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In my post, ‘I want to homeschool - where do I start?’, I mentioned my weekly menus and shopping lists and that I do not cook every day. All of this, trying to aid me in making homeschooling life easier. This was just a tiny bit of that post, but it seems that most of you were quite interested in making cooking life easier. Is cooking taking up most of our homeschooling mother’s time!

Well, just to refresh your memory. I cook every 2 days, spend no longer than 20-30 mins in the kitchen cooking (this does not include pots that are cooking on the stove as I don’t need to be there preparing anything) and I have my set menu which varies between week 1 and week 2 and then week 1 repeated and then week 2 repeated. Along with this goes my pre-prepared shopping list so that I know what to buy for each week and don’t waste unnecessary money on things I won’t actually use.

I tend to change my weekly menu every month or every 2 months for variety.

So, some of you wanted some of these quick, cheap and yummy recipes that will give you more time for home ed. Well here are three:

TAGLIATELLE CARBONARA (for the Italian in me)

Ingredients

Onion, garlic, mushrooms, halal ’sandwich’ sausage or halal ham, double heavy cream 300 ml, 3 eggs, 100g of cheese of your choice, tagliatelle

Boil the entire pack of tagliatelle.

Thinly slice the onion and garlic and fry in olive oil. Add the sliced halal sausage/ham and fry. Add the sliced mushrooms.

In a bowl, beat three eggs. Mix in the 300ml double heavy cream and 100g of the grated cheese of your choice. Season with salt and pepper.

Once the tagliatelle is boiled, drain and transfer back to the saucepan. Add the hot mushroom mix and very quickly add the cream mix. Toss everything very quickly. You need to do it quickly so that the egg in the mixutre cooks but does not become scrambled. Season as you wish.

Serve with grated cheese. 

 

ALGERIAN CHOURBA (am married to one!)

INGREDIENTS

Lamb or Beef, 1 large potato, 2 large carrots, 1 courgette, can chopped tomatoes, tomato puree, 2 cans of chick peas, bulgur wheat, fresh coriander, onion, cumin, ground coriander, ground cinammon

Chop all the veg in very small ’soup’ sized cubes.

Fry the chopped onion. Add the spices. I don’t measure. Maybe 1 tablespoon of each. Add the meat and cook until brown. Add the chopped vegetables. And cook for 10 mins. Boil water and add about a kettle and a half into the saucepan. Puree the chopped tomatoes and add. Add the tomato puree (3 tablespoons) and a broken cube of beef stock – halal of course. Add the chickpeas. Mix all together. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 25 minutes.After 25 minutes add 1 small cup of bulgur wheat. Mix and continue to simmer for another 20 minutes until the veg is cooked. Turn off the cooker and add chopped coriander. You can serve with cous cous or just eat with baguette. Very nice with grated cheese on top.

LUBIA WITH DUMPLINGS

Ingredients

Mince meat, onion, garlic, lubia (have to buy this from an Algerian shop or you can use cannelini beans – but not the same), can chopped tomatoes, dumpling mix, tomato puree, coriander, egg, cumin, rasel hanout

Combine the mince meat, chopped onion and garlic, fresh coriander and cumin and rasel hanout. Shape into meatballs.

Fry chopped onion in a saucepan. Add the meatballs. Cover and cook on a low heat until all meat balls are brown. Boil the kettle and add 1 and a half kettle of water. Add pureed can of chopped tomatoes and tomato puree. Add more cumin to the pot.  Add the lubia. Bring to the boil and then simmer. Make the dumpling mix (you can make this dish without dumplings, but it is yummy with them) and then add after 25 minutes. Simmer for another 15 minutes. Turn off the cooker. Add fresh coriander. Again, lovely with fresh baguette, rice, or cous cous. Don’t forget the yummy cheese.

Hope this helps release some of your time up for home ed or if you are busy with home ed, just some more time to pursue your own dreams.

Better to make than to print?!

Last week wasn’t really a productive week. Hubby was off work and was pretty much ill, so it was like having an additional child at home! lol So, as you can imagine…we didn’t really get much done.

