Saturday, June 24, 2006

Review: Little Bitty Baby Learns Greek

I never would've thought to even attempt to introduce the Greek alphabet to my children.  But since I really enjoy Johannah Bluedorn's illustrations, I thought Why not?  I received Little Bitty Baby Learns Greek in the mail and was excited that is was a boardbook!  Hooray!  I can actually leave this one out for the kids (and even Dozer) to look at without having to worry about torn pages or pages wrinkled by slobber and sippy cups.


 


This book teaches the alphabet for Biblical Greek.  Each letter is introduced on a page and includes the capital letter, lowercase, pronunciation and letter sounds.  The kids' favorite part was, of course, the beautiful illustrations.  By the way, their favorite letter was kappa.  Why?  Because kappa says the c sounds as in candy.  Mmmm...they just loved the picture of the candy in the glass jars... Simple logic, huh?  And if they were to remember even one letter of Biblical Greek, it will most definitely be kappa!


 


While I don't currently plan on teaching the Greek language to my children, we will definitely go over this book many more times.  It did make the idea of teaching Greek a little less intimidating... So who knows what the future may hold for us...


 


This book also allowed for some great discussions that we would not have otherwise had.  For example, we talked about the books of the Bible and how they were originally written in a different language.  And how different languages have different alphabets...and some of these alphabets have sounds and letters very similar to our own English alphabet!  Believe it or not, we even discussed translations and King James...which then led to a brief conversation about people in other countries who do not have a Bible in their own language. 


 


I think this talk of other languages and countries could be expanded even more.  I'm sure they would be very interested in talking about some of the missionaries our church supports.  And that, of course, could branch out into lessons on geography, other cultures and who knows what else!  I just love homeschooling, don't you?!


 


If you haven't done so already, I would definitely recommend Little Bitty Baby Learns Greek by Johannah Bluedorn (or any of her other books as well).  The illustrations are lovely, the products high quality and the content inspiring!

3 comments:

amada said...

Well, not seriously anyway. Although if I ever do, I'll re-read this recommendation. We have the Bluedorn's book Teaching the Trivium and actually live that way kindof anyway. I just HAD to say hi to make sure you come over to my blog to find out about our BIG announcement.

Talk to you soon,

Amy

Cajamarca, Peru

Honeybee said...

I have to admit, even though a boardbook, I was intimidated by it at the convention. I GUESS I'll look again! :) Thanks for sharing!

Melissa

dawilli said...

Thanks for sharing that!

Who knew that a jar of candy and kappa could lead to praying for missionaries and exploring world geography? Yes, that's what I LOVE about homeschooling!

I will definitely put this one on my wish list, though that list is way too long... it may take a while to get to...

Thanks again for the review, great job,

ali