Starting the day in the garden, and bears

The weather is getting warm at the moment. Although this is known as a heatwave here, doubtless residents of India would be grateful for the cooling conditions of a British heatwave. SubhanAllah. Weather is relative.
My children do not enjoy hot weather, and complain in the afternoon that they are too hot to do anything. The girls did manage some painting however, and it certainly dried fast enough out on the patio.
In the morning the patio is in shade, so we went out there in the morning. The girls laid out a toy's picnic and I read aloud to the boys. The temperature was just right at that time, so I continued the reading for a little longer than usual. After that the boys played outside for a while until it became hotter.
Today Ia finished off her bears and pandas project. It was made up of ready made materials I got from Currclick. At the time I thought it would be right for her English language level, but it turned out to be easier, as her reading had improved, alhamdulillah. Overall I'd say that I'm glad I bought the materials in a sale, rather than paying full price!

Inside the lapbook Ia made two mini books, which we slipped inside a pocket for storage. One was an accordian style book, in which Ia needed to match and sequence the text and pictures to make a story. The other mainly focussed on bear vocabulary.

Most of the rest of the work was done on A4sheets, so I just stapled them together at the top, so they can be flipped up and looked at. Not very creative, but does the job! We stuck a couple of bits on the back of the folder too.

Monday

After a weekend full of friends coming over, today seemed quiet.
The girls were ready to play, play, play, but by afternoon Ia was ready for a few daily tasks. Today she worked on an accordian mini-book. It is part of the bears and pandas project she's now nearly completed. When I initially got the materials for the project they seemed like they could be a little difficult for Ia, in terms of the language element, but alhamdulillah she's progressed, so now the work seems a little easy! The aim of the project was mainly to work on language skills, rather than learning all the bear information. Language through information, rather than information through language.
I've gone on to the Year 2 materials for Ia's maths, as she has used up everything for Year 1, maashAllah. She will now be using the curriculum that has lessons for every school day of the year, inshAllah, and as I know that we always get behind I thought I'd cover a few lessons now, before having a break.
Not that I'm quite sure when that break will occur as yet. I don't see the point in dropping everything if there is nothing else planned for any particular day. If we haven't other plans, and if the children themselves haven't thought of anything else they'd much rather be doing I see no harm in continuing with a certain amount of routine. But, inshAllah, there will be lots of different things to keep us occupied,and I don't intend to return to the full, regular timetable until after Ramadan, inshAllah.
Oh yes, we did set up the third triop kit yesterday. Unfortunately I'd lost the instructions for that particular set, so I made do with a combination of the instructions for the other set and something I found online. They are the same creatures of course, but the eggs came in a different format. InshAllah something will come alive in there. We are experiencing very warm weather for this partof the world, so the temperature conditions couldn't get much better.
Wait and see.

Winding down

We are still in wind down mode, subhanAllah!
The boys finished off a workbook project on animal classification today, did their daily Quran, used BBC French and listened to me read. Currently we are reading another of the My Story history stories, and a book on Tawheed.
The girls did bits of work on the computer, and Ia continued with a phonics workbook I want her to finish off before the summer, inshAllah. She also did a little more on her bears and pandas project. For her reading we are currently working our way through some DK readers. Alhamdulillah we have quite a lot of reading material for her current level, so she just chooses a book to read aloud to me each day.
So, having assessed the boys in maths I've decided to skip the rest of the book that we've been using for this year. The rest of the pages were either more monotonous practice of things they are already proficient in, or new visual topics, which the book did not present clearly, in my opinion. Visual maths is the hardest type for the boys to grasp, so they really need animated illustrations, such as you can get online. I thought it pointless to persue those topics in the book, as a book cannot adequately illustrate translation or rotation of shapes. This type of visual maths is difficult for me too, so I really feel an online flash presentation makes the best job of it!!!
Alhamdulillah the internet is so useful for home educating.
Anyway, I've ordered a different book for next year's work, inshAllah.
Finally, it seems that the triops have died. One, smaller, kit remains. Should we try it again this year, or wait until next?

Busy Days!

Collecting museum trail stamps at the London Transport Museum.
It has been a hectic few days! We had overnight guests, then we were off to London to meet up with old friends and make a first visit to the Transport Museum. We all had a great, but exhausting day, alhamdulillah.
Had a bit of a wind down today. Ia has finished off this year's maths, and the boys have been doing some maths assessments (diagnostic purposes only!)

Caterpillars and sewing

My camera is actually a mobile phone, so it doesn't really do close up! Can you spot the caterpillars munching the plant?

Ia has been working on this cloth dolly. I did need to help her, but she did lots herself too!

