Jewish Homeschooling
Here you will find resources for Jewish parents who have chosen to educate their children at home, including support, information, and ideas for combining your faith and your children's education.
Homeschooling in the Jewish Home
Home Schooling: Instilling Jewish Family values
Looking for an alternative to overcrowded classrooms, dwindling per-student funding, metal detectors and mediocre curricula--not to mention social pressures, conflicting values and prohibitive private school costs--a growing number of parents are opting out of the American education system. They're taking the biblical imperative more literally than ever and educating their children at home. Once the bastion of fundamentalist Christians, home schooling is attracting a growing number of Jews.
Fundamentals of Education
It must be clear at the outset that there are no sure-fire rules of education that apply to all children at all times. Reishis Chachmah quotes a Midrash that it is easier to raise a legion of olive trees in the Galilee, where the soil and climate are not conducive to growing olive trees, than to raise one child in the Land of Israel, even though Israel is conducive to proper education, since the atmosphere itself helps to imbue one with wisdom and holiness. Children are not objects to be fashioned at will, but rather human beings who have their own free will and can reject, if they so choose, even the best education. The most a parent can hope to achieve, as Chiddushei HaRim points out regarding all learning, is to put the words of Torah on the heart of the child so that when the heart opens up, the Torah found on it will sink into the receptive heart.
Home Is Where The Lesson Plan Is
With liberalized state laws across the country, a growing number of Jewish families, including many in urban centers like New York City, have turned in the last decade to homeschooling, a movement usually associated with rural, fundamentalist Christians. No official statistics on the number of Jewish homeschoolers are available, but the figure is surely in the “thousands,” including a many religiously observant families--young Lubavitch couples serving as emissaries in isolated areas were homeschool pioneers--and a rising percentage of non-Orthodox households.
Learning Torah Through Music
This article is written to address some of the questions that have arisen regarding homeschooling the younger Jewish children around pre-K and K. There are so many good quality reading materials that are colorful and inviting read-alouds for parents to their young children.
How to Educate Your Young
The striking contrast in the grandchildren of Abraham may not have been due to a difference in their temperaments, but to mistakes that were made in their upbringing.
Chinuch At Home
Chinuch At Home offers Jewish educational resources for paents, teachers and homeschoolers.
Education is Life
Our entire value system stems from our experiences. The influences of a classroom or a book are minor compared to the plethora of impressions that bombard us constantly. Every teacher knows that by the time a child can sit at a school desk, that child has already received a majority of his education. The child has already developed the attitudes, drives, tendencies and emotions that will shape almost everything else he will do the rest of his life. That education did not come from a book; it came from experiential interaction. All the teacher can do at this point is offer some direction and a suggestion here and there. In fact, teachers take a back seat to the true teachers of life: parents. When a human being is most receptive to influences, then those influences have their greatest impact. A child is an open book which has engraved onto it's impressionable pages the most basic messages - transmitted by the parent.
Beit HaChatulim
This website is offered by a Jewish vegetarian homeschooling family. You'll enjoy reading about their experiences and how they combine their faith and homeschooling.
Chabad Launches the First Online International School For Jewish Children
Chabad Shluchim living in remote places or cities where there is no Jewish school, have long contended with schooling their children at home or parting with them at young ages, so they can get a traditional education. A newly developed online school now gives these children the benefit of a classroom situation where they daily interact with classmates--children of other shluchim, and a teacher, at home.
Kosher Homeschool
Kosherhomeschool.org is devoted to providing information and networking to Jewish homeschooling families worldwide. At kosherhomeschool.org, they hope to address the special needs of Jewish homeschoolers as they strive to provide a superior education in Judaic Studies (l'mudei kodesh) as well as Secular studies (l'mudei chol).
Support for Jewish Homeschoolers
Jewish & Torah Observers Sonlight
This is an international forum for Jewish and Torah-observing homeschoolers/home educators using Sonlight curriculum, or other literature-based curricula or methods. For support, encouragement and discussion about Sonlight curriculum, literature selections and with specific reference to Jewish education, calendar and life-cycle, etc.
Kosher Homeschool
Kosherhomeschool.org is devoted to providing information and networking to Jewish homeschooling families worldwide. At kosherhomeschool.org, they hope to address the special needs of Jewish homeschoolers as they strive to provide a superior education in Judaic Studies (l'mudei kodesh) as well as Secular studies (l'mudei chol).
Jewish Home Educator's Network (JHEN) Newsletter
JHEN connects you to Jewish homeschoolers throughout the country and world-wide. It is a quarterly newsletter filled with thought-provoking articles, letters from readers that provide open dialogue on a wide range of interesting topics, mouth-watering recipes, creative holiday and craft ideas, stimulating book reviews, a Jewish calendar chock-full of information and original ideas, help columns with practical how-to advice on homeschooling. It is the only place you'll find the columns "Homeschool Hannah" and "Aunt Rachel's Bookshelf".
Chevra
Chevra was formed in September 1998 as an online support community for Jewish homeschoolers of all varieties. It tends to be a very chatty place where they discuss Jewish observance, homeschooling, family life, outside interests, and (the favorite topic) why the laundry never seems to get done. If you are looking for a group that discusses only homeschooling and Judaic resources, you may very well be disappointed in Chevra's free-wheeling discussions of everything under the sun, but there is lots of great information here.
