Drawing

Yesterday the girls and I did some sketches in the garden. I've never been any good at art, but it encourages Ia if I join in with her, and it is quite enjoyable to sit together and draw. (U had some help with hers).

What has been happening?

Not much!!
This week has been different. The boys have had sports activities every day and are off for cricket again today. They've just been doing Quran and maths in the mornings, to keep those ticking over.
Ia has also been doing a little maths, and she has completed a notepage project on "Good Deeds help you get to Jannah". I'll probably put this on Always Learning Resources at some point, but I'm currently working on a different long post about a friend's project for ALR. Basically the good deeds project was a collection of moral Islamic stories (man and thirsty dog, etc), which we read and she wrote a little about.

Apart from that the girls have enjoyed a lot of play time, done lots of drawing, played in the park and are expecting a friend over this afternoon, inshAllah.
Of course, you might assume that with this relaxed HE shedule I must have got a lot of other sorting/organizing/planning type things done, but alas no. When the pace slows, I also slow, and don't get half what I should done. SubhanAllah.

Painting

Painting giftwrap in the sunshine.

Suncatchers

This week the girls and I made it to the art workshop, alhamdulillah! They made suncatchers, and painted jam jars.
Ia has continued to work on her skipping and reached her target number of skips without stopping, maashAllah.
The weather is dry and sunny, alhamdulillah, and that means more cricket for the boys.

Friday

It has been quite an intense week, what with all the reviewing and planning, so I need a nice, refreshing picture to top this post.

Ia has been practising her skipping today. She needs to improve in skipping in order to pass her next gymnastics badge, inshAllah. Her skipping is the only thing she needs to work on, as she has now mastered the headstand, alhamdulillah.

Today the boys did some making mixtures experiments to find out about substances that mix together and those that do not. The book told us to use food colouring in the mixtures. Above is ammonia and vegetable oil, not that you can actually tell from the photo!

Also today the boys finished the English language textbook we've been using for this year. The final piece of work was to rewrite a passage, changing it from first person and present tense into third person and past tense. I'll continue the weekly ten minute spelling work for a while longer but take a break from other English language work until the autumn, inshAllah. I expect they'll do some of their own creative writing between now and then, as it is something they enjoy, and of course the reading continues, inshAllah.

Maths is the main outstanding subject this year, as it was last year. The programme I'm following has a lesson for every school day of the year. I'm only about 1 week behind shedule at the moment, but compared to other subjects it seems a lot is still left to do. Last year I ended up having a maths week when we just did several maths lessons every day, just to get it done!

I'm not planning to use the same programme with the boys next year, but then it will be Ia's turn to start using the materials instead!

Anyway, next week is school half term holiday here and the boys already have a fully booked week of sporting activities to look forward to, maashAllah. Can't decide what to do with the girls yet. Maybe some art and craft, inshAllah.

Wider reading

The girls have been spending lots of time on creative play with lego these last couple of days. When they get engrossed in something like that I don't like to disturb them, so Ia ends up doing her daily work later in the day.
From time to time I shedule some non-fiction reading into the daily task lists. This doesn't include Islamic reading, which we do a little of each morning. By Islamic reading I mean that I read a little from an Islamic book. It is like a daily reminder or refresher. Sometimes we read about the lives of the Prophets (as) or the Seerah, or at other times it is topics on imaan or tawheed or reminders about Islamic behaviour and so on. The whole range really. This is as good for me as it is for the children. Actually, they tend to remember more details than I do.
Other non-fiction reading will usually be of library books related to topics we are currently studying. The boys have been reading about marine life, habitats and Vikings and Aztecs this week. The further a person goes with their studies the more independent wider, research reading they have to do, so I take the view that the foundation for such reading habits can be built up from early on.

Thinking ahead

I've begun an alphabet project with U. I really don't enjoy this teaching the alphabet bit of home education! It seems so dull. Until those letter symbols get combined into words they are just boring symbols. This probably contributes to my leaving it as late as I can before teaching alphabet stuff, in the hope that the child will have picked up lots of it on their own already, so the bit with me involved can get done more quickly.
At the moment U is mainly interested in sharks and fish, wanting me to read the same library book again and again, subhanAllah!
The boys have been doing an acid base neutralisation experiment today, after I finally got organised and bought the household ammonia. We did the experiment outside. They plotted a graph.
I'm reaching the winding down stage of our home ed year now. I've made lists of whatever I want to get completed before the summer and begun working on lists for next year. Over the weekend I went through all the English and maths resources that I have for each of the girls to use next year. I don't need to buy anything for them, alhamdulillah, I'm reusing resources. I listed down each workbook etc that we have, so that when I come to look for materials I can immediately see what there is and decide what to use when, inshAllah. I've also made a list of projects and topics, not in any particular order, just a list to choose from, inshAllah. I need to make similar lists for the boys.

Fast moving puppets

These hand puppets can barely keep still for a photo as they are so busy rushing all over the house! This is what the girls made with the kit I bought them after they missed out on the Saturday workshop! I had to help U a lot with the stitching, but she did well, maashAllah.

Pics by boys

I had hoped to have some pics of art work by the girls today, but when I got to the art workshop this afternoon it was already sold out! I wasn't expecting that as the last one I went to was nearly empty.
I felt sorry for the girls for missing out, so we went to the craft shop and I got them a simple craft kit there.
These photo collages are from the boys canal trip last month. We got them disposable cameras to take with them to record their trip. I collected the developed photos today. (Photo development is SOOO expensive these days!) I was quite impressed, maashAllah. I'd expected a lot more fuzzy out of focus shots, shots of the floor etc, but they did well!

