Spring and our HE!

The weather has been absolutely stunningly beautiful here in London masha’Allah. It really has brought a much needed ray of sunshine to our lives, alhamdulillah. My grandmother (non-muslim) died last week and was quite down about it so the weather has really cheered me up. Due to the death, and then my son and I becoming ill, we have really taken it easy on our timetable. In fact, most days for the last 10 days…we haven’t actually kept to the timetable. It has made me think about change. Spring kind of makes you think like that doesn’t it. Change is good, right? (More on that in another post insha’Allah)

Alhamdulillah the IHSAN website and forum is going well. Alhamdulillah we have a great community developing on the forum with 45 members from different continents. Why not come and join us insha’Allah.

Okay, so we have been doing the following since the weather has been too beautiful to resist masha’Allah:

QURAN

A lot of Qu’ran. She finished memorising surah balad masha’Allah. Now on to surah Fajr.

Once she finished memorising surah balad, I printed out this workbook on surah balad. A sister made it, masha’Allah may Allah (Swt) reward her. She also made another one on surah fajr. So once that has been memorised and we work on it, I will post it up here insha’Allah.

READING

We have been reading a lot! I have been reading so many books to her and it has been nice to spend quality time just reading. Something funny happened though: I was reading a book to her and noticed that something was unIslamic so I tried to ‘islamify’ it and read something about Allah. (It wasn’t an Islamic story book!) So, she stopped me, looked at the cover, returned back to the page I was reading and said: “Ummi, I can’t find where it says, “Allah didn’t like that. But then forgave him.” LOL I didn’t know what to say!!! Okay, so now that she is reading it looks like I am going to have to read word for word!!!

JOURNAL

She used her journal. For those that haven’t seen previous posts on this. She draws a picture, and tells me about the event that she is journaling and I write down IN HER WORDS wht she dictates. It allows me to see how she is progressing in her vocabulary and speaking skills. I can see that R doesn’t like drawing very much. She quickly draws something without paying much attention to it – like she wants to get it over and done with. I think she likes writing more? Should I push her to improve in her art work? Or leave it?

ART AND CRAFT

Lots and lots of painting.

She made this butterfly from hama beads. She really loves hama beads…good for fine motor skills.

She also made this masjid with her father using air-dry clay from ELC (currently on sale for £4!) Do you remember the dinosaur they made? and the jungle?! Why is it that I can’t make fantastic things like that with her?? (grrrrrr!) I really think I’m going to leave the HE to him. I spend every week with her trying to make things with her. He does one thing in a blue moon and she talks about it for weeks!!!! Not that I’m jealous of my dear husband or anything?! (grrrrr! LOL…Masha’Allah!)

OUTDOOR ACTIVITES

Like I said, we have been out a lot this week. It has been good for me and for her. I needed to be out to reflect a lot on a lot of things! Can you believe this is in South London? Doesn’t it look beautiful?

Every Thursday we have been attending the Home Ed get together in East London. I love it. She loves it. And I think every sister and child who goes there loves it. I feel like we are building a small community of home educated children alhamdulillah. 2 weeks ago a very kind sister brought henna and they decorated cakes. It is fantastic as children from 13 to babies all mix together alhamdulillah.

IHSAN WEBSITE AND FORUM

Assalamu Alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu,

The IHSAN (Islamic Homeschooling Support Advisory Network) is now live! Alhamdulillah. Please do visit us at: http://www.islamichomeeducation.co.uk.

We have nine years worth of articles on the webpage as well as our new forum.

If for some reason, the forum disappears due to technical difficulties, insha’Allah we will be back. Just keep checking back.

Wasalaam.

Why I haven’t been blogging and our home ed

I haven’t posted in a while. I have been preoccupied with something I am sure you will all be excited about just as I am! For those of you in the UK, you will know of IHSAN (Islamic Homeschooling Support Advisory Network). It was set up in the UK in 2000 and it was a paid membership where members would receive a newsletter in the post as well as other benefits. Well, the newsletters have stopped and IHSAN decided to go online. Alhamdulillah I took up the challenge of sorting out the website with our webdesigner who is a brother masha’Allah and the website will go live this SUNDAY 15TH MARCH 2009! The great benefit of this is that this will be GLOBAL insha’Allah.  So what do you have to look forward to?

*   All the previous newsletter articles (thats almost 9 years worth of articles on all aspects of homeschooling) online. There is a wealth of information in those articles written by sisters who are home educating.

*   A free forum where you can meet other sisters who homeschool or who are considering starting and discuss everything pertaining to home education.

*   Plus a children’s gallery on the forum to upload pictures of your children’s work.

*   There will insha’Allah be children’s competitions and insha’Allah we will be continuing with the newsletter but uploading the articles online.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE…spread the word. Email everyone on your mailing list, if you blog please put up a post on your blog. You may cut the information I have put here – please spread the word. And I look forward to ‘chatting’ with you on the forum from the 15th March insha’Allah.

The website is: http://www.islamichomeeducation.co.uk/

Okay what have we been up to?

QURAN

Well most of our home ed recently has been Qu’ran, Qu’ran and more Qu’ran. So much so that a lot of the other subjects have been ignored…’slightly’. As you know we are pushing R with her hifdh (memorisation). It does require a lot of work and so I decided to concentrate on this more than the other subjects. We have been revising what she has already memorised ‘Surah Nas to Surah Shams’ and she has 2 ayats left to memorise Surah Balad insha’Allah.