Jewish Waldorf
This group offers a discussion of issues facing Jews who choose Waldorf education, the potentials and difficulties of combining Waldorf with Judaism, ideas for celebrating holidays and festivals, information on traditional crafts, etc. All levels of Jewish observance are welcome, as are all levels of experience with Waldorf education, Anthroposophy, Steiner, etc. Homeschoolers, Waldorf schoolers, Jewish Day schoolers, public schoolers, and all others are invited to join the discussion.
Jewish Homeschoolers
The focus of this list will be to provide homeschooling support and resources to Jewish homeschoolers of all levels of observance. Topics include curriculum choices, teaching tips, and holiday observances.
Sonlight Users' Messianic Forum
This group is for Sonlight curriculum-users who are actively homeschooling/ home-educating from a Jewish or Messianic perspective, and those who are interested in learning more about Messianic Judaism, and how it relates to parenting and specifically to home-educating their children.
Jewish Sonlight Users
For Jews (or those becoming Jewish) who are using Sonlight (or any other literature based method) and adding in Jewish resources. This group welcomes all Jewish people of faith, (Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, etc.) This group is open for discussion of anything relating to Jewish homeschooling, raising nice Jewish children, adapting Sonlight to a Jewish perspective, etc.
Jewish Homeschool Curriculum and Resources
L'Shon Hatorah Learning Program
The L'shon Hatorah series is designed to aid in the teaching of the fundamentals of Hebrew Grammar and basic vocabulary. The goal of these workbooks is for the student to develop the requisite skills necessary to be able to translate with accuracy and fluency.
Milon English Hebrew Dictionary
Milon is a free online English Hebrew English dictionary. Get translation and definition from the most popular dictionaries and encyclopedias.
KTAV Publishing House
For over 75 years KTAV Publishing House has been a trusted name in quality Judaica, offering a large variety of Jewish educational and scholarly books, gifts, and resources.
Chinuch.org
Chinuch.org is designed to enable Torah educators to share quality educational ideas and materials. Access to the best resources and inspiration from hundreds of mechanchim and mechanchos worldwide enhances the quality of chinuch everywhere.
Behrman House Publishers
Behrman House Publishers is recognized for its distinguished Jewish educational materials used in schools throughout North America and in English-speaking countries around the world.
JewishMusic.com
Tara Publications offers JewishMusic.com, with a wide selction of recorded Jewish music, along with videos and sheet music. It was founded in Cedarhurst, LI in 1971 by Velvel Pasternak, a noted musicologist, The goal of the company was the publication, preservation and dissemination of the heritage of Jewish music.
Torah Tots
Torah Tots products combine the zaniness of their Mitzvah characters with educational fun. You'll find cassettes, audio CDs, videos, and interactive CDs.
Limudei Kodesh Curriculum
Finding published curriculum for Limudei Kodesh even for a regular Yeshiva is virtually frustrating. Most Yeshiva day schools have their own curriculum that they make available for their teachers and parents. Most parents don't bother asking about it as they completely trust the teachers and the school to educate their precious children. It's the Jewish homeschooling family who's decided to do it all or partially who is not only curious but find themselves totally dependent on such a curriculum to help them tread through the journey of homeschooling their children in Limudei Kodesh.
Jewish Source
The purpose of this list is to sell or trade used Jewish books, games and music, cookbooks, holiday guides, textbooks and Yiddish or Hebrew books for homeschoolers interested in learning or sharing books which are explicitly Jewish in nature.
Jewish Education and Entertainment
This site offers word games, geography and trivia quizzes, Jewish clipart, and more.
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Featured Resources

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Ideas and Books: The Method of Education
A selection of Charlotte Mason's writings on the topic of the place of ideas and books in the education of children. Mason's teachings on the topic of education required six large volumes to cover. This book makes it simple for homeschooling parents to find exactly what they need to learn about Charlotte Mason's thoughts on ideas and books. The teachings and philosophies of Charlotte Mason, a British educator from the last century, are currently experiencing a revival, especially among American ...
Beautiful Feet Books
Beautiful Feet Books publishes Rea Berg's "History Through Literature" study guides. They offer fine children's literature, including the D'Aulaire biographies and Genevieve Foster's "World" titles. This is a great resource for anyone wishing to utilize an approach that studies history through literature.
Bead Sequencing Set
Stack the durable, brightly colored wooden beads on 5 hardwood dowels in sequence to match the design on one of the pattern cards. Builds complex reasoning skills as well as sorting and coordination. Includes over 45 brilliantly colored beads, 5 dowels, and 10 patterns that increase in difficulty.
Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book Of Homeschooling
The classic work on teaching children at home, updated for today's new laws, new lifestyles, and a new generation of homeschooling parents. Today more than one and a half million children are being taught at home by their own parents. In this expanded edition of the book that helped launch the whole movement, Pat Farenga has distilled John Holt's timeless understanding of the ways children come to understand the world and added up-to-the-moment practical advice. Rather than proposing that pare...