Makkah Lapbook

 Last week the girls completed lapbooks on Makkah. We based this project on the first chapter of  "Muslim Cities Then and Now" by Susan Douglas, from the Islamic School book series. The textbook chapter is called Makkah During the Hajj. The book contains helpful teachers notes and I used these and the workbook pages as part of the project. I just added my own ideas to make lapbook mini books to go alongside.
Our lapbooks contained mini books on the following:
How Makkah Began: A recount of the story of Hajar and Ismael (as) in the desert, Zam Zam and the building of the Ka'bah.
What is Makkah like at Hajj time?: A description based on materials in the book. We had recently watched a documentary on Hajj, which was also helpful to the girls in being able to picture the scenes.
Travelling to Hajj: This mini book listed the conditions for travelling in the past and in modern times. The two lists were side by side, so a comparison could be made.
Makkah and the Kab'ah: This was another comparison mini book, this time comparing how Makkah and the Kab'ah used to look in the past with the modern day scene. The girls did some illustrations. There are lots of pictures online to look at to help with this. This mini book also gave the opportunity to use descriptive language.
The Hajj Journey: This was a worksheet from the book, showing the actions of Hajj.
Where is Makkah?: a map
What is the Arabian desert like? We did this first, as a scene setting exercise, so that the girls could understand a little of the geographic and climatic conditions of the region.
Makkah at the time of the Prophet (saw): This mini book listed a few facts, for example that the Prophet (saw) was born in Makkah and that he later conquered the town and the inhabitants embraced Islam.

The blue lapbook is Ia's and the yellow is U's.

Teaching Ideas

This morning I was looking around for links to writing tasks for year 2 when I came across an activity from Teaching Ideas. They have some nice writing prompts in the non-fiction section and some templates for the writing to be done on the computer. My girls had fun writing newspaper reports about an escaped zoo animal and making lost pet posters. I printed out their work to put in their year files.
Later they used an activity from the science section linked with our current habitats topic