Kimba Lapbook

 Ia has completed her short lapbook study of "Kimba" by Geoffrey Malone. The book is a wildlife story, fictional but portraying lions as realistic animals. No talking lions here! I read the story aloud to the girls, then did some follow up work on it with Ia.
These are the different booklets she made:
1. Characters book. In this she wrote a short description of each of the main characters.
2. "What will happen next?" This was a piece of creative writing continuing the story from the end of the book.
3. Adjective and verb flowers. Ia made a list of the adjectives which could be used to describe the lead character, Kimba, and a list of verbs to show what Kimba did.
4. Ia wrote a book review of her opinions on the story.
5. Rewriting an incident. For this piece of writing I found an incident in the story in which Kimba encounters men for the first time. The whole book is written in the third person, so Kimba's actions are described from the outside. In the incident where he encounters men Kimba's experience and reaction is very richly described, so I asked Ia to rewrite this extract of the book in the first person. I explained to her she would write as if she were Kimba, using "I". She needed to stick to the version of events as described in the book, but just tell it in "Kimba's own words".

As I said yesterday about the river project there is probably more I could have done with this book study, but I think it is usually better to stop before reaching the point where the child is totally fed up of the project! Overkill is definitely best avoided! I would rather move on to something else which is fresh and interesting than do a topic to exhaustion.
Overall  Ia enjoyed this variation to her English studies, alhamdulillah and I intend to do more of them in the coming academic year, inshAllah. I started book studies with the boys when they were year 4 (age 8-9).
Sometimes I do find that the writing suggestions in English textbooks are too detached and irrelevant. Book studies are one way of finding something more interesting to write about, inshAllah.

River Project

Over the past couple of months the boys have been working on a river project based on the river near us. They completed the final piece yesterday. I didn't plan this whole project out in advance, it started with an idea and evolved from there. Neither is it a project that is filed all in one place, it comprises some written work and some powerpoints, so it is not something that can be photographed or displayed. I've done some blog posts connected with this before, but now its time to sum up.
This is a summary of the different tasks that have gone to make up the project:

1.We walked along the areas of the river near us, photographed it at different locations and noted different features. This was done over several days, each day visiting different stretches of the river. At home the boys assembled the photos into a powerpoint presentation to describe the area of the river we had visited. This focussed on describing the features, looking at erosion etc.

2. I borrowed a book about the river from the local studies section of the library. We read about the background and history of the river and its role both  in our local area and other areas it flows through. The boys made some notes on this.

3. Using the textbook "Geography fieldwork Projects" by Jennifer Frew we read about how fieldwork can be carried out on rivers. We carried out a fieldwork project on measuring the river's flow, and the boys wrote up their results for their geography files.

4. Some time later we carried out a second fieldwork exercise on investigating the river's load, which also got written up for the files.

5. Using several internet sources the boys found examples of different ways the river is currently used by people (eg leisure, wildlife sanctuaries), and some examples of historical uses (eg water mills, transportation). From this they put together powerpoint presentations to explain different uses of the river, (along its whole length,) and compare past uses with current ones.

6. Again using the textbook mentioned above we read about assessing water quality in rivers. We then searched online for information about the water quality of our local river. We found several sources of information on this. From those sources the boys put together a report looking at how water quality is assessed, problems of pollution and efforts being made to improve water quality in the river we have been studying.

I'm sure there must be many more things we could have done to extend this project further, but it seems to have run its course with us and now seems the right time to draw this particular study to a close.
However, during this long look at one particular river we have come to know it quite well, and I feel that this won't be forgotten in a hurry. Bringing something local into geography study has been really beneficial, maashAllah. Also I've come to know of some locations along the river, a little further away from us, which I'd like to visit inshAllah, so looking forward to being able to do that too.

Beads and lions

After Ia received her castle U wanted something to make herself. She chose a jewellery making set, which arrived yesterday. In the afternoon we made the clay beads, which I then baked in the oven. Today she has threaded this necklace. We have worked on this together, and Ia has joined in too. U finds it more fun that way, she doesn't want to do the whole thing herself. The beads were not too difficult for her to shape or thread, but the knots on the necklace were tricky so I did those for her.
This week Ia has been working on a literature lapbook. I read "Kimba" by Geoffrey Malone to the girls a few weeks ago. It is a realistic wildlife story about a lion. I thought they could both do a lapbook on it as part of their English study, but U wasn't keen. Today Ia made petal books, one of verbs and the other on adjectives. She made a list of adjectives which could be used to describe Kimba, and a list of verbs to show what Kimba does (roar, snarl, pounce, sleep etc). InshAllah I'll post this when its done. I'm determined that we should get it done within the next couple of weeks, inshAllah!
Meanwhile the girls continued their interest in big cats by watching a BBC four documentary about tigers, called Spy in the Jungle. It featured new cubs - so inevitably a hit!!!