Since I last blogged, we shared a nice afternoon with three other homeschooling mothers and all of our 11 kids between us had a fantastic time being kids. One of the sisters baked some yummy chocolate cakes which I just had to try out and that is what R and I did, except that we didn’t have the ingredients to make icing which were on the original cakes made by my dear friend.

In the sister’s words;

5oz self raising flour
1oz cocoa powder
6oz butter
6oz caster sugar
1tsp vanilla essence
3 eggs
 
 
beat butter and sugar till light and fluffy
beat eggs first then add slowly to the butter sugar mix bit at a time, until incorporated
sift flour and cocoa powder together then add a few spoonfuls at a time until mixed in completely, then the naughty bit (lol) add the chopped chocolate, and mix.
 
put into cake cases and bake gas mark 6 for 10-15 minutes,
let cool (if u can resist!),
voila!

(By the way Umm D, I just couldn’t resist…I ate a couple hot, straight from the oven!)

I bought a book from a new online bookstore called Bananas.co.uk . It cost me £3.00 and the book was surprisingly big and thick…good value for money and R seems to be learning a from it whilst thoroughly enjoying it…anything to do with stickers!

This was the first time we actually covered odd and even numbers and the book explained it in such a child-friendly manner as you can see below. R added 1 to the number on the head of the ladybird and then had to find a sticker with that amount of spots and place it on the ladybird. She loved it!

We are still carrying on with the literacy folder I made for her and practised reading and writing group 1 words from the letters and sounds curriculum from standards. dfes.gov.uk

When R was little, we did lots and lots and lots of painting. And for some reason, we have hardly done any painting for what must be over a year! Well, finally got the paints out. And this is the masterpiece, masha’Allah:

I really must allow her to do more painting.

We have also been working on 1-100. Today, I tested her and asked her to count to 100. She pretty much did it with a little help here and there. So to reinforce it and also to teach her to count in 2s,5s and 10s, we made this:

Firstly, I took a large piece of sugar paper and divided it into 100 squares. I then wrote 1-100 in the squares in pencil.

R then copied each number for writing practice. As you can see, the paper is so huge that she had to do it on the floor!

Once she completed writing all the numbers, I gave her gold star stickers and asked her to put a sticker on all the numbers she would count if she counted in 2s. We actually referred to the above ‘Big Book of Sticker Maths’ to go over what even numbers were. After that, I asked her to place a different sticker on all the numbers she would count if she counted in 5s. And all the numbers counted in 10s were written in a different colour.

And there you have it, a personalised number grid and skip counting lesson all in one. Now, you may be thinking, you could have just printed that out. But where would the fun have been. And surely a child learns more doing something hands on then she does just reading or looking at it.

To finish off, whilst I was making this grid and was writing the title…R shocked me by reading the title. I couldn’t believe it. Masha’Allah. She is beginning to read words everywhere. I’m really excited! Alhamdulillah.

Old Entries

Every month, as I mentioned in an old post, I have decided to send out a reminder to check out my ‘old posts’. You can do this by looking at the right hand side of the blog and clicking on one of the categories which will take you to previous posts.

I was having a look at some of these posts recently and cannot believe how much time has flown by. We practised writing in shaving foam, discussed melting when we made chocolate swirls, were crazy about number and alpha buddies and all of that just seems eons ago!

Anyway, do take a look at old posts and please feel free to email the links around to any sisters who may be of benefit insha’Allah.

Horniman Museum and a few other bits…

Before I begin with this post, I mentioned educationcity.com in another post and a lot of you subscribed to their 10 day free trial. I received an email from them stating that if anyone pays for a subscription and does so by giving them my ‘tell a friend’ code, I get 3 months worth of educationcity added free of charge and so does the new subscriber. So, if you want to subscribe and want me to have a free 3 months as well as wanting an extra FREE 3 months for yourself, send me a comment, and I will send you the details. Many thanks,

We visited the closest Museum to us in our new abode in South London…the Horniman Museum which is about 10 minutes away from where we live. Have heard some good reviews about it, but I must say it was a wonderful day and we thoroughly enjoyed it!

