I am under shock and my hands are slightly shaking as I type this.
My little 25 year old brother announced today that he has become a Muslim and is getting married in a few weeks! Am totally under shock. I can’t believe it. I always said I would shout it from the rooftops if someone in my family embraced Islam.
Well, here I am SHOUUUUUUUUUUTING it! lol
Takbeer! Allah Akbar!
Assalamu alaikum,
Ummihomeschoolsme has been closed for some time. I can’t go into details but I had to make it private for some time. I apologise for not replying to everyone individually who emailed to ask for access or to ask that it be reopened etc. I ask Allah (Swt) to accept this blog as a means to attain nearness to Him, to help others along this home ed journey and to protect, guide and nurture myself and my family along the way. Ameen.
We’re back! 🙂
During Ramadan, I have been planning for next year inshaAllah and we are going to be trying out some new methods, curricula and so stay tuned for more ummihomeschoolsme posts.
A request please: I hope that I will not have to make this blog private again and so I ask you all to make dua for me and my family.
JazakhaAllahu khairan,
Umm Raiyaan
Please support this email to your contacts – especially those that want to gain some reward from Allah and volunteer for the project. And revert sisters in difficulty who would benefit (it doesn’t matter how small or big the difficulty is).
As Salaamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuhu,
May this meet you in the best of health, happiness and imaan.
Here is some really exciting news, Masha’Allah.
SOLACE, a new voluntary organisation has been set up to help revert sisters in difficulty. www.solaceuk.org
At some point, you have most likely received a forward in your inbox or a text asking you if you know of anyone who can house a revert sister who has been thrown out of their home or asking you to donate money for a revert single mother who is unable to pay the rent and has been threatened with eviction.
How often do you think that these sisters get the help they need? And after their immediate problem is solved, who is there to follow up with the sister on a regular basis, just to see if she is okay?
What most people forget is that many revert sisters may have been rejected by their families and don’t always receive the support they need from the Muslim community either. Sadly, we are not in a position where mosques or Muslim community centres can offer lasting assistance to these sisters and they are often left to fend for themselves.
SOLACE, with the help of Allah, aims to provide comfort, companionship and practical assistance to these revert sisters.
Here is a taster of the kinds of support SOLACE will provide, bi idhnillah;
By the grace of Allah, we have the support and full backing of Sheikh Haitham Al Haddad, who has given us his time and advice to help establish SOLACE. May Allah reward him for his generosity.
However, SOLACE needs YOUR help.
Here’s what you can do…
1. First of all, please spread the word to revert sisters you know who may be facing difficulties. They may be coping alone with health problems, suffering depression, isolation or loneliness. Or suffering marital problems or physical/emotional abuse, or needing help dealing with non-Muslim relatives? They may even be considering leaving their Deen.
If so, please pass on the SOLACE website address to them: http://www.solaceuk.org
2. SOLACE is a voluntary organisation that relies solely on fundraising and donations. It is still in urgent need of an extra £5000 funding.
– If you would like to host a fundraising event in your area please contact info@solaceuk.org
– If you would like to make a donation, then visit the website where donations can be made via Paypal or direct bank transfer, (to be safe and secure.)
– If you know of any companies that would like to sponsor SOLACE, forward this email to them and ask them to contact donations@solaceuk.org
100% DONATION PROMISE
You can be confident that 100% of the money you donate goes towards assisting reverts in difficulty. No money is taken from your donation for our administration costs.
Do you know of any sisters based in London who have 1-2 hours a week to spare, to listen and provide support to a revert sister in difficulty? (full training will be provided free of charge).
Do you, or anyone you know have skills that you think SOLACE could benefit from?
eg. administrative, fundraising, counselling skills etc
SOLACE needs your support to make this a beneficial service for revert sisters in difficulty.
Please make du’a for this project.
