To all home educators

Please support this sister as in turn her venture might end up supporting you:

Asalamuu alaykum

Are you home educating? Interested in home education? The Home Educators Hub needs your help! 

We have a wonderful work in progress that will be a great resource for home educators. 

Please help us by completing the following few questions and email it back to homeeducatorshub@gmail.com

Feel free to forward it on to all home educators! 

(1) If there were a series of online home education webinars, would you attend? If yes, what topics would you hope to listen to? 

(2) Do you use tutors to teach your children? If no, please explain why. 

(3) Do you plan or intend to plan your child(ren)’s home education in advance? 

If yes, do you feel you need assistance with this? 

If no, please explain why. 

(4) Which of the following options would you choose and why? 

A. A ready made individualised home education plan for your child (ren)

B. The above with resource lists of everything you need. 

C. The above with actual resources.

(5) Would you be interested in a unit study/topic planning service? 

If yes, what would you expect from such a service? 

(6) How often do you use online resources in your home education?

(7) Do you see ideas on websites, blogs and books that you would like to try with your child(ren)? 

If yes, do you feel you have enough time to prepare these activities? Would you use a service that would prepare these activities/resources for you? 

(8) How often do you speak to other home educators for advice on home education? 

(9) Do you feel it is important to speak with more experienced home educators? If yes, why? 

(10) Would you be interested in a home education resource library?

If yes, what types of resources would you hope to borrow? 

(11) Please state any other type of help or support you would hope for in your home education. 

Many thanks for completing the questions. 

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Don’t miss out on our week of free home education freebies coming soon! 

The Home Educators Hub

Email that touched me. .

My plan was to make the blog private due to some personal reasons. I didn’t feel many readers would mind as the comments on the blog have been quiet in recent posts.

I was quite shocked at how many private emails I received requesting it to remain open as it has helped with ideas for kids, resources etc. I think most of you readers are lurkers! !

I apologise if I haven’t responded to you privately. There was one email that I received from a sister who doesn’t comment but has been following the blog for many years. It touched me, made me fill up with tears and made me rethink my decision to go private. So inshaAllah it is public again and to the sister that sent me that email. .. Jzk for having a profound impact on me and causing me to reflect on what I do and what’s important to me.

So update from us. .

We’ve had in laws over from Algeria staying with us over the last few weeks. As the children hardly ever get to see my husband’s side of the family every year due to them living abroad, it has been nice for them. But it’s also meant that pretty much everything has gone out of the window!

I find it quite frustrating as R’s Quran schedule is badly affected. She feels it too!  We have started to get back to some sort of normality since they left.

Aside from lots of play, the kids have visited practically every museum in London due to taking the in laws.

I found some cheap sets of magnetix on gum tree to add to the boys collection. They take that out 5x + per day.

R attended a local textiles class and made the cushion in the picture above. She used the sewing machine and glue gun. Quite a nice pretty result mashaAllah. The sister who teaches the class is very creative mashaAllah and it was very kind of her to set up a class just for home educated girls during her break from being a teacher.

We also attended a trip visiting the Brixton windmill which R particularly enjoyed. It came at the right time as we had just finished a project on wind. This windmill is one of the only ones in inner London and is 10 mins from where we live. .. Didn’t know it existed!

Zuzu is as creative as ever. Here he has made a Knight costume and wouldn’t take it off for ages! !

Amazing what he can make with bags,  paper, tape and a cereal box!

Finally, a sister shared this excellent article with me. I definitely recommend reading it. ..

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/give-childhood-back-to-children-if-we-want-our-offspring-to-have-happy-productive-and-moral-lives-we-must-allow-more-time-for-play-not-less-are-you-listening-gove-9054433.html

Country projects completed

For the month of November, the children chose to learn about a country of their choice. This is a bit of a long post but wanted to put everything in one post.

R chose Brazil. Z chose Canada. Y chose Antarctica.

They all began by doing some flag work. Antarctica doesn’t have a flag so Y designed his own with lots of snow everywhere!

For R’s project, I let her decide how she wanted to learn about her chosen country.

R mapped Brazil and used a key to identify mountains, rainforest etc.