READING

She is reading bob books set 2 quite well now. So, I have started using Oxford Reading Tree and Oxford Read Write Inc. set which I think are excellent. We have been spending a lot of time working through the educationcity.com worksheets. This is mainly for revision, but they are proving especially useful for spelling. They ask the children to draw a picture beginning with a letter and then to write the word. It is good because R is beginning to sound out the words in her head in order to spell them.

MATHS

We haven’t done much maths recently. But to consolidate work on 1-100, I found this maths 1-100 game. It is very simple but effective.

ISLAMIC STUDIES

We finished our unit on Adam (AS). Please see the top of my blog and click on the page that says Resources for Adam AS Unit for the list of what we used insha’Allah.

We finished reading our previous Islamic book and now I read a little each day from this:

The vocabulary in there is perfect for R to understand and also to challenge her level of vocabulary.

We have also started a copywork project in our Islamic Studies. I have been reading up about copywork and it is not only good for handwriting practice, but builds the vocabulary of the child as well as grammar. Visit http://islamiccopywork.wordpress.com/ for more information.

Our project is based around the Names of Allah which we started last year, but I felt we needed something that we could keep. So…

 

I made little mini books (just a small piece of paper folded in 2. On the front cover (in pencil) I wrote Allah (Swt) name in Arabic and then wrote the meaning underneath in English. Inside, I wrote an easy to understand explanation of that Name. She copied everything and whilst she was doing so, we would discuss the meaning and how it is applicable in our lives. It has been going very well masha’Allah.

Also, we made salat centers. Now, all credit does to the wonderful wonderful sister who runs http://talibiddeenjr.amanahwebs.com/. I got this idea from her blog.

We made the pouches from holographic card(folded in 2 and the sides stapled together). The rest should be self explanatory from the pictures as well as the link you can find all the printables. Basically, it teaches the child that we need to pray on time as well as teaching them that there are duas to say after each salat, morning and evening, before going to sleep and upon waking up. This is useful for the whole family. All the duas that you would say after each salah goes into the relevant pouch. There are literally booklets of all the duas to say. It is wonderful and even though R is not praying yet, after I finish praying we sit down together and she takes the booklet out of the pouch (the pouches are on our wall) and we read them together.

In the second picture, she had to read the Arabic words which said which salat it was and link it to the correct picture. I would not help her read the Arabic as I really want her to improve in her Arabic reading.  In the end I helped her a bit, but she pretty much got there in the end.

 

R has 2 more weeks left til her pottery class ends. She has thoroughly enjoyed the 10 week course for homeeducated children in Clapham Leisure Centre. The instructor told me, ‘R definitely keep us on our toes!’ LOL It is also nice to see how she has progressed in the last few weeks. Here are some items she made on her own (a rather large bracelet, a house and a bowl of sausages!). LOL! Remember she is only 4.5 years old. LOL

Finally, R is absolutely obsessed with daffodils at the moment. On the way home from pottery, she made me buy her a bunch! I think it arose from our time spent at the new home ed get together which takes place every Thursday. (It takes place in East London, costs £1 a family. Parking is £1 and the centre is modern with a modern play area and very clean and modern building. We have everything to ourselves for 2 hours! There were over 50 children on the first Thursday from 2 months old to 13 years old – all home educated! If anyone wants details, send me a msg.)  On our way to a shop with two other ummis, the kids found daffodils and since then she hasn’t stopped talking about them, smelling them. PLEASE PLEASE…if anyone knows of a unit study, lapbook on daffodils, please send me a message. Until next time…happy home ed!

Award

I got nominated for this award from this wonderful homeschooling ummi!

 

Here are the rules of this tag:

1. Admit one thing you feel awful about (involving being a mom). Once you have written it down, you are no longer allowed to feel bad. Remember you are a good mom! 2. Remind yourself that you ARE a good mom, list 7 things you love about your kids, you love doing with your kids, or that your kids love about you. 3. Send this to 5 other moms of the year that deserve a reminder that they are too the best moms that they can be. Remember to send them a note letting them know you have selected them, and also add a link to your post that directs people back to the person who nominated you.

 

OKAY, So here are my answers:

1. One thing I sometimes feel awful about being a Mum is that I don’t have the time to do the things that I really enjoy, and then I beat myself up about it because it is a blessing that I have my kids.

2. 7 things I love about or love doing with my kids are: I love when they laugh, you know, that contagious laugh and then I get the giggles too. I love that my daughter (baby doesn’t count yet) loves Allah. I love teaching my children. I love that R has such a considerate and kind nature, masha’Allah. I love that Z is so chubby that at almost 1 year old, he is not crawling! lol (gotta love that one as its trouble when he does start walking!) I love swimming with my children. I love watching R run and run and run through the park or a field.

3. The five Mums that I am sending this to (who have a blog) are:

http://educatingthemuslimchild.wordpress.com

http://talibiddeenjr.wordpress.com

http://boyceview.blogspot.com

http://exuberantconnectedness.blogspot.com

http://raisingmuslims.wordpress.com