Please join Tsuki in learning the English Alphabet. This book is great for:
Teaching children new words.
Children learning to read.
Israelis learning English.
In this book, each letter has a separate page, along with three original high-quality and full-color illustrated words. In addition, there is a list of the letters with the sounds the letters make in Hebrew.
Please join Tsuki in learning the English Alphabet. This book is great for:
Teaching children new words.
Children learning to read.
Israelis learning English.
In this book, each letter has a separate page, along with three original high-quality and full-color illustrated words. In addition, there is a list of the letters with the sounds the letters make in Hebrew.
Disclaimer: My Hebrew is limited to first-semester college Hebrew, and my first semester in college was a looong time ago. I therefore enlisted the aid of the amazingly talented mystery author and Rabbi Ilene Schneider in verifying the translations. I encourage you to visit Ilene (and buy her books! :) ) at https://rabbiauthor.com.
In Tsuki and the English Language, Dikla Berkowitz gives small children just learning English a first step in understanding the letter sounds and shapes in an easily understandable format. Neither Hebrew nor English are easy languages (although I'm given to understand that it's easier for kids to pick up second languages than it is for adults - one hopes this is so, because it's always been a hopeless tangle for me!).
Children follow a cute little cartoon figure through the English alphabet looking at three or four pictures on a page (P for pumpkin / peacock / pen, etc.), with the Hebrew character correlating to the "p" sound at the top of the page beneath the P. At the back of the book, for a bit more in-depth understanding, there is a guide to Hebraic equivalents to the English sounds. For those not familiar with Hebrew, this is a lot easier said (written) than done - it's not a 1:1 correlation. There are several characters in each language that simply don't correlate (i.e., vowels in Hebrew are only present in written writing for beginners, and then they drop out entirely; there are characters that indicate pauses more than a particular sound, etc.), and the guide is definitely necessary. Still, it would have been nice to see Tsuki kind of jump through it and make it more kid-friendly.
The only other wish I had was perhaps this - the pictures could have the English and Hebrew names beneath them to further facilitate kids' learning (and to help the parent with the child, who will inevitably be sitting there pointing at the pumpkin wondering what the proper word is in one of the two languages - or at least, *I* would).
But Tsuki is a well done, well-conceived book and a great way to introduce kids to a second language that involves not simply a new language, but a new alphabet. I'd love to see a next book with more words.