Jewish Education & Entertainment

http://www.j.co.il/

This website has five educational games: Language Match Game, Multilingual Word Search, Hebrew Hangman, My Jewish Coloring Book, and Israel Geography Game.

There is also a list of other websites, although all are basically a part of this website, with other topics that might be of interest:  The Jewish Trivia Quiz, The Hebrew Sign Maker, The Hebrew Language, Learn Hebrew Videos, The Jewish Wisdom Database, The Bible Quiz, My Hebrew Songbook, The Jewish Clipart Database, and 3 Year Jewish High Holiday Calendar.

BabagaNewz

"BabagaNewz.com is an innovative, educational web site for Jewish middle school students and teachers. The web site will help our readers understand the values that are at the core of Jewish beliefs and practices.
BabagaNewz.com will encourage young people to explore Jewish values, traditions, life-cycle events, holidays, and Israel, from perspectives that are novel, hip, fun, thought-provoking, exciting and that will encourage them to continue these explorations with the full power of their imaginations and reflections."

This website looks like a great resource.  There are articles under the headers: Israel, Celebrities, 'Kid Power,' Videos, Science, Humour, Peoplehood, and History.  There are games, like Brachot Trivia, and English Hebrew Match Game, Puzzles, and something called Jewpardy.  Under Activities there are: Crafts, Recipes, How To, Board Games and Interactive (I wonder what that means?).   And at the bottom you can choose to navigate the site according to a particular holiday, the current parsha, or Jewish value.  Now that is innovative!  And last of all, in their music section, called JPod, they have all sorts of music.  I think I see some tefillahs, some holiday related music, and much more!

Oh, and I just noticed there is one more section, called Teachers, which seems to have articles or tutorials for teachers on how to use very new internet technology to make virtual bookshelves, webinars, wikis, pod casts, word clouds, etc.  I'm sure that will be useful for homeschool parents as well as teachers.

This definitely looks like a great resource!

*This post looks like it was published on Shabbos, because I had preset some posts to publish themselves and neglected to check which day would be Shabbos.*

Akhlah: The Jewish Children's Learning Network

This site looks extremely interesting.  Here is a sampling of what they cover. Jewish Crafts, Worksheets, Tanach, Parsha, Yomim Tovim/ Jewish Holidays, Learn about Israel, Learning Hebrew, Jewish Biblical Heros, and Jewish Traditions. 

Of specific note is their aleph-bet resource!

"Akhlah, the Jewish children's learning network, is an important resource created to provide Jewish children and their families access to the prayers, stories and rituals that have bound Jews together around the world and through the ages. Akhlah is specifically designed for the youngest and least knowledgeable among us, while maintaining scrupulous attention to the details of the subject matter.

Children and others who wish to learn about Judaism will find that Akhlah offers a comprehensive yet non-sectarian perspective. Akhlah does not subscribe to any of the branches of Judaism, but celebrates them all. We wish to provide information about the traditions and practices of all the major branches of Judaism, for although the vagaries of geography and circumstance have spread these branches in different directions, when we look back, we share the common bonds of ancestors, history and language: these are the roots of our Tree of Life."

Hebrew Vocab Quizzes with Pictures

This website has some fairly easy looking Hebrew vocabulary quizzes using pictures.   I'm not sure why, but the Hebrew fonts didn't come out for me... maybe something to do with my own computer, or with the age of the website.  If anyone finds that the Hebrew does show up properly for them, or figures it out, feel free to leave a comment here with tips/instructions. 

Beit HaChatulim

 

A website about a conservative Jewish homeschooling family's experiences homeschooling children of various ages from 1996 through 2008.  The website is currently being rebuilt.  I would like to read through their experiences and suggestions sometime soon.  There is also a link to the Chevra Jewish Homeschooling List, which is an email list for Jewish homeschoolers of all denominations of Judaism.

League of Observant Jewish Homeschoolers

"LOJH was a not-for-profit league of families designed to satisfy the growing demand for Orthodox Jewish Homeschooling. Although we are no longer active, the number of requests we receive about this topic is overwhelming. However, we believe the content we have collected on this site (over the years) is still relevant and helpful for many people."


Although this group is no longer active, I thought it was good to add, since it has some interesting resources about Jewish, Orthodox homeschooling that I'd certainly like to look through at some point.  If you find anything especially interesting there, please leave a comment here telling about it! 

Lionden Landing

 
Michelle blogs about her homeschooling family of three.  She writes about their homeschooling, as well as other themes and events in her family's life.  She's joined in with the Homeschool Diary, a blog carnival, that Jennifer began a few months ago (that I have dismally neglected... along with this blog, oy).   Michelle's daughter is currently learning the Aleph-Bet, and I really enjoyed reading about Michelle's new birthday tradition, as I've been discussing birthday traditions with my better half recently, trying to hash out what we want to do each year.  Please head over and read Michelle's blog!  I'm happy to have another to add to my (hopefully, if I can keep this up semi-regularly) growing list of Jewish homeschooling blogs.