She was reading about the northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere of the world and that the southern hemisphere have their summer whilst the northern have their winter. She’s not sure but she thinks Brazil may have two different seasons in one country as the equator runs through Brazil? Anyone know if this is true?

She then researched what the Brazilian flag represents. .

She then decided to research and compare the life of a city child and rainforest child in Brazil and wrote about it. .

She chose the Squirrel monkey to research. .

We fortunately know a sister who is Brazilian living in Brazil. I had my first marriage meeting in her house many years ago mashaAllah. So R compiled some interview questions, typed them up and we emailed them over. MashaAllah the sister’s daughter went to great length and really put in effort to answer her questions in great detail. R asked questions like ‘what does it feel like to be a Muslim girl living in Brazil?’

The girl sent R some photos and one that amazed R were some Capybaras crossing the street as though they were tiny mice or rats that cross the street at night in the UK. Capybaras are huge rodents. . can you imagine catching one in your kitchen!!

R made some traditional food and made Pao de Queijo which are Brazilian cheese breads. They bring back memories of my above friend making them for me when I was  pregnant with R as I was addicted to them.How time flies. .now R is making them for me.

We used cornflour as we couldn’t find tapioca flour.

R decided to create a poster to put it all together.

Onto the boys. I kept it very simple with the boys. ..

Z wrote Canada and Y stamped Antarctica with the alphabet stamps.

They then coloured their country on a world map.

The boys made igloos using sugar cubes.

We watched some videos about igloos and Eskimos on YouTube.

We then looked at a great Usborne book we have which is perfect for younger children and they chose an animal from their country.

They coloured the animal and did some light copy work. We looked at pictures online and watched more videos and read some books about the animals in their country.

Z decided to make a Canadian aeroplane..

I was telling a sister that unlike his brother and sister, he really doesn’t like to do math, phonics etc. But he loves this kind of stuff.

We also discussed the time difference and different sports that are played such as ice hockey. Z also spoke to his uncle who has been living in Canada for the last few years.

Both boys were very proud when we put their little books together. .

And that’s the end of another project for November alhamdulillah. I wanted to do more for both our wind project and country project but as we were going to Forest school every week there wasn’t enough time. But it goes to show you don’t need to cover everything when learning about a topic. Today I’m planning our next project inshaAllah. . Science experiments for science and climate and weather also for science/nature.

Wind project

We’ve been learning about Wind this month. It’s been so much easier learning altogether rather than do different projects. Just requires me to look at different age  appropriate activities.

We still have another week learning about wind and I have a few more activities lined up for them.

But this is what we’ve done so far. ..

R wrote a descriptive piece using each letter of the word wind. I encouraged her to use her senses as she wrote the piece. Not sure if you can see what she wrote, it says:

‘Whistling gracefully on lovely gentle days. And blowing fiercely through angry stormy times.

Invisible and delicate, it can shatter into a dangerous storm.

Not visible to the eye but can be heard by the ear in sounds of whoosh and whoo.

Dark and dareful in a storm, destroys everything in a hurricane. Swirling round in a tornado.’

She built a windmill using a Thames and kosmos kit called wind power 2.0
A few months ago, I and a few sisters ordered some Thames and kosmos kits as the price is so much cheaper when you buy in bulk. The prices are more than 50% cheaper! I’m so glad I arranged the order as the kits are fantastic mashaAllah and a good investment as the other kids will inshaAllah use them too.

This particular windmill creates electricity and a bulb lights up without any electricity supply. This led to a discussion about how windmills are used to produce electricity for homes etc. We learnt about the science involved and how it works.

With the boys, we read books about Wind and had a bit of fun blowing different objects around using a straw. We also watched some videos of tornados and hurricanes which amazed the boys.

The above windmill also charges rechargeable batteries. Managed to find rechargeable batteries in the pound shop! So R is planning on conducting that experiment. Let’s see if it works!

A sister has arranged a trip to a local windmill in January inshaAllah so that will tie up this project nicely inshaAllah.
I’ll post up some more of what we’ve done next week inshaAllah.

Dua challenge

There are some Muslims who without fail will always say their morning and evening adhkar. There are others who cannot simply pray the fardh salah. They must pray the 12 rawatib. And others cannot leave or enter the home without saying the relevant dua.

