With the added plus of the Shalom Ivrit Prayer Companion, they will also learn to participate in prayer with understanding and reading fluency.

The first book in a three-year series, Shalom Ivrit 1 is built on the theme of the Jewish holidays. Students encounter Hebrew as a living language by building on their everyday and holiday experiences, at home and in school. Two endearing and humorous characters -- Bar the Mouse and Malmalah the Ant -- help teach 160 key words and an additional 90 holiday and enrichment words, as well as comprehension and language skills. Students read about such familiar activities as eating honey on Rosh Hashanah, lighting candles on Shabbat and Hanukkah, dressing in costume on Purim, meeting a new teacher, and learning in school. Basic grammar -- including the present tense, masculine and feminine nouns, and adjectives in the singular and plural -- are presented simply and clearly.

A variety of comprehension activities -- including puzzles, cloze technique (sentence completion), true and false, and word/picture matches -- reinforce instruction and provide practice, as do additional stories and poems, dialogues, blessings, songs, and riddles.

Contents:

• Shalom
• Where Is the Honey?
• In the Sukkah
• Family
• In the Classroom
• Shabbat Shalom
• Hanukkah
• Dinah Is Happy
• Tu B'Shevat
• A Beautiful World
• Today Is Purim
• The (Passover) Seder
• The Blue and White Flag
• Every Year