Hebrew learning materials for kids (WIP)
Illustrated Hebrew language learning materials for beginner-level Russian-speaking children. This is an ongoing personal project in which I try to combine my illustration and design skills with my experience as a foreign language teacher and linguist. The materials are aimed at young learners who have to master basic Hebrew really fast after immigrating to Israel as they begin to integrate into the Israeli education system. I started the project following my own and my family’s experience of learning Hebrew as part of our Aliah process in 2022 and as an attempt to use my teaching and illustration skills to help the children of my fellow Russian-speaking immigrants who struggle with learning the language at school where they don’t have a common language with their teachers.
As I was working with 6-7-year-old children who do not yet read fluently in their first language, I tried to rely on illustration as much as possible in explaining the meaning of both words and grammar, only rarely using Russian translation as a supplementary clarification tool. For this reason, the materials can be easily adapted for speakers of other languages in the future. It was also an interesting challenge for me as an illustrator to explain the material visually rather than verbally. As I wanted the materials to be suitable for private tutoring as well as group classes, I chose the comics format for dialogues so that it is always clear who is speaking to whom and pronouns and word forms for both genders in single and plural could be practised even with one student.
The project is still a work in progress as I continue to develop it further in parallel with my tutoring practice.
Here are some examples of the illustrated dialogues and worksheets:
