More art!

More art today, inspired by Deep Space Sparkle once again!
The thing with art is that if you are not that artistic yourself, as the parent, doing arty stuff at home can get to be something you never quite get round to. At times I feel a sort of mental barrier to it, knowing that I've got to make space for drying painty stuff, washed up equipment and so on. In my mind I imagine this will take more effort and time than it actually does. Maybe this is a hangover from days with toddlers when the brandishing of painty brushes indoors could get a little fraught, and I preferred keeping painting sessions outdoors in the summer. But the reality of nowadays for us is that there is no reason for me to put off doing art. It is not messy and it does not take long to set up or put away.
U has a rather take it or leave it attitude to art sessions, sometimes she is enthusiastic, other times she doesn't want to join in. Today she did half her picture, and I finished off the rest. Ia, however enjoys it much more and gets real benefit from it I think, maashAllah.
So, no excuses for art inhibitions!!! It must be done, inshAllah!

Super Quick Lapbook!

Ia made this super-quick lapbook this morning! It was a ready made poem study lapbook which I got as a freebie on Currclick some time ago. It was easy to do, and was something different for English language study. She read the poem, did some copywork, did an illustration and the rest of the lapbook parts were based around questions about the poem. It was quite satisfying to complete something in one morning as our lapbooks generally seem to be taking longer and longer to complete!

Some of today

The boys have been doing some work on fractions in maths and conjunctions in English and they've been reading books from "The Danger Zone"history series on American history themes. In Islamic Studies we went through the incident of the rebuilding of the Kabah and for French they practised using mon/ma/mes. They also reviewed their memorised surahs and went out to the park for football practice with H.
The girls have used Education City, played with Top Trumps wild animal cards, worked on their desert lapbooks and read their reading books. U has also done some more on her All About Me project, which she is enjoying, maashAllah. Ia has done a little from her Iqra workbook and both did a little maths.
Looks like I forgot to get Ia to do her Quran reading lesson revision today, but she did go through the last 10 surahs on the computer.

Snowdrops

MaashAllah!!! Spring really is coming, inshAllah.....real evidence photographed today!!!!

Ship Pictures

Sometimes we do no art at all for ages, and then we do lots at once. I think sometimes I'm just not in the right frame of mind for art, although this is a poor excuse as it is not as if I have to think of ideas, I just copy them. The idea for the ship picture was from Deep Space Sparkle again.

U had her own take on this, and just wanted to draw a ship to put on her background, maashAllah.Following this both girls are enjoying an extended ship drawing session at the moment.

What with having other kids over this week and slipping out of our routines I'm feeling a bit confused about what day it is. I keep thinking it is already Saturday. I hope, inshAllah this week has been a refresher, although I feel like I need a bit of springtime!

Testing for Right Angles

Another part-time sort of day here today. The girls did a little maths, reading and Quran. U is getting quite well practised with her CVC words by now, maashAllah!
The boys had some reading, Islamic studies and a little French. I'm currently using the Collins French Club books I got from the Book People with them, although I don't use all the audio. We have been rather patchy with the French, although today I was pleased to notice that they could remember quite a bit of the vocabulary from the chapter, alhamdulillah, and their pronunciation seems to be improving too. I really want to be making more effort with the French, inshAllah.
This afternoon R and J's friend was over again, and this time his sister came too to do some baking. The three boys did some English comprehension together and then had free time.

Sunshine

I took the idea for today's artwork from here.

Today was sunny in a way that seems spring-like when it has been so long since warm sunshine, alhamdulillah.

The boys spent much of the afternoon playing in the garden with one of their friends. I did a little more work in the garden, cutting down the dead left-overs from last year, and the girls ran about for a while.

Monday

A picture from R's work today! Just to make a change. Our geography topic has moved on to South America now, and today's task was the continent map.

It is school half term so the boys went over to visit a school-going friend this afternoon. I do not see the point of taking a whole day off routine if there is nothing else planned to do, just because of school half term. The weather remains wet and cold at the moment, so not encouraging for spending much time outdoors, although I did try to tidy up a bit in the garden over the weekend. I hope, inshAllah, that we'll do some out of routine stuff further on this week.

Also Launch Pad

This was the quietest visit we've ever made to Launch Pad. The week before half term... maybe I should remember that. It was so quiet that you could notice how much wear this gallery gets! But it is all still strong and we added our own bit of punishment to the equipment!
The girls especially enjoyed making swirls with the iron filings below.