They have many different exhibitions: Africa, a real life Aquarium, China, art work, natural history, skeletons, animals anatomy in jars! And much more! My favourite part of the museum was an exhibition by Romuald Hazoume from Benin. After 3 days, I am still thinking about it. He made this piece of artwork with petrol cans to re-create a slavery ship which stole thousands of Africans from their homeland and took them to the Americas. Each petrol can signifies a human being. The way in which the petrol cans are stacked together represent how cruelly the slave owners ‘packed’ them into the ships. The half size cans represent children. He also used gin bottles, tobacco and guns to ‘recreate’ the ship which signified that these items were exchanged for human beings! One of the pictures you will see below shows a yellow petrol can and a brown one. Both were used to represent the White Empire’s and African King’s involvement in slavery. The reason why the artist used these items were that he wanted to use items from Benin, his home country as the artwork represented the sufferings of his people. In addition, he used them to highlight the fact that slavery still exists by exploitation of people. People normally exploited for things such as gas and oil! I must say I am not a huge artwork fan and normally can’t understand why artists use silly items to create their masterpiece. But this was simply FANTASTIC.

One other part of his exhibition which almost brought tears to my eyes (I tried to capture it in one of the photos below) is the following quote:

“They didn’t know where they were going, but they knew where they had come from. Today they still don’t know where they are going, and they have forgotten where they come from.” This exhibition will be at the Horniman museum until the end of February. It will then move on to different museums across the country.

My father is from West Africa (and mother from Sicily, Italy – in case you are wondering) and it made me realise that although I became a Muslim, I still have roots in a very rich and wonderful culture which I would like my children to learn about it. But most importantly, for me to rediscover and return back to.  *sigh* Brings back memories of my trip to Nigeria in 2003 - I miss it. Here (finally) are the pics:

Before we left the museum, I had a quick look at the bookshop and found a beautiful book:

It is written by a woman who travelled through Africa and spoke with men and women who could not read or write and asked them to tell her their stories. The book includes all these wonderfully rich stories. I couldn’t believe that I found this book! Although my father is literate, I remember him always saying ‘There was once an African proverb…’ They used to mean so much to me then and now thinking about it, more now! Reading these stories, it truly is amazing how illiterate people have the deepest messages to give. Actually, makes you think about the Prophet (saw) and how Allah (Swt) used him…an illiterate man as the last prophet to mankind! And what a lasting impression, he (saw) made on humanity.

Anyway, enough of the nostalgia. Back to home ed. Hubby has been off sick from work since Monday which has thrown our home ed into a bit of a crisis! I find that when hubby is home, we just can’t stick to our routine. So, R has read and been read to. She also worked on her fine motor skills by completing this (from the 99p shop – they really do have some good things in there!):

I also spent the time printing out certificates from educationcity. I love this site – I really do. As R has completed the educational games, the stars turn to gold when she gets 100% and when she does, they have a printable certificate. So, I ran off all the ones she has completed today and will be putting them into her yearbook (see my planning and organisation category). If that isn’t good enough as a way of the child being proud of their achievements, there is an additional fun activity to complete on each certificate:

I also made a Literacy folder for R. I really want to push her in her reading as she is doing so well masha’Allah. So, I printed off all the worksheets that come with educationcity.com (yes! they have worksheets that come with the package. It definitely is £25 per year well spent!). I also printed out starfall worksheets and photocopied remaning jolly phonics sheets from the jollyphonics handbook. I then, sorted them all out into their categories. So for example, when learning about the sound ‘ow’, all the worksheets from educationcity, starfall, jollyphonics and any other books are all put together. I also included handwriting practice based on the sound we are learning, fun activities based around that ’sound’, words to copy, words to read. So, now I have a literacy folder ‘in order’ where she is not jumping from ’sh’ one day to ‘oa’ another day, but rather spends a good amount of time on ’sh’ to master it and then moves on. And the best part of it is that it includes reading, learning, revising and writing. It took me ages to make but now I feel there is some sort of structure to the rest of her learning how to read.

Finally (my posts are way too long!), I saw something similar to this on someone else’s blog and really wanted it but couldn’t afford it at the time. But one arrived in the post a couple of days ago. R loves it, is constantly changing the time and activity and is finally understanding the concept of time!

And that (for now) is it! Happy homeschooling!