The idea came from this needlecraft book, which we bought recently. I would recommend the book, as it has really simple instructions and appealing projects.

News flash

The triops are alive and swimming. InshAllah they are also growing!

Spotting the signs of home education

At times like these who knows what could be classified as irregular behaviour, the tell tale signs of home education, the signal that something subversive must be going on.
Could it be that the family that appears to be trying to check out a million library books all at one time (when most children in the library appear to be checking out one or two); and are trying to squeeze those books into a couple of bags which are already half full of pine cones, (causing some to spill temporarily onto the floor), are standing out a bit too much?

Tuesday

This morning I read aloud to the boys, and also to Ia who is now listening in on the reading aloud. U sits with us and makes up her own story, which she "reads" aloud from another book, at the same time. Not ideal, but inshAllah she'll grow out of it! Then they decorated the cakes in the picture, which I had made around breakfast time.

Also today we got out the glass paints a friend had kindly given us. I think we need to start eating more jam!

U's painting style!

They all spent time playing in the garden today too.

Oh yes, and there was also some place value for Ia and reflective symmetry for the boys.

U got out the educational CDroms.

Just quickly

U has been doing some more of this rod work today. Copying designs, and inventing her own.

This morning Ia played some of the sentence games on Roy the Zebra. I heard about the site from a sister on the IHSAN forum, maashAllah. It is just right for Ia at the moment.

The boys had calculator work today in maths, which they were happy to do! Tomorrow's maths page is the start of a series on shape and symmetry. Not so popular.

Triops again

Last summer we grew triops, or rather, one surviving triop. My mother gave each of the three older ones a triop kit, but we didn't really have space to set them all up at once, so this year the second kit is coming out. The eggs went in last night, so inshAllah something will hatch tonight or tomorrow. The photo is of the tank. Even if we get a triop, it will be too small to photograph.

Another Friday

Everyone has done a bit of French today. The girls used Jump Ahead and the boys had a go with the BBC site.
The boys finished off the fact v opinion exercises by writing summaries of the ways in which not everything stated/written must be true.
This week Ia has written a couple of little stories. Today's was on the bears and pandas theme that she has started on this week. Yesterday the boys also did pieces of creative writing.
The boys have been reading books from the Horrible History series. The library has plenty of these, and more in the other series of Horrible Science etc, so this will, inshAllah, satisfy their reading requirement for a little while.
Ia has gone back to reading Usborne Beginners books, this week reading the Bears book and the Under the Sea book.
U has continued to collage, done some work on the letter "C" and a little practise in hand writing letters.
All this just goes to show what sort of destructive intentions I have towards my children's education and why the government needs to make an urgent crackdown on me and my like.

Use of a magazine

Yesterday I also bought a copy of National Geographic Kids for the boys. I've never bought it before, I was just curious. I wasn't that impressed, but then I probably wouldn't be!!!
Anyway, the boys are studying some exercises on distinguishing facts from opinions at the moment, and we were able to use the magazine for that!
It only took a few moments for them to identify lots of examples of opinions expressed in the magazine, and for this purpose I see the benefits! Being able to see when text is being used to promote an editorial (or other) viewpoint is very important. When a DVD is described as "great", who says so? And what about those info ads, how sneaky are they, presenting themselves as informative articles?
So THAT'S what you can do with a magazine. Read it for the purpose of dissection. Be the opinion sieve.
(And, by the way, you might want to do the same with this blogpost).

In the town

With the boys out for the day with H, the girls and I set out to the library with the usual shoulder wrenching bag full of books. I had a reserved book to collect and the girls went through the picture book boxes while I found a few books for the boys.
On the way U had complained that her shoes were hurting, so I took her to a shoe shop, found that she now needed the next size and got her replacements.
Next we went looking for lined paper, squared paper and graph paper. I also got activity magazines for the girls.
On the way home we called in at the park playground and the local museum before getting home for a quick meal followed by activity magazine collage. U got the Cbeebies Art magazine, and it is just right for her age.
I'm not really sure about magazines in general. Personally I don't like them, as they are too bitty and superficial in their approach to subjects. If I'm interested in something I want to know about it properly. If children need "topic tasters" to find out whether they are interested in something they can just get out a library book to dip into and for "news" there is the www. Maybe it is just me, but I don't understand what people really like about magazines!

In the valley

The water here is so cold that the boys could stand no more than 10 seconds at a time.

Do you think this is a badger sett?

At the beach

A sea urchin. The shell is more fragile than eggshell, and covered with an intricate pattern of perforations and bumps, subhanAllah.

Sand pools, where tiny sand coloured fish live.

And the occasional crab.(See blob in the top left corner). Don't worry, we put it straight back.