1001 Inventions, Muslim Heritage in Our world

Yesterday we went on a trip to the Science Museum in London. We've been plenty of times before but I thought we should go again and see the 1001 Inventions of the Muslim World exhibition, as I've been hearing so much about it.
To be honest, I was rather disappointed. You see, I have the book "1001 Inventions Muslim Heritage in Our World", on which this exhibition is based. The book is great, lots of pictures, lots of interesting information. The exhibition did not add it that. It seemed to me to be extracts from the book, displayed attractively to be sure, but basically parts of the book in display format. There were some illustrative models, and a few listening posts, but again no more than the content of the book already informed me of.
Do you see my problem? The exhibition is excellent if you do not have the book, and do not plan to get the book. If you have the book it is fine to drop by the exhibition if you are passing by, but a special journey is not required.
Apart from the text, pictures and models there was a short film, which I did feel was good and more accessible to younger visitors. The main message from it was that the "Dark Ages" were not dark in the Muslim world, they were a time of scientific discovery. The girls did probably pick something up from that.
Overall I'd say that if you are interested in this topic at all, get the book!
Personally I find it much easier to take in information when reading quietly at home than when reading harshly illuminated plastic windows in a darkened room surrounded by school groups flitting backwards and forwards like moths, not alighting any where for more than a moment.
Maybe that is just me, but I'd still recommend the book over the exhibition.

Wednesday

Some symmetry work for Ia in maths today! We did a project on reflection last year, so this was some fun revision.
I started reading Esther Hautzig's "The Endless Steppe" to the boys today. I requested it from the library and they brought it out of storage, where this particular copy had lain unread since 1997. I think this is an overlooked book. It tells the true storyof a Polish Jewish family exiled to Siberia during the war. I remember reading it when I was young, and rereading it now it seems very familiar, so I think I must have read it several times and it gave me much to think about.
And this goes to show that it is worth requesting books from the library.

Science, English, Geography

It was a beautiful, sunny day today for most of the time. H took the boys out to the park for an hour of football practice.
I've started to get the boys to do a short section of their science textbook four days a week, as progress through it had become very slow, and the topics at the moment are all revision, sometimes even of work they covered thoroughly in year 3! To do a section with the questions at the end only takes about 15 minutes. In this way we should finish it off by the summer, inshAllah.
They are also about half way through their English textbook, which seems right considering we are half way through the academic year. I know it doesn't exactly matter where we are, but although I have a structure going on I don't micro plan, so I don't lay out chapters to be covered by such and such a date etc. For this reason I like to keep an eye on marker points in the school year as a rough indicator of our speed of working!
The thing we are working most slowly on is the geography I think. I'm really not worried about that though. We'll work on it until we've had enough, regardless of whether we finish the book (Trail Guide To World Geography). I still do like that book though, and plan to use it slightly differently with the girls, inshAllah, maybe getting longer out of it.
At the back of the Trail Guide is a literature study on Round The World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. I'm not going to do the literature study, but today I finished reading aloud the book to the boys. It is an odd book, isn't it? And I'm really not sure that it should be in a geography study, as it takes such a (now) dated approach to the portrayal of the world. It is a product of its time, of course, and can be seen as indicative of attitudes of days gone by. All the stereotypes and colonialism puts it more in the history category for me!
The photo at the top of the post? One of U's activities today. Just put it there to make the post look better.

Weekends

Weekends for us at the moment are full of sports activities, the kids meeting up with friends, computer play, drawing, reading, playing and going to the library.
And that just about sums up this weekend too.

Couple of things

SubhanAllah it has been a busy at home day! A couple of things to mention:
Phonic workbooks are good, but it can get a bit dull writing it all down. Today I cut out cards to do the exercise a different way with U. The task was to make CVC words from sets of letters, where the vowel was always the same. I'm sure you could make nice looking cards on the computer, print them out and laminate, but if doesn't improve the learning objective, then hand scribbled does the same job.
Today Ia moved onto the topic of mass in maths. The topic really called for a balance scale, but I don't have one of these. When I did this topic with the boys I was using a shared balance scale.
The lesson was about getting the feel of 1kg, so I got a packet of pasta from the kitchen and got her to hold it. Then she had to go to the kitchen and try to judge how many potatoes she needed to put in a bag so that it felt the same weight as the pasta pack. When she'd made her estimate we checked with our kitchen scale. She was a bit over, so she had another couple of goes with bananas and apples and got much more accurate, maashAllah.

Just ticking along....

Our home ed is just moving on gently at the moment, alhamdulillah. There doesn't seem to be much new or exciting to report. U keeps asking me how long it is until spring! But winter is a good time to get lots of indoor book work out of the way. I'm gradually edging U towards doing a little more each day, I'm still only talking about a few more minutes here and there, but just a few more minutes makes a difference.
We've also been having a bit of illness gradually working its way around the family, meaning several days have been affected by someone being out of action. This is the way it goes, alhamdulillah. Today was R's turn and he spent most of the day in bed listening to Famous Five CDs.
The girls spent loads of time on iboard again, and persuaded me to print out some postcards they made on there!