While its been cold…

Since much of this week has been so cold, we’ve pretty much stayed in apart from the day we went out to make a snowman. Here is what we have been up to:

R finished memorising the dua for dressing last week and we are now memorising and using the dua upon entering the evening. We often discuss the fact that the shayatin came out during this time. So whenever we’re out and on our way back home from somewhere, she tells me to drive faster so that we get home before the shayatin come and ‘bite us’ (!)

I have carried on reading ‘Goodnight Stories from the Life of the Prophet (saw).’ She really loves this book masha’Allah and we often have a bit of a ‘chat’ afterwards about the events that took place in the seerah (life of the Prophet (saw)).

As part of our unit on Adam (AS), which we are almost finished with, I used the following powerpoint on Adam (AS). (Scroll down to the bottom where it says Powerpoint Book, Adam. R then also watched the Story of Adam (AS) for children as told by Yusuf Estes which can be found here. She really enjoyed it, and for anyone that knows Yusuf Estes, he will always have you laughing masha’Allah.

She also made this which we got from here. We just merely copied the idea and made it into our own. We used colouring books to find and cut out the pictures. This was quite basic for her, but I thought it would be fun and we talked about Allah and what He created whilst she cut, coloured and stuck. I could have made it more specific to her age and included some writing or something, but to be honest I was quite tired this week!

 

For reading, R worked on the following sounds: sh, ch, th, ee, oo and st. She finished the above workbook. We only have one left for literacy, so looks like I am going to have to buy some 5-7 year old workbooks. She is completing too many workbooks too fast now which suggests that the 3-5 year old workbooks are too easy! That is the beauty of home ed…you go with your child’s ability, not his or her age group. R has continued to read to me and I find that the more she reads, the less she needs to sound words out. I am going to try and ask her to read 3 Bob books to me a day iA. For reading, she has also completed a lot of the education city games and the stars are changing to gold which means that she got 100% for the games. What is nice about educationcity.com is that when this happens, they have a printable certificate which I can put into her yearbook (see my other post on what her yearbook is).

Aside from that, she drew an A3 picture of lots of flowers, clearly missed her pottery lesson and used her playdough instead, pretended to be a breastfeeding princess with dress and crown and breast-fed baby of course, dressed her baby brother in hijab (he’ll get his own back when he starts walking) and danced to nasheeds on youtube! A busy but joyful week!

I want to homeschool – where do I start?

Two homeschooling mothers left comments on the blog with quite a few questions that others seem to be asking me. So, instead of replying as a comment. I thought I would answer their questions via a post. Please remember, this is my own method of homeschooling and organisation. There are others but I am only going to post what has worked for me. So, here goes:

Where to start once you decide to homeschool?

1. List all the goals you have for your child per subject for the entire year.

2. Once you have divided your goals. Sort out your resources…this could be printouts from websites, educational games online, educational resources bought from ebay, amazon, WH Smith etc, books, textbooks.

3. Then form a REALISTIC timetable for your children. Remember it has to be realistic. Think about their attention span, age, capabilities etc. Decide what subjects you are going to do on what day each week.

4. Work through your subjects as per the capability of your child. For example, it may take you 1 week to learn about shapes, but 2 months to learn about time. Be flexible so that your children can grasp the concepts at their level and time.

5. Then, make your own timetable. Include everything. EVERYTHING! From cutting the nails of your children to doing the ironing. Everything that is your life should go into that timetable. I tend to form one for each day. That way, I know when I need to clean each room, when I need to cook, when I need to do the shopping, my own personal ibadah (worship) time and so on. Include days out. EVERYTHING.

6. Then fit the homeschooling timetable that you have already prepared into your timetable. Now your week should be complete. I don’t put times next to my timetable. I just work through it during the day.

7. When it comes to cooking, I have formed two weekly cooking timetables. Week 1 and week 2. I DO NOT cook every day! I normally cook for two days. I alternate, so once I have cooked week 1 and week 2, I go back to week 1. Now that I know what I am cooking each week, I also have a ready shopping list for each week. Saves money and time in the shops. I just buy what I am going to cook. I tend to change my weekly menus every month (just because my husband likes variety).  And no, I do not cook complicated dishes unless we have guests. Quick, cheap but scrummy yummy is what it’s all about!

