ND goes for Hebrew classes every Wednesday afternoon so now on Wednesday nights, we'll have Hebrew lessons from ND. Last week he had his first lesson and he learned how to read the Hebrew version of ABC. The Hebrew version of ABC has got 22 characters instead of the usual 26.
Here's how it looks like. It looks like.... Hebrew to you?
Well, it sure does to me... An absolutely complicated and strange looking language.
ND was taught to memorise the Hebrew characters above using the ABC tune. When he picked Caleb up from school last Wednesday evening, he sang it once for him and amazing, amazing, amazing... Caleb picked it up real fast and was able to sing to me and Sarah when he reached home. For the past week, Caleb has been singing the song about once or twice a day. I tried memorising the song... it's been a week and it's only today that I can remember the whole song.
Do you want to know what's even more amazing? Well, for the past week, whilst ND and Caleb have been singing the song and I've been trying to learn from them, Sarah hasn't been looking very interested. She wouldn't sit still to listen to Caleb. She would be busy playing with some toy, walking around the room, talking about random things and trying to interrupt us.
Well, this evening, when I asked Caleb to sing the song for me so that I could record it, and I asked Sarah to join in, I was amazed that she could even sing the whole song! Yah, she picked up a couple of words here and there but she usually messes it up with some other sounds that she will make up. I really had no clue that she was really taking it all in. I think it's really amazing how intelligent God made our brains to be.
Anyway, it's time to listen to the stars. Please enjoy the Hebrew version of ABC.
Btw, ND and I have concluded that the kids really pick up very fast just by listening to the language. They're much faster than us adults. The only advantage that we adults have over them is the fact that over the years, we have learned to use other tools to help us in remembering things, such as some of us learn to reinforce our memory by looking at the words, or we come up with acronyms or rhymes to help us remember the sequence better. But even then, the amount of effort that we adults have to put in is a lot more as compared to the kids.
Another conclusion that we've come to is that, by the end of ND's course, our kids could very possibly be more proficient than him in the Hebrew language. I think it's really to ND's benefit that he imparts all that he has learned to them so that he can send them to take his Hebrew paper on his behalf. They'll probably ace his paper for him.
Oh, and I forgot to mention about Sophia... Ah, she's the privileged one coz she gets to start so early. See, from what I read, though she can't talk yet, she's really the one who's absorbing it all easily... So, I think she's going to be my Hebrew specialist:P And guess what? We've prepared the Hebrew characters on flashcards so that we can flash it to the kids continuously... especially Sophia. Haha, I'm kidding lah. I'm not that kiasu. We are trying to learn it as a family but, I think our priority is really to have fun. One thing's for sure, Caleb definitely thinks it's fun. This evening, he told me that he was teaching his classmate how to sing the Hebrew song and she was teaching him how to count in Japanese. Don't you think he sounds really enthusiastic about the language?
