It all adds up

We liked the window pictures we saw here, and today Ia made her own version. Jazakallahkhair to the sister who posted that artwork. I took a photo to post, but once again I found I was unable to upload the photo. After clicking "upload" it simply redirected back to an empty image selection box. Any ideas?
These past few days everyone has made themselves very busy. I don't really know what they've been doing in their room, but it has taken up lots of time! The girls have painted and done "baby games". The boys have been very disappointed to learn that the city of Acre eventually fell to the Franks after such a prolonged effort from Salah-ed-Din. It was a lesson in itself to realise that this is history, not fiction, so it won't always work out the way you think it should! They are so used to childrens' stories where the character they support comes out on top!
We have been continuing to learn about the life of Ibrahim (as), episode by episode, recently covering the building of the Kabah and the incident of the Sacrifice. Instead of doing separate Hajj related study this year I am just trying to cover the life of Ibrahim (as) as thoroughly as possible, making the links to Hajj clear. InshAllah I will finish off this topic during next week.
Today we also learnt/ relearnt Arabic colour words using the activities found here. The boys mastered the exercises quickly, maashAllah, and its given me some ideas on games to follow this up with. Maybe we can do the same with French too! We did French colours on Monday, didn't we? Time passes so fast, alhamdulillah!
That reminds me. Getting on with things here at home, I do sometimes wonder how my children's educational experience compares with others. Not in the sense of is it better/worse, just what are the differences or similarities. For example, amongst the regular gloomy school related stories I hear on the radio, (how do most parents feel about that?), I heard that the government is stressing the learning of a modern foreign language in primary school. Then I heard a teacher talking about teaching French in her classroom for half an hour a week. Half an hour a week? Long ago, when I used to run an after school French club, we had about 45 minutes a week, and it doesn't go far! So what is my point? If half an hour a week is enough for government announcements, fanfares or whatever, just think of all the little half hours the home educated child spends on all sorts of things. Its all learning, its official!