Some of today

The geography studies are going well, maashAllah. Using the Trail Guide is really working for us. It is not one of those resources which looks great on the outside but which turns out to be very fiddly and preparation intensive when you start it. I don't like resources which tell me exactly what I "have to" do, I like those that offer space to explore and the Guide does that. We are still at the beginning, of course, studying the composition of the earth, continents, oceans etc. Today the boys went onto Wikipedia to look up the Pacific Ring of Fire, then they went to BBC news to read about the current earthquakes in Sumatra. From that they wrote up a paragraph on this latest earthquake.
Ia has also been writing today. This morning both girls wrote a letter to their grandmother. U's letter was mostly a showcase of letters she can form.
Later in the day we did an Islamic studies writing activity, based on an activity a friend had done with the boys years earlier.
We started by revising the meaning of the following Names of Allah:
As-Sami, The All Hearing,
Al-Basir, The All Seeing,
Al-Alim, The All Knowing.
Next I read to them the story that J had written in 2005. It was about a boy who was about to do several bad deeds but who stopped himself when he realised that Allah could see and hear him and know what he was doing or about to do. In the original lesson the children had listened to a story like this and then had been asked to write their own similar story including each of the Names of Allah somewhere in their story. (Actually the original activity included two more names as well, but I simplified it to three.)
So, this time Ia listened to J's story, then wrote her own version.
U did not want to be left out so she traced over the Names of Allah written out for her in a book. Then she made up a story (not at all related to the activity) by drawing a series of pictures and explaining the story at great length. Of course it did involve thunderbolts and Tana-roar-u-ses (spelt as said).