JazakAllahu Khairun
Wasalamu alaikum
SOLACE Team
(Solace is supported by MRDF: Muslim Research and Development Foundation)
Assalamu Alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu
This is just absolutely brilliant. I would really recommend that everyone watches this short video about education. Its why I and many others home educate!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=player_embedded#!
Wasalamuu alaikum
Umm Raiyaan xx
Salaam,
From the sisters at Tailor Made Educational Guides:
Asalamuu ‘alaykum
We are in the process of finalising a few final touches on a new Ramadhan Guide.
With this guide, we have two options:
GOLD which will include instructions and all resources/materials for 28 days of hands on activities during the month of Ramadhan. You would simply take the appropriate file for that day and your child has fun whilst learning about Ramadhan. PRICE: £34.99 only (includes p&p)!
SILVER which will include instructions but without resources/materials. PRICE: £9.99 only!
The above guide is suitable for children aged 5-10.
The guide is not currently available on our website. Ramadhan is soon approaching. If you would like to take opportunity of the GOLD option and receive your package in the post in time for the arrival of Ramadhan, send us an email at info@tailormadeeducationalguides.co.uk with ‘Ramadhan Guide’ in the Subject box and we will arrange payment and shipment details.
The SILVER option will be available to be purchased on our website http://www.tailormadeeducationalguides.co.uk in the next week (Allah willing).
Do check out the other Ready Made Guides on our website. Although we have stated fixed prices for our Ready Made Guides, if you would like to buy the BRONZE or SILVER option and cannot afford the said price, we would be more than happy to email you the guide at a price more affordable to you. Our primary aim is that children enjoy learning.
Thank you and kindly inform your family and friends about TMEG.
Walaykum ‘aasalam
On behalf of the team at TMEG
Umm ‘Abdullah
Remember this from one of my old posts. Well, their website is up:
Here is the sister’s email:
Asalamuu ‘alaykum,
We begin with the Name of Allah, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful.
Our website is now up and running, walhamdulilah.
You can visit us at: http://tailormadeeducationalguides.co.uk/
Please spread the word amongst your contacts. Especially all of the mothers who do not want their children spending hours in front of the TV or computer during the summer holidays. And for the home educated mothers who want to start something new and different for this coming September.
Thank you to everyone who has made duaa for us and has emailed all of their contacts. From the emails alone, we have had so many orders that have prevented us from completing the website until now.
Please continue to make abundant duaa for us.
Walaykum ‘aasalam
On behalf of the team at TMEG,
Umm ‘Abdullah
I’ll be posting a longish post soon. We have been doing LOADS AND LOADS of Arts and Crafts, Arabic and Quran. Oh, and R is whizzing around quite confidently without stabilisers on her bike now, masha’Allah.
No, we haven’t disappeared. Just been very busy with myself finishing up with my own studying for this year. So, we have been taking it quite easy.
Am writing this post, because I really do like to support my brothers and sisters in their business ventures, especially if it has anything to do with HE. 🙂 This is a sister I know. Please do spread the word. I know that she is putting a lot of effort into this and is very good masha’Allah. Here is her message:
In the Name of Allah, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful
Asalamuu ‘aalaykum,
Are you a Home Educator who wants to provide your children with a fun education, specific to their own interests and needs? Do you want your children to learn the ‘traditional’ subjects but in a fun way related to their hobbies? Are you a parent who is unhappy with the ‘boxed in’ approach within your children’s school and wish to provide a supplement at home to your child’s education that they will enjoy? Are you a parent who not only values the education of your children but also is passionate about them excelling in their unique interests? Are you a teacher who works in a private school and needs help with planning for your unique students?
If you have answered YES to any of the above questions, then I am excited to announce something that will insha’Allah meet your needs, more importantly your children’s needs and will give you more time to enjoy educating your children. My name is Umm ‘Adbullah and I would like to introduce you to Tailor Made Educational Guides.