The coiled rope is called a "cheese". Coiling a cheese was one of the skills they learnt on the trip, along with operating locks, and swabbing decks!

And this is the lapbook on Prophet Dawud (as) the boys completed in the second half of last week. I've described it over on Always Learning Resources.
U also finished her Hungry Caterpillar project last week. I used a file folder with lots of printing on it for her work. To cover the print I recovered the folder with a large sheet of plain paper, then got her to sponge paint patterns all over it.

May Projects

This week has seemed so busy, subhanAllah, I don't know why! As Maghrib is getting late now, the days are longer, the children go to bed later. Whatever it is, the days feel more helter skelter than usual!
Ia has finished another lapbook, using a combination of cheap unit study materials and the free www.homeschoolshare.com materials. She wrote two stories for this project, and now even feels confident enough to enter a story writing competition! She hasn't entered one yet, but is ready and waiting!

The boys finished their mini projects on Vikings and Aztecs. Each produced a few pages on their topic, and also did lots of reading and other activities online. I don't think it is necessary to buy unit studies ideas, if you can Google effectively you can do it yourself, but I found it was a useful exercise for the boys in terms of reading instructions and then following tasks more independently.

Animal Classification Monday

The boys are doing an animal classification topic at the moment in science. We usually do our science topic on a Monday. Today they made the free animal classification lapbook from Homeschool Share. Yes, we did do the whole thing in one session, but it was easy for them, as the information was not new. It seemed a neat way of summarising key facts. We are also covering this topic with a textbook section, and wider reading of library books, although we did neither of those today. Ia also did some of the lapbook, although for her I stuck to vertebrates only.
Because this was a quick job I did not want to make a proper lapbook of it, instead I used a lap'n'note style in a ring binder again. I like this style, it is useful for when you don't want to do a full length lapbook study, but would like to make use of a few lapbook ideas to illustrate or highlight a few facts.

Later the girls went out to play in the garden again. They made themselves little notebooks and went around the garden "spotting" and noting down what they "saw". Why the inverted commas? They noted down blue whales, basking sharks, Siberian tigers.... So it was a game rather than real nature journaling. But it did lead to some independent writing from Ia, and some lines of letters from U, plus lots of laughs, maashAllah.

And I enjoyed looking round the garden. Alhamdulillah.

Collage idea

My girls have been doing their own art and craft experiments this weekend. They cut out pictures from a clothing catalogue and then collaged their own people pictures, by combining the pieces into different arrangements.

More reading and writing

I love this bush, maashAllah! It is such a performer. I don't know what it is called. In spring it is covered with flowers and in the autumn it has amazing colours. I can't get a photo to really do it justice.
We have been getting on with things for the last couple of days. Alhamdulillah Ia has written two more stories, both on dolphins, her current interest. This evening she is trying to read a Dick King-Smith book. She admits she can't understand it all, but she has kept trying for about an hour, so she must be understanding enough to sustain an interest! I think it does help that the Peter and Jane books have a lot of words on each page, so once they are used to that the child isn't so put off by "lots of words" when they move on to longer stories.

Projects

Continuing the butterfly theme this morning Ia and U made butterfly pegs from the Nature Detectives site. I really have been neglecting this wonderful free resource. Maybe it is because the boys were not really too interested and Ia was too young when I first came across it. It is good for Ia now. I've made her a nature notebook section in a ring binder file, to stick pictures and the posters and stickers you can use from Nature Detectives.

U has got started on a preschool lapbook on "The Hungry Caterpillar". She is very happy to be getting her own work, maashAllah. I find myself using more printables these days, as it just saves me time.

The boys completed their Wind in the Willows project today. I decided to take a lap'n'note approach here! So the work is in a ringbinder (together with another project from last year and another in progress). Their written work is often too long for the lapbook approach, but some sections still suit it. For this project they wrote about their favourite character from the play,

a page comparing the setting and residents of the Wildwood and the Riverbank, a page of their own script written in Alan Bennet's style, a lapbook tab book describing the main characters, a vocabulary mini fold defining terms such as "play script" and "stage directions", and finally a review.

Butterflies

Inspired by pictures posted on the Ihsan forum (link in sidebar) of butterflies for the Nature Detectives competition Ia and U decorated butterflies today. Ia made two, she'll be sending in the orange one, inshAllah.
I'm trying to get more of the home ed resources sorted today. Like with the garden, its a task which never seems to be complete, alhamdulillah!

U wants to do what the others are doing. She does not want to do "baby work", such as learning letters and sounds. So, I have presented her with her first "reading book" (above). It is a Ladybird book, just like Ia's readers. It is old, just like Ia's readers. It pleases, alhamdulillah.

Aztec farm

R has made a model to show Aztec terrace farming! Here growing corn and squash.
The boys spent the morning playing football. The girls have been doing lots of colouring in of more clothes for their Lil Muslimah dolls, and their cut out and colour theme books. They also got out some of the craft materials and started making little dolls/toys for themselves., alhamdulillah. I wanted to do some craft with them today, but alhamdulillah they did it by themselves!
I've been in the garden, gardening. I love to see all the flowers and plants, maashAllah, but it does take a lot of work, and I can't really keep on top of it. There is always so much to do.

Late Spring Garden

such a colourful time of year, maashAllah.