Art, maths and poultry

For maths today Ia did some tasks using the cusinaire rods. First she made a shape with 4 equal rods (all touching each other). Then she drew round the shape. Then she repeated this, making different shapes with the same 4 rods.

Next I held up various rods and Ia had to estimate their length by drawing a line of similar length on paper. Accuracy soon developed on that task, maashAllah.

Then, Ia drew round her hand and we measured the width and length of her hand using red rods. After that we went on to measure other small items in "red rods".

The boys did a half termly assessment paper for maths today. This is their favourite type of maths, they actually look forward to the test!? But best of all today the one who got a few marks less than his brother today did not throw a tantrum. Indeed the whole issue of corrections and minor discrepancy in marks passed by quietly today. Alhamdulillah, that is excellent progress!

Amongst other bits and bobs we also,continued with geography today. We looked at an organic poultry farm and used the information we found to make comparisons between intensive and organic free range. I think that next session I should get them to make a table of advantages and disadvantages for each method.

Happily Busy

Today I tweaked a bit with routine. I had some writing to do on the computer first thing, then once the children woke up I made pancakes. That done the three older ones did their Quran work for the day. Next I read the boys a short biography of Nu’man ibn Muqarrin al-Muzani. Meanwhile Ia had done some colouring of an Arabic letter and U had done some colouring too. Next a short break (I get washing machine on, wash some dishes, read to U). Break over the boys write a traditional style story and Ia does some handwriting practice and then uses the French CDrom on the computer.
I’ve recently decided to do a review in science, to make sure that all the vocabulary is soaking in. The boys do not find science hard, but I feel that they may be a little careless with remembering the details, so I bought workbooks for them to revise over units they covered last year and so far this year. As I made lunch they got on with the next unit.
After I’d cleared up from lunch a surprise visitor arrived for an English lesson. Just a misunderstanding over the days, probably my fault for not being clear. Anyway, alhamdulillah, I took a quick look in the diary of lessons kept from the boy’s time in Reception/Year one and got something ready. This allowed the boys a rather long break! They played on the computer, but then got on with their maths lesson in their room.
Meanwhile Ia and her friend drew a picture of a bedroom and labelled it using words taken from the book “Carlo Loves Reading”. It is one of those books with illustrations labelled with nouns. After that I wrote out words from the book on flashcards and asked them to find the word and read it using the pictures in the book to help. U kept auntie busy with chat, chat, chat.
Later, before going swimming, the boys did some geography work, studying a dairy farm, and answering some questions on it. Before bed they want me to read some more “Wouldbe goods”. Its been a busy home educating day. The way it should be, Alhamdulillah.
Today’s failings? Ia has done no maths today. The floor of the room where we do our work is covered with Hama beads as U thought it would impress her friend if she scattered them, and Ia thought it would impress her more if she rolled in them. No one wants to impress me by picking them up. But we can’t have everything can we!

Apples and stories

Yesterday the boys continued with the farming project by looking at an example of an apple farm in the UK. Having the internet is such an advantage for work like this. I'm not sure how I would go about gathering information on farms and what they produce without it. Many farms have their own websites, primarily to promote their products of course, but they helpfully give some background information on themselves as well. Of course most such farms are the smaller family run type, especially those promoting organic/free range / unusual varities. Large conventional farms are not so open about themselves, but then they don't need to promote in the same way. I will be pointing these things out. The farming education site has some case studies on it to use too.
Yesterday they used the website to answer the following:
Where is Tullens Fruit Farm?
What varities of fruit do they grow?
How do they sell their crop?
What else is produced on the farm?
What has changed in apple farming?
How does a farm shop seem to be different from a supermarket?

As the weather gradually improves, inshAllah everyone will want to spend more time in the garden. Yesterday the boys played "cricket" out there and the girls went for a run around. U often asks to go out to run around. The boys did well in terms of exercise yesterday as they also got to go cycling with H and had a swimming lesson. It is worth letting them play outside in the afternoon, even if it does mean that we continue studies in the evening.

Ia had a friend over, and we did some English work together. I read them the story of the Enormous Turnip, and we discussed the "list style" it uses. Then the girls did pictures to show what they felt was the most important part of the story (giant turnips), and wrote sentences to explain. Ia wrote, "They all pulled. It came out." When I say wrote I mean that she dictated what she wanted to write, I wrote it and she copied it out. After that I asked them to write their own story, with a list element. Of course they are only young, you must wonder how they could possibly do that! They wrote in pictures of course, adding any words they could. Both girls chose a story about cats which went out to find food. If they feel that they have written a story, they will believe that they can write stories, which will mean, inshAllah, that in the future they really will write stories.

Running After Myself

Today has just been.....
U has been very funny, maashAllah. She helped me mix up muffins this morning, but that is not the funny bit. U says that when she is bigger and I am her age, she will look after me. This is what she will do for me when our roles are reversed, she will get me to sleep at night (but I will have to sleep in my own bed), when I call she will bring me a drink in a cup with a lid on it. She will give me food, buy me toys, allow me to watch TV and she will teach the boys. She will shout at the boys until they come downstairs, then they will do good writing. She will also look after Papa when he is a little boy, but Ia will be her sister