Back when I was in 12^th grade, we had an elective course on the subject of “teaching methodology.” I had signed up for the course, and I remember it being a fun, usually interesting class. Nothing like discovering the reasons why your teachers did what they did all these years, like staying poker-faced until Chanukah time… (What, your teachers didn’t learn that rule in their teaching schools??)

Kidding aside, though, I remember being fascinated by the different learning modalities that we were introduced to. There are many different ways of learning, and each person has his/her own style by which he or she learns best. There are audio learners, visual learners, tactile learners, kinesthetic learners, and more. I already knew about audio and visual learners—I’d realized years ago that I am a visual learner; I need to see the information in order to process it properly—but the idea of needing to touch something or move in certain ways in order to understand information…that was news to me.

Suddenly I understood why so many preschool morahs have the kids twist and turn their bodies into the shapes of the Alef-Beis that they are learning, or create the shapes of the Alef-Beis out of play-dough or Lego.

Which brings me to the book Alef-Beis in Motion. For all you parents and morahs out there who have “touchy-feely” kind of kids (read: many of you), this multi-sensory book is a real winner. Written by both an experienced speech therapist and a veteran preschool morah, this book shows kids how to “act out” the Alef-Beis, by way of a hand or body motion; as well as how to properly articulate the sound that each letter makes. The result is a fun and educational book that will have your kids not just learning the Alef-Beis, but “experiencing”—and thus, actually “owning”—them too!

Of course the book is adorably written and has bright and inviting illustrations, too. But best of all, by reading this book to your kids, you’ll be ingraining the shapes and sounds of the letters in your kids’ minds, paving the way for them to succeed in kriah.

By Esti Scher & Shoshana Ament MS, CCC-SLP

Click here to purchase online.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 7th, 2023 at 12:29 pm and is filed under General, New Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.