All of the above feel out of place should they miss any of the above. They feel like something is missing and almost perform the above as though they were obligatory acts of ibadah.

As a revert, sadly, those who were around me during those early few weeks and months did not show me the importance of adopting the above. And so trying to get into the ‘habit’ of never missing some of the above acts of worship have been an uphill struggle. It’s taken me many years to reach a point where some of them become habitual… others I still need to push myself that bit more.

With children, especially when they’re young, are like sponges. They are clean slates and what we engrave on them will inshaAllah always remain.

This is why I feel it is essential that whilst they’re young that they get into the habit of doing certain things so that when they’re adults it is so second nature they do it without thinking. My hope is that by working on developing these habits that they will be a means of ajr for them when they are adults.

So I’ve begun to think of ways to get them into these habits. We’re working on getting into the habits of saying our situational duas.

As adults we choose to do acts of ibadah because we want reward and we want Allah to love us and be pleased with us. For very young children, it is difficult for them to have the same motivation.

So I sat with the children and spoke about the importance of saying our situational duas. I told them that all of us need to get into the habit of saying our duas. So the challenge is to remember to say the duas we already know, to remind one another to say them, to learn new ones and to help one another in learning them. For every dua they say, they get to choose a sweet. For the boys I further explained that just as I’m rewarding them, Allah rewards us with hasanat and stores them for us. And we’ll see all the stored hasanat in Jannah inshaAllah.

As a reminder, I created the above poster as a reminder for them and replaced certain dua posters in different positions around the house. Some posters have been up for years so changing the position slightly has made them take more notice.

They made bags to store their sweets and the dua  challenge jar is placed on our main table to serve as a motivation.
This past week they’ve really gone for it mashaAllah and they’ve been saying most of their duas and learning new ones. But what has been so nice to see is them encouraging and reminding each other mashaAllah.

I’ve even withheld from giving them sweets as rewards for a few days to see if they’d still say their duas and masha’Allah they did.

It’s also been good for me to get back into saying certain ones.

I think I’ll carry on with this until the sweetie jar is empty and then hopefully they’ll have got into the habit.

Dissecting owl pellets

Our home ed group ordered owl pellets. Although R has dissected owl pellets before she still thoroughly enjoyed the activity. It was zuzu’s first time and he found it. ..’interesting’.

They were all given owl pellets and began to dissect them and identified which bones of which animals were eaten by the owls. Some owls had even eaten pieces of fabric print!

For those who may not know, owls cannot digest the bones of any animals they eat and so they basically vomit a ball called a pellet which contains the bones of the animals they’ve eaten.

Y also had a turn too but found it too dirty and smelly. He’s my ‘ocd clean’ child!!

Both R and I were both surprised that you could even order owl pellets. A sister ordered them from France mashaAllah.

Project a month

I’m trying to do one science project and one other project a month with the children.

I’ve dedicated one whole day just for science and project work and masha’Allah it really worked well.

Previously I’ve tried to do a little project work in the afternoon but by the time they got through other subjects there just wasn’t any time. So instead they now have a full day just for this and we had a blast masha’Allah.

For science, we’re all learning about one topic together but differentiated as per their age and ability.

For the other project that’s where I’ve got a bit of a headache as they’re learning about different topics.

At the moment we’ve started a project about Wind and windpower for science. And the other project is a country study. R has chosen Brazil. Z has chosen Canada and Y has chosen Antarctica.

I’m going to try and post activities saved under each category on the blog so that if you decide to do a similar project in the future it will be easy for you to find all ideas/activities related to that specific project inshaAllah.

Categories are on the right hand side of the blog.

Please do share any ideas you may have if you’ve already competed the project we’re currently studying.

Oh and I receive lots of private emails. Please please try to use the comment function on the blog n instead so that others can too benefit from your ideas or anything you ask and I may respond to. I’d really like this blog to be as useful as possible inshaAllah.

9 years old

Today is the 15th of Ramadhan and R has turned 9 by the hijri calendar. To me, this is more important than when she turns 9 by the Gregorian calendar as the Islamic calendar is what Allah and His Messenger have stipulated the Muslims go by.

Can’t believe it was 9 years ago today that my darling R entered into the world. I feel quite emotional writing this. I remember very clearly the day she was born and here she is 9 years old already masha’Allah.

