Moving

I haven’t been posting for a while. Life is a bit of a rollercoaster at the moment. I’m not very well and due to see a specialist in the hospital. Please make dua. On top of that, we all have the flu! But this flu is really testing. It seems everyone in London is getting it. And on top of that, we are moving. Moving to South London today… and I haven’t finished packing, due to the event yesterday. Yesterday, I was involved in running dawah workshops and alhamdulillah we had a really big turnout and the sisters seemed motivated and enthusiastic. One sister took her shahadah, masha’Allah.

So, my life is in boxes, my head hurts, my daughter is complaining she is bored and wants to do ’school’ and I am just a wee little bit stressed now! But breathe breathe breathe, all will be well insha’Allah.

Just wanted to say, I will be without the internet until 5th January. I will try occassionally to go to an internet cafe, but don’t know if that will be possible.

But, will be back properly from the 5th insha’Allah. Hopefully I will have a nice long post with plenty of pictures of what we have been doing from settling point to the 5th January. In the meantime, do visit my older posts by clicking on the subject header on the right hand side of the screen.

Happy homeschooling!

Work on new units of study

This week was meant to be start of our new units of study that I mentioned in my previous post. We have done some work towards it, however not as much as I had planned due to the flu!

Anyway, here is some of what we have done…so far!

ADAM (AS) UNIT

We began by re-reading the story of Adam (AS) and used the two following books. We also read about how Allah (Swt) made creation. After reading to her, I asked her comprehension type questions to test her understanding.

We then read from this book and R completed exercised found in the book based on the creation of Allah (Swt). I really like this book as it is a great book for young readers to read and practice their reading skills with particular words highlighted in red for emphasis . This is the grade 1 book, but there are 10 I believe per grade. I bought mine from Darus Salam in Walthamstow, London.

 I photocopied the worksheets from the book as I would like to be able to reuse the book for R’s baby brother and any future children insha’Allah.

We then moved on to some reading work. I bought these wonderful workbooks from Books Plus in Edgware Road. I do love that bookshop, they have some wonderful books for children (and not just Islamic ones!) What I like most about these workbooks is that my daughter loves them. It combines learning with sticker fun. In this lesson, she learnt the sh sound and read some words with ’sh’ at the beginning of the word and ’sh’ at the end of the word.

I try to read to R every day, and today she asked me to read this book to her which one of my friend’s bought her for Eid Ul Fitr. A good book, very informative, in easy language and great statistics about all types of reptiles! A good book to buy if you want to make a lapbook about reptiles or a particular type of reptile.

 

I try to allow for R to practice her reading every day, and masha’Allah she can read most of set 1 of her Bob Books. So, I ordered set 2 and she seems to be reading it nicely. I think we will have to move on to set 3 quickly, masha’Allah. I am so glad that I read The Well Trained Mind, because I found these titles in that wonderful book. I must re-read it again as I last read it when R was 2 1/2 years old. She is now 4 years old and a bit. Maybe we will start the Classical method of homeschooling…mmm….

Oh, and look at the last picture of the Bob books: in every book, there is a list of all words used within the book, including sight/tricky words.

 

 

Who remembers these? I posted about these cards I bought from WH Smith ages ago. We are still using them. We really did get our money’s worth from these cards. They are wipe clean cards that teach number recognition and counting. We also have the letters as well. So, these are excellent in my goal of R learning how to write all numbers from 1 – 100 from memory. They have some interesting maths activities on the back of the card based on each number being taught.

 

And to finish, I popped into a local Woolworths (I cannot believe the entire chain of Woolworths is closing down – I remember shopping in Woolworths when I was a wee lass!) As they are trying to get rid of all of their remaining stock, everything is super cheap. I bought R this and she started using it straight away. She sat and worked on it for 1 and 1/2 hours, had a break and finished it this morning. We ironed it and hey presto:

 

 R ran up to hubby proud of her piece of work and he instantly made reference to it looking like the Star of David. But there is no connection. LOL

DISCOVER in Stratford, London

The day after Eid, we decided to take R to Discover in Stratford. Discover is an educational center that encourages children to read, write and create through play and in a fun way.

Hubby wasn’t too impressed with it. An adult had to pay for the entrance fee! The parking was really cheap though: £1 an hour. But R seemed to like it and I could really see the way in which it would encourage a child to read and creatively engage in writing. Here are some pictures of our day:

There was also a light exhibition downstairs, but it was closed to the public because of school visits. The center has a nice play area which encourages imaginative play as well as alphabet and number practice!

It was a nice day. I do think if I were to go again, I wouldn’t go with hubby, but go with some budding enthusiastic homeschooling mothers instead!

New Units

We haven’t been keeping to our schedule this week because we are on ‘holiday’ – eid holiday that is. Well, a holiday for R, certainly not for me as I have been busy all week planning our new units for study which will insha’Allah be starting from this coming Monday! I have added a category section to the blog (see the sidebar). What I have decided to do is add the unit study that we are working on and all posts related to that unit will be stored in that particular category. This makes it easy for any of you who wish to use the unit for your own children or want to be able to easily access all related posts without having to go through the whole blog.

So, as you can see the new unit studies are:

Human Body (Science)

1-100 (Maths)

Writing from memory 1-100 (Writing)

Adam (AS) (Islamic Studies)

Reading will be kept in the category called Reading Lessons.

I have also updated my blog roll, so do visit all my favourite homeschooling blogs. I have also updated the sites I cannot homeschool without and will be updating one website to the list every time I post insha’Allah.

Also, now that I have updated the sidebar to include our categories, do feel free to click on one of the categories which will now easily bring up old posts! (Can’t believe I didn’t put this up earlier – sorry!)