All praise is due to Allah, we are a small group of sisters who have led careers as teachers. Some of us left the ‘traditional’ teaching path and are now home educating our children. We provide a service whereby the parent, home educator or teacher contacts us with the interests, strengths and weaknesses of the child. A tailor made educational guide is then produced specifically for that child. We take into account the hobbies of the child, what they absolutely HATE doing, and what they LOVE to do.
One of our recent customers was a homeschooling mother. Her youngest child, aged 5 loves insects and reptiles, hates writing and loves maths. We took this into consideration and produced a 6 month guide whereby he pursued his love of insects and reptiles (with integrated Islamic Studies), enjoyed the fact that there was a lot of ‘insect and reptile maths’ and we created ways in which he could practice on his writing skills without realising he was actually doing so. In the end, a happy mother and child.
We have a range of guides to suit you:
* 1 YEAR CURRICULUM
* 6 MONTH CURRICULUM
* 3 MONTH CURRICULUM
* HOLIDAY ACTIVITIES
* EXTRA HOMEWORK CURRICULUM
* UNIT STUDIES.
The process is as follows: – You contacts us with your requirement. We then email you a questionnaire which will enable us to create a tailor made curriculum for your child. – You choose a GOLD, SILVER or BRONZE option and within an agreed time frame, you receive your educational guide.
GOLD: The guide with resources.
SILVER: The guide with ideas to do with your child.
BRONZE: The guide.
We specialize in Islamic Studies as well as integrating Islamic Studies into your child’s hobby-based guide.
The benefits of this option:
* A quality educational guide based on what YOUR child ENJOYS.
* You have more time to enjoy educating your children as we do all the planning for you.
* Authentic Islam integrated into the tailor-made guides based on the Qu’ran, Sunnah and way of the righteous predecessors.
We are in the process of setting up our website, but in the meantime, if you would like to take benefit of our services and to request a quote, you may contacts us on tailormadeeducationalguides@hotmail.co.uk
Waalaykum ‘aasalam Umm ‘Abdullah
I am really failing at blogging! Feel quite bad that I am neglecting ‘Ummihomeschoolsme’. But, my heart is attached to another!
Anyway, thought I would quickly post a little update (no pics sorry!) of our HE.
We have been doing things slightly differently. A lot of nature walks – I’ve been inspired by the Charlotte Mason method. This has gone down very very well masha’Allah. It is great for R and for me. Love it. 🙂
I try and read to R every day, she practised reading to me every day.
A lot of our HE has been mainly reading and Qu’ran recently. Alhamdulillah she finished memorising surah Ghashiyah and is now on to the next surah. Her reading of the Qu’ranic script is improving very slowly. I think we are trying to work on the hifdh more than the reading.
R has been working on addition and masha’Allah has grasped the concept quite nicely. I’ll post a pic on this later (we used pasta shells as an addition tool!)
We have spent a lot of time talking and me answering her 1000s of questions. I have realised this is just as important, if not more important than workbooks. Listening to a child can lead to so many things and we too can learn so much from them.
Now, another reason why I have been taking it easy on the ‘structure and timetable’, is that I have been given a challenge! 🙂
I am to homeschool R for 2 weeks using the unschooling method (AHHHHHH!)This challenge has been given to me by my dear sister who runs SISTERS Magazine. Now, for those of you who know me, or who have been following the blog, I am not an unschooler at all! Hence this being a real challenge. I basically need to put the timetable aside and unschool. How on earth am I going to do this?! Just so that I don’t completely freak out when I start the challenge (I’ll let you know when I officially decide to do it), I thought I’d give myself a little taster and so that is kind of, emphasis on ‘kind of’, doing.
I have been reading a book my dear sister who is HE via the unschooling method lent me. It is called The Unschooling Handbook. A very interesting read – but am still freaking out!! 🙂
Anyway, you will be able to read up about my challenge here as well as in the SISTERS Magazine where it should be published later this year.
Also, I have uploaded a new page at the top called Resources for 1-100.
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.
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! 🙂
Ummi Homeschools Me 