctuary, the Third Bais HaMikdash, may it be rebuilt speedily in our days. That Israel is our home, and that we want to perfect ourselves so that we merit being redeemed the final last time to return to our home like a lost prince/princess to the King. We should never feel comfortable while we are at galus, and if we do, then something is not right with our soul.

Another important thing that our children learn to emulate from us, parents, is how we handle situations in our neighborhoods. For instance, how we handle non-Jewish holidays. This varies from family to family. In my neighborhood, we as a Jewish family, do not participate in Halloween, but in other religious Jewish neighborhoods, some families do, including rebbeim. So, each family has to take a stand on what is important in their eyes. We like to think that what we do is right in Hashem's eyes, but each Jewish family has their own opinions, obviously. This surely doesn't happen in Eretz Israel, as long as the inhabitants keep Torah ways.

Learning Hebrew, the language of the Torah

I personally feel it is crucial to be able to study Torah directly from the Hebrew text. This is as close as we can get to Hashem in terms of being a recipient at Har Sinai. Hebrew text is very precise. English translations are not, especially if it comes from popular publishers whose intention is to make a generation already handicapped in the Hebrew language to be totally dependent on them for continued translated Torah materials.

I believe that the best gift one can give to our children is to give them the skills to acquire Torah, through toiling over the language. They will need it in Chumash, Mishna, Gemara and Siddur. Experts have proven that our G-d designed brain is more able to absorb additional languages if it is conditioned or exposed to multiple languages while in the first few years in life (less than 6 years old). This advice I personally learned from people older and wiser than I am, so I take it seriously. Once we are comfortable with Hebrew, we can then acquire a sister language, Aramaic, which is spoken by our foremothers, Rivka, Rachel, and Leah. Our imahot grew up in Padan Aram and spoke Aramaic. Aramaic being the language of Padan Aram. This I learned from Rabbi Shalom Gold of Yeshivas Bircas HaTorah, Yerushalayim, in his Aramaic language shiur on Paltalk years ago.

We also learn from the Torah (Midrash included) that our patriarchs and ancestors up to the Sanhedrin of the earlier times had to be well versed in the languages of the seventy nations. Being multi-lingual is an asset to the Jewish nation, and being in galus could be beneficial for that reason as well.

There are tons of Hebrew language materials out there and we are fortunate in this day and age to avail of ourselves of these materials.

Comments (1)

	1. 09-07-2007 03:44
	Thank you for sharing your insight, especially your personal priorities, which mirror our own. You raise an excellent point in teaching about the galut (Sephardic transliteration), which I think is important even at early ages in order to instill Jewish identity and the larger sense of klal. This makes me all the more aware of gaps in our teaching. One of the biggest challenges for the uninitiated is measuring just how much to teach and when to teach it.     Regarding the array of choices in Jewish media for children, a word of caution: some of this may not be kosher. I have spent many hours searching for books and other media and wished for a hechser. IP: 192.132.254.187 Registered

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