Eid Ul Adha

Eid Mubarak All!

It is 8pm and I am exhausted! Last night, hubby and I decided to decorate the living room with balloons and decorations as a surprise for R. We all then awoke, made ghusl and left for the masjid. It is always nice praying the eid prayer, meeting all the muslims from different countries, mashaAllah.

Our masjid went all out this year and each child that entered the masjid left with an eid gift. The kids were sooo happy. We then came home, had a late breakfast and R walked into the living room. She couldn’t believe her eyes! LOL She loved all the shiny coloured decorations. Baby Z was very impressed as well. (Kicking his arms and legs about trying to grab balloons and streamers).

We then spent the rest of the afternoon with another family and both families took the kids out. It was a nice day, a tiring one but alhamdulillah an enjoyable one.

I’m too tired to write any more, plus want to post something on my other blog…so until next time insha’Allah. Assalamu Alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu!

Activities this week

This week, I haven’t been very well. Last week, I pretty much stuck to our timetable, but this week, I just couldn’t stick to it due to being sick. But, alhamdulillah that doesn’t mean home ed has stopped there. Although my timetable is geared towards my ‘goals’ for her for this year, she still learns through other methods. Here are some activities we have been doing:

 This is from a colouring books called ‘My Colouring Book of Salah’. This was the first double page of colouring and I just thought it was brilliant! It has 5 pictures of a house and its surroundings. Next to each picture is the salah of the day and a caption asking the child to colour the sky and sun in particular colours according to the salah of the day, hence the time of day it is. R now understands that maghrib means when the sun goes down and the sky is ‘beautiful’ at that time (her words). I think this is something you can draw at home. Just copy the 5 pics and ask the child to colour in per the salah time.

A friend of mine who is also homeschooling told me about Origami. She and her children make one animal per night before they go to sleep with the aim of creating an animal theatre! Well, got R to try it and here is what she made – a sunflower and a swan with her duckling:

 

The website is: www.origami-club.com/en

We also worked a little bit more on her lapbook. Any idea what it could be on yet? :p

PIC 1 and PIC 2: Crayons with numbers as words, as digits and as dots. Matching them up - Numbers 1 to 20.

PIC 3: Counting – counting the items on each picture, finding the relevant number, writing it out and sticking it on.

Yesterday, we went to our local library and returned all of our library books and picked up at least 10 library books (and I was forced to read all 10 books when we arrived home!) We also dropped in at our local playgroup (trying to make the most of it before she turns 5 and then they don’t allow her in anymore) and this is what she made – gave me ideas of similar things to do with her at home:

In the playgroup, R found other children to play with – slightly younger than her but she enjoyed being ‘ummi’ with them. Doesn’t it scare you when your children pretend to be you – you really see your flaws! Anyway, she was playing with some little girls and then walked over to me with her fingers in her ears. She looked really upset and said to me: “Ummi, Astaghfiru’Allah.. they said birthday!” The lady I was talking to looked at me and then at R with pity in her eyes. I explained that we don’t celebrate birthdays. R doesn’t understand what a birthday is but later asked me if she could have one. I asked her what she thought it was and she said a cake. So I told her we can make and eat cakes whenever we like. The questions are starting…. (!)

An idea that the playgroup gave me was ‘dressing up’. R thinks she is a princess and every day sings to herself in Arabic that she is Amira (princess in Arabic). She found a princess dress in the playgroup and wore it the whole time we were there. So, at home, I took all her dresses out (she doesn’t have many and they aren’t fancy!) and her bangles that were a gift and put them all into a box. Now she can play dress up at home. She loves it! I really need to implement more ‘play’ activities into our schedule.

Today, I went shopping and whilst we were in one of the aisles in Tesco, a lady dropped a packet of something and didn’t pick it up. R ran over to it and picked it up and placed it onto the shelf. I asked her why she had done it and she looked up at me and said ” I was being merciful.” LOL I couldn’t believe that the simple lessons we have been working on in relation to the Names of Allah (Swt) has sunk in. And she is constantly reminded of this name/attribute of Allah because it is on our board in the living room every day. Now, she makes references to rahma and mercy and being merciful quite a lot! Our name this week is ‘ Al Malik – The King/Master’. I would really recommend doing this with your children. It is really working wonders with R, masha’Allah. 

R has memorised the dua for travelling, and on our board, we now have the dua to say after it rains. Every day, she wakes up, opens the curtains and looks to see if it has rained. So far- nothing, but it is December so I’m sure we will be using it very soon insha’Allah. She has 3 ayats left of surah Alaq to memorise and then Surah Teen. She can see that she doesn’t have much left to finish Juz Amma (I know that there is still quite a bit to go) and has asked me about the party I mentioned if she finishes it. Children do not forget! I have asked her why it is that ummi and abi are always pushing her to memorise all the time. And she responded by saying, ‘So that when I finish memorising the whole Qu’ran I can put a crown on your head’ (This is in relation to a hadeeth about the child hafith who crowns his/her parents on the Day of Judgment). She carried on saying that ‘I still want the party though’. This is something that I posted about in the yahoo group that I belong to, and I must say I received some interesting responses. I will be holding a small party for R insha’Allah if she finished memorising juz amma. Why? Because as servants of Allah (Swt) we too are also motivated to do actions for their reward. And there are rewards for things dunya wa akhirah. I will insha’Allah post up a response from a sister who explained this really beautifully masha’Allah which persuaded me to go ahead with my initial choice of the party. But more on that closer to the time IF she gets there!

To end this post, a sister who is also homeschooling sent me this link which I think many of you will insha’Allah find useful. It really is good for children who are getting to grips with their phonics:

alphabetwheel