Hi Bar -- We're not Israeli, but I am teaching my daughter Hebrew. This is difficult because there aren't that many materials available, and also I don't speak Hebrew myself -- I only know a little.  I just noticed the files you posted, and these will be very helpful to me.  Thank you.

My daughter LOVES LOVES LOVES Hebrew!!!  On the forum, I described how I taught my daughter to how to read English
http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-to-read/how-i-taught-my-toddler-to-read/

In addition to this,  I also taught her the Hebrew alphabet, and she knows the names of all the letters and she can recognize several words in written in Hebrew,  such as parpar, chatool, geshem, shofar, challah, etc. 

I've taught her a lot of basic vocabulary -- colors, body parts, animals, etc.-- and some religious/Jewish heritage words like havdalah, hagadah, shabbat, tzedakah, mezuzah, etc.  I've learned myself by teaching her, but she always asks me questions about Hebrew that I don't know.   

Above all, we listen to a lot of music in Hebrew -- and she can't seem to get enough of Hebrew music.  Actually right now, as I'm typing, she's singing l'shana tova tikatevu... It's already May and she's still singing Rosh Hashana music... !  :)  Actually, she sings in Hebrew much more often than she sings in English.  I'm just amazed at how much she loves Hebrew... it's such a beautiful language.  We're not very religious, but its so wonderful to see her connect with her Jewish culture and heritage. 

Great question from Mooncake regarding words and pictures.  Basically, when I was doing the Doman-style cards with my daughter, she was 16-18 months, and she already knew the meanings of the words we were using.  So most of my cards didn't have pictures.  For some of the cards, I found pictures from the internet and pasted them on the back, but that was very labor intensive, and I'm not sure it was necessary.  For the most part, I just flashed the cards really fast while saying the words.  But sometimes we talked about the words, or I flashed "refrigerator" and asked her to point to the refrigerator, etc. I think the rapid flashing of words is what really helped her to learn to read, but I'm sure it wouldn't have worked if the words didn't have any meaning for her. 

Making the cards was relatively easy.  I bought a box of card stock from office max, and then I went to the "Copy Max" next door and had them cut it into thirds, so that each card was about 8 by 3.6 inches.  I started with 3 groups of 5 cards, and flashed them once or twice 3 times per day.  After 5 days, I took one card out of each group and added a new one to each group, and then I did this every day.  On the back of each card, I wrote the date that it was added to the rotation.  Then at the end of each day, I took out the 3 cards that had been in the rotation for 5 days, and I created 3 more cards to go in.  I kept everyting organized in an accordion folder.  It was super easy and not a lot of work, and it was very easy to create word lists.  You can use "baby's first word" books for ideas: parts of the body, animals, foods, people's names, plants, action words, clothing, and anything your child happens to be obsessing about.  I always decided what words to at the end of the day and didn't prepare materials in advance.   

That was a beautiful poem posted by Curly -- thanks for sharing!!!!

Teaching my daughter to read as well as all the learning activities we've done -- has been a fabulous journey and a bonding experience for me and my daughter. She loves learning, and she really seems happier if we do some learning activities each day.

But intelligence doesn't guarantee success in life, and success doesn't guarantee happiness.  I want that she should continue to grow into a kind and gentle person who will some day make the world a better place even if only in a very small way.  I want her to find fulfullment in her intellectual persuits and as well as her personal relationships.  I'm not worried about her being a geek.  Both of her parents are geeks... Geeks rule!  But even geeks (well, most geeks) need a few friends and meaningful human relationships.  As a mom, I want to provide the best nourishment for her as a whole human being -- body, mind, heart, and soul. 

But like the poem says, I can only give her my love -- ultimately it's her life.   Right now she's a very happy little girl -- much happier than many other little kids I know -- even though she doesn't get any McDonalds or Teletubbies.  I hope that this will continue; we can only take it one day at a time. 

I started to keep a diary  when I was doing the word cards, but then somehow I lost it, and never got around to starting a new one.  I wish I had kept a record just because it would be so interesting, but I might try to write down a few things from memory.  I have kept a private blog about my daughter, but doesn't include that much about her reading -- Rather I write down things from all aspects of her life --  grandparents' visits, blowing dandelions, stomping in mud puddles, plus her reading and cognitive growth too.  It's a very good exercise to help keep things in perspective and focus on the whole child. 

Thank you all for your responses so far... this is great!  I'm so happy to finally be able to share.

Surprisingly, we didn't read much to her before 8 or 9 months -- she didn't seem to be paying attention, so I didn't bother.  However, since she was about 9 months old, she has shown a great affinity and love for books.  We started with board books (her own), and then around 15 months, I started checking out regular picture books from the library.  We've done both "learn to read" style simple books designed for teaching kindergarteners as well as picture books designed for small children.  I try everything -- it's FREE!  We're lucky here in California because I can have any book in the whole region delivered to our neighborhood branch for free -- up to 50 books at a time.  I look for books based on suggested reading lists, and I follow her/my favorite authors and topics. 

I've been using Library thing to keep a record of our favorite books -- This link has everything I've given a "thumbs up" to -- from our board books to our recent favorites. 

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/mayalanda

If you look in the "comments" section, you can see the age that we first read the book -- but all the books have a wide-age appeal, and we have checked out many of the books more than once.  (Actually, she still enjoys many of her board books). 

 I really like Librarything:  I show her the page with the covers and she tells me which books she wants me to request from the library.   

If you look at my library, you'll see that there are a lot of books about bunnies, cats, dogs, and insects.  I don't read anything with a licensed characters (no Elmo, Dora, Spongebob, etc), and I make sure that the books are appropriate for her at her developmental and intellectual level  (No World War 2 documentaries,etc.)

If I had a child that wasn't much into books, I'd look for things based on his interests... but not push it too hard... just a little bit each day... and try to keep the word knowlege going through games, etc.  My experience is that if you try to get a 2 year-old do something, he only wants to do the opposite.

I have a daughter (now 34 months) who can decode just about anything.  I'd like to share my story in order to help others who are interested in teaching their young child to read.

First a little about me.  I'm a former 2nd grade teacher who now teaches ESL part-time to international college students.  I have Masters in Education, and a Masters in Teaching English as a second language.  My husband is a professor of applied linguistics. 

When my daugher was 14 months old,  one of my husband's students gave him some pirated DVDs from the "Your Baby Can Read"  series.  And I thought "what a load of crap"!  I hadn't let my daughter watch any videos/TV during her first year and was/am not a fan of baby Einstein... but YBCR seemed kinda cute, and she seemed to like it, so I let her watch it 3 or 4 times a week.  After one month, I bought some "sliding word cards" from the site above, and tested her to see if she'd actually "learned" anything.  At that point, she could only recognize that "hi" was "hi", but more importantly she seemed to understand the concept that the printed word corresponded to a spoken word.   It was enough to convince me that there was some merit in Titzer's theory...
   So then I decided to go the library and check out Doman's "Teach your baby to read".   For about 2.5 months (When she was 16 -18 months did a modified version of Doman's method.  This involved 15-30 seconds of quickly flashing word cards 9 times throughout day. (Doman suggested 5 groups of 5 cards, but I only did 3 groups of 5 cards)   After only about a week, it was clear that she was learning -- if I held up two cards, and said, "Which one says monkey?" she could point to the correct one.  She caught on quickly, and within a few weeks, she could recognize dozens of words by site, and she really seemed to enjoy it.  (I would not have continued, otherwise)  Using this method, I was introducing 3 new words each day -- not a lot, but that's 90 words per month-- so over the course of my 2.5 months, she learned over 200 words.  I basically chose the words based on what she was interested in, and went through thematic groups  -- foods, parts of the body, family members, action words, etc. 
   In the middle of this, after I had been doing the word cars for one month,  I found starfall.com, and I started doing the ABC part with her on my lap.  She learned the entire alphabet, upper and lower case (and the sounds they make) in about a month.  I believe learning the letters and sounds really complemented and enhanced the whole-word approach.

After I had done the word cards for 2.5 months, i felt we were done with Doman's stage one - that a 'critical mass' had been reached, so I stopped doing the word cards.  She was also 18 months old and starting to move from speaking only one word at a time to putting two words together.  I started to do word couplets, as Doman suggests, but it didn't really feel all that "fun"... and I realized that there are so many more large print books and resouces available for small children than were available when Doman's book was written.  So I started pointing to words as we read, at first only in books with large print, and then with everything.  At first it was a little weird to do this, but then she started following along.   I used  a book called "Best books for babies and toddlers" by Odean to help me find good books to read, and we checked out about 30 books at a time from the library.  I also made a few books with our family photos and large print captions.  We continued to do the ABC's on starfall, but we also moved onto the "Learn to Read" section which emphasizes blending sounds and phonics. 

By the time she turned 2, she could recognize hundreds and hundreds of words by sight, read simple books by herself (even when she's never seen them before), and could figure out short words she's never seen before.  -- please also note that I hardly spent any money to get these amazing results!

During the past year, I haven't been "teaching" her to read -- rather we've just been reading.  Lots and lots of books, based on her interests.  Either I read while tracking the words with my finger, or sometimes I read a page and she reads a page if she's in the mood.  I scour the world for books that will interest her.  She's building fluency and her knowledge of the world -- it has been and continues to be a fun journey for our family.  But it's not something the rest of the word can exactly relate to -- I didn't find this or any similar forum until now, so I'm excited about connecting to others who may have similar experiences.

I taught my daughter to read using YBCR, Doman, starfall, and lots and lots of books.  She's now 34 months, and I'm no longer actively teaching her because she can pretty much decode almost anything.  Materials designed to "teach reading" are too easy at this point -- We just read lots and lots of books. 

When we were in the teaching phase, I mostly kept it under my hat because I read what other people said on other discussion sites, and I knew it was something controversial and I didn't want people testing her.  I made the mistake of telling my mom -- who used every opportunity to "test" her and show her off -- this really, really bothered me. 

So now I have a not-yet-3-year-old who can read -- and it's really really cool.  Its a source of great joy for our daughter and our family...but I still don't like to mention it.  Sometimes,  people do notice, and we've told a few close friends.  It seems to freak people out... Either they're jealous or they think my daughter is a freak... or that we're too  "pushy"... I don't know; I get bad vibes from some people.  I'm not sure if I should try to explain how or why I taught her, or if I should say, "she just picked it up." and change the subject.  I don't want people to get hung up about it.  Her reading is just ONE part of her; there are many other things that make her beautiful, and unique.   I'm glad I found this forum to meet other people who have very young children who enjoy the ability of reading.