I have two children (for those who are asking). R is nearly 4.5 years old and her baby brother will be 1 years old in March insha’Allah. I have changed organised my timetable such that the main bulk of the home ed is done whilst he naps. However, recently he seems to be changing and so I just preoccupy him with something, carry him, feed him whilst I home ed her. Actually, I now am able to clean whilst homeschooling her and have figured out ways in which I can do homeschooling and something else at the same time.

I do not speak fluent Arabic. My daughter and husband speak Arabic together. Alhamdulillah. But when it comes to Islamic studies, it is I who teaches her. I believe I know enough to teach her..alhamdulillah and there is much out there that can support anyone who wishes to teach Islamic studies in a fun way.

Sisters may be thinking, oh – its easy for you to homeschool your daughter. You only have a baby to worry about. I am also finishing my academic studies, working a couple of hours a week, involved in dawah activities as well as learning tajweed and hifdh, in addition to cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing. What I’m saying is. You can do it! Even if you have a busy schedule like me, you can do it. You just have to be strict with your time and organise yourself.

I must also state that I have ‘tweaked’ my timetable so many times as life has changed. You must accept that you will need to do this. It could be due to a new class you are starting, more demands from the children, more demands from hubby or whatever. Alhamdulillah after much tweaking – I now have a timetable that seems to sit well with my family. I truly believe that when everything else is going smoothly in life, then home ed is sweet. When the washing piles up, the house is dirty, the children smell and you can’t remember the last time you did some personal ibadah, then not only do you suffer but so does home ed. For me, organisation is and will always be the key to happy homeschooling (as well as the important dua to Allah (Swt) to make it successful and easy for you!).

Like someone said, it is not that we do not have enough time in the days of our lives. It is just that we do not know how to use the seconds and minutes that we have.

Snow

Last night, my husband was at a walima and I went to see a group of sisters. We were caught up in the snowfall and it was so difficult to drive due to the slippery roads! It is amazing how a quick change in the weather leaves us incapable of controlling our cars, travelling to work and leading a ‘normal’ life! Subhana’Allah. We aren’t really in control of anything..are we?!

Anyway, I had some exciting news last week! It maybe some old news to some who belong to the yahoo group I belong to, but I clearly wasn’t paying attention to the emails regarding the games club. Okay, so let me explain. A few sisters on the yahoo group have organised the ‘Project a Month’. Basically, we go on a trip once a month. We have an interesting line up with a visit to HMS Belfast, and a visit to the Regents Canal!

Two weeks before this, the sisters who attend the ‘Games Club’, meet in West London for the children to present work they have done on the subject matter of the trip and they also have arts and crafts and Islamic Studies activities. The main reason for the ‘Games Club’ as one sister explained, is for the children to overcome ’shyness’ and confidence issues and by doing a presentation of the work they have done. It could be anything, but it has to be 100% the child’s work. I like this and although it is far, I insha’Allah want to attend as I think it would be good for R to socialise as well as build her cnfidence inshaAllah. In my eyes, at least that is twice a month that she will be mixing with other children. And it also allows us to explore and learn about different subject matters associated with history.

For those of you who were following my madrassa dilemma…Allah (Swt) is indeed The Guide. I prayed istikhara before I left and we got lost and could not find the place. After arriving an hour late, I walked in to the school and knew straight away that this wasn’t for R. The school was lovely masha’Allah and the headteacher was very kind. I I It is just that the other children she would be mixing with wouldn’t be my choice of companionship at this age where I am trying to build a solid foundation. In addition, she is doing fine in her hifdh, arabic and Islamic studies at home. The £80 a month could be spent better elsewhere insha’Allah.

We have been following our timetable alhamdulillah. Something, that might be of interest to you which could probably be used in any subject is this:

We are still working on our Adam (AS) unit and after reading to her, I wrote three words and said ‘Jannah is…’ and she had to complete the sentence. What was interesting was due to my reading to her, her vocabulary grew! I think we will be doing more of these inshaALLAH.

 

Finally, I doubt very much that we will be attending pottery today. due to this:

 

So, looks like I’ll be taking the kids out and showing them (yes that includes baby Z) how to have a real snowball fight! InshaAllah!