This Ramadhan, I’m very proud of her (not in an arrogant way but more in a motherly-love kind of way). This is her second year of fasting the whole month and mashaAllah she has kept all of her fasts. She also decided to set herself the goal of reading the entire Qu’ran this month and day 15 she is masha’Allah tabarakAllah on track and will have completed her 15th juz today.

We did have the same goal but I sadly am way behind her. I think I seriously underestimated how difficult fasting would be in the heatwave that we’ve had, plus breastfeeding (baby S seems to be feeding more and more) and then the sleepless nights. Alhamdulillah, despite all of this, I have managed to keep all of my fasts. But am lagging behind on the Qu’ran front. I don’t think I’ll be able to finish reading the Qu’ran this month but alhamdulillah am so happy for R as if she continues in the way that she has, then this will be her first ever time completing her recitation of the entire Qu’ran – and what better time to do it in, then the month of Ramadhan – the month she was born in. Insha’Allah it will be something she’ll remember.

Aside from that, not much else going on. R has stopped her hifdh during Ramadhan. Didn’t plan on doing this but she was so passionate about completing her recitation of the Qu’ran that she just couldn’t have managed her normal hifdh timetable at the same time. So instead, she has been doing an extra juz a day of murajaah to really try to consolidate it. I know this might seem a lot – one juz recitation and then a separate juz of murajaah but it is doable if split up in chunks in the day.

R has also had her daily Arabic lessons and apart from that, she’s been free to do what she likes. She has been knitting a hairband for her sister, baby S and has been reading a very lovely book about the stories of the Prophets. This book has been on our shelf for some time and can’t believe we haven’t read it sooner. It really is just perfect for R’s age. It isn’t for adults and isn’t for little kids – its more for the age bracket of 8-13 I would say.  So, she’s been enjoying that.

As for the boys, it has been Qu’ran revision. Stopped on the hifdh front too. And looooots of Reading Eggs. Z’s reading has really taken off masha’Allah and I have now taken out the Superdragons reading set and he is reading simple books to me. Yay! Been waiting for this.

Half way through Ramadhan, I’m determined not to get depressed at not being able to achieve what I had set myself to do. Alhamdulillah, I take comfort in knowing that our intention is rewarded even if we did not complete the deed. And it is all about the intention behind deeds and not the deeds themselves. Allah knows our situation, He knows…

Hope you’re all having a wonderful Ramadhan. Please remember us in your duas.

Real home ed and ramadhan

We’ve pretty much stopped formal work apart from R’s quran schedule and Arabic. For Z, he’s continuing with quran, Arabic and lots of reading eggs.

MashaAllah his reading has really picked up and we had a wonderful moment last week. He decided to grab a piece of paper and a pen and without me asking him he wrote the words ‘see, cat, the and man’. I couldn’t believe it mashaAllah. And now he’s sounding out loads of words, he sees words everywhere when we’re out lol. This is it inshaAllah. When they start acting in this way they’re ready. So am going to carry on as it seems the method I’m using is working with him now alhamdulillah.

Despite not doing much formal work, I feel that we’ve had some real home ed days alhamdulillah. Recently I’ve met a few ‘readers’ of my blog and I cringe

English through topic work

As you know from my last post, have decided to teach English through topic based work which is something R loves.

To make sure I am covering everything I feel she needs to cover this year, I looked through a few English books and made a list of different areas to be covered when studying English. The list was quite long but as I was making it, I realised that there are definitely more fun ways to learn these things than simply sitting in front of a textbook.

R doesn’t feel she’s missing out on fun topic work now and I can see that doing English this way is just as good – if not better.

For example, recently she composed a letter to my father who has reccently got back in touch with us after so many years of not wanting to know me! She wrote her first draft, corrected spellings and then rewrote it in her best handwriting. Different elements of English there alhamdulillah.

Yesterday, she did some dictionary work based on vocabulary linked to the Explorers topic and made the mini books to insert the definitions into –  so a lot more fun then simply answering a dictionary question in a text book!

Today, she’s making a mini book writing about the reasons for exploration.

I’m really happy I’m going down this route insha’Allah. And she no longer feels that there is no time for topic work.