This week…

Here are a few activities during our lessons that we did this week:

Although there are so many alphabet friezes to buy or print out there, we made our own. My decision behind this is that I find that my daughter learns a concept better when she has had an input in making a resource to do with it. So, for preparation, I folded 13 pieces of card in half, drew a line down the crease with a marker. And that was it! When it came to our lesson, we sat at her little table. I explained to her that we were going to make ALL the letters really pretty (for boys you could use another word ) and we were going to stick them all up on her wall to use during ’school’. I allowed her to choose the arts and crafts materials she wanted to decorate the letters with. She chose glue, glitter and stickers. I began by writing the upper and lower case letters and asked her what letter it was, and what sound it make as I wrote the letters down. I then passed it to her to decorate. She loved it and was so proud when it was all put up on her wall. Since placing it on her wall, we have used it to test her phonic memory of the letters, to test her knowledge of the letter names, to sing the alphabet. She has a special wand made out of strips of tissue paper that she uses when I ask her to find letter ssss. We will be using this regularly insha’Allah and it was simply great fun to make together.

 

The tree with apples was a definite must to make. For preparation, I cut out a large trunk from an A3 size of sugar paper and printed the same apple ten times on card (I found the image in google images). In our lesson, I showed her that different colours can be mixed together to make other colours – she couldn’t believe her eyes! After allowing her to mix green and red to make brown, we painted the tree together. I let her paint over the lines as I could still see the shape that I needed to cut out. After allowing it to dry, we then took turns in painting the apples green and red. I found it easier to allow her to paint the apples going over the lines and then cutting them out afterwards. Once dried, we stuck the trunk and apples on the wall. I will be using this tree a lot insha’Allah. Some of my ideas for my apple tree are as follows:

Counting and sorting the apples

Explaining addition and subtraction by the apples ‘falling’ off the tree.

Making a ‘Allah Loves…’ tree. Whenever my daughter does something like obeying her parents, returning te salaam, memorising a new surah, it will go on the apple. Once she has completed all ten apples, she will be rewarded with something special.

Once we have done the above with our ‘tree’, I will then laminate the apples and stick magnets to the back of them and the tree, and we will do some lessons on magnets together inshaAllah.

 

This next activity – my daughter enjoyed very much. Children seem to love the computer and my daughter is no exception. So, when I cut out large bold letters from sugar paper and told her we were going to print pictures of things beginning with that letter from the computer, she was a very happy little muslimah! The choice of pictures were completely up to her. After printing them out, I cut around them – she glued the back and stuck them onto the large letter. I then wrote down the word for each picture and displayed it on her wall. We will only be making two of these a week until we finish the alphabet.  I think I need more wall space….  !!!!!

Planning is everything…

To plan or not to plan…that is not the question! Having homeschooled my daughter on and off for the past year with no real planning behind our daily activities has been hectic, chaotic and to put it bluntly…a complete mess!

 Whilst I know that there are many homeschooling mummies who tend to take the ‘unschooling’ approach. I knew as soon as I read a few unschooling books, that this was not the method for myself or my daughter. Even though I knew that effectiv homeschooling would take a lot of time for planning, resource making, lesson planning etc, I just couldn’t get down to ‘business’ so to speak. That was until I spoke to a dear friend of mine who has been teaching for almost a decade. She advised me well and before I knew it – within about a week and a half (with no breaks!), I had planned my first 6 weeks of teaching, including all the resources that I made. Basically everything was ready for reading, maths, writing, science, art, and of course Islamic and Arabic studies.

I cannot tell you what a relief it was to finish the planning and it really is paying off. Not only do I not need to rush the night before to plan for the next day, but it really means that I can get down to what is important – actually homeeducating my little one.

 So, where did I begin with the planning. Well, I nipped down to Woolworths – bought a ring binder notebook with dividers inside, took out some scrap paper from home an began to plan.

For each subject, I wrote down the following:

 1. Objectives that I had for my daughter for the year 

2.  Guidelines from the national curriculum

3.  A book list (all the books I can use as teaching aids for that particular subject)

4. Resource list (literally everything that I have in my home that can be used to teach from puzzles to flashcards to textbooks)

5. Idea list (ideas that I had for making the teaching really fun and inspiring)

Once I had finished these lists, the actual planning began. I divided each week into my teaching days (for us, we do school on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays). I the created two timetables – one for the week and a daily timetable.

So, ours looks something like this:

 WEEKLY

                                Sunday          Monday          Tuesday          Thursday

Reading                 1 hour                 -                   1 hour              1 hour

Maths                    1 hour                 -                   1 hour              1 hour

Writing                  30 mins              -                   30 mins           30 mins

Islam / Arabic      1 hour                 -                   1 hour              1 hour

Art                             -                  2 hours                 -                        -

Science                      -                  1 hour                   -                        -

Reinforce               15 mins              -                    15 mins           15 mins

With this in mind, I then divided the year into school dates with breaks for my daughter as well as myself to plan for the next 6 weeks.

The planning for each subject then began. 

For reading, I divided each teaching lesson into the following format:

15 mins teaching

Resource 1

Resource 2

Activity

Primer

I used the Letters and Sounds Curriculum as my foundation and resources and activities were fitted in accordingly with what I had at home or things that I would make.

The same sort of format was used for Maths. My main aid was the Foundation Numeracy Strategy from the Standards website. And again, we used resources we had at home, or I would make my own.

For science, we are sticking to a book called: Belair Early Years Science. It is superb! Full of fun ideas and covers key areas for learning.

For art, we are using a mixture of ideas I have come up with as well as a book called Creativity by Sandy Green. I also use the art lesson to finish off any major activity from a subject.

For Islam/Arabic: our daily lesson is divided as follows:

Surah review

New surah

Adaab

Module

Arabic  

And that…(phew) is about it. But believe me, it does feel great to have everything planned, dusted and sorted way before beginning the actual lesson. I hope this helps you all with your planning should you wish to plan for your homeschooling. It may not work for some, but as the title of this post says…for me…planning is everything…

Assalamu Alaikum, Hello and Welcome…

Assalamu Alaikum, Hello and Welcome…

 This blog is to record all the exciting projects I and my daughter undertake as we travel down the homeschooling path. My reasons for homeschooling are many. However, there is one reason in particular: to attain the pleasure of the One who gifted me with a child to nurture, educate and raise for His Sake Alone.

 Whether you are muslim or non-muslim, I hope that you will benefit from this blog. It will be updated regularly, with pictures, step-by-step guides and my planning (God willing).

Although I have been homeschooling on and off for the past year, we have begun our first six week term of homeschooling which took me hours and days to prepare. However, the thorough planning and endless cutting out (on my part), has been well worth it. We are enjoying the journey and hope that it is one that will lead us to many other journeys as mother and daughter and servants of God.

 It is my hope that this small endeavour is accounted for as one of my good deeds and that as a result, my Lord is pleased with me, and my daughter and future children (God willing) understand their true purpose in life.

 So without furtherado…welcome and enjoy…

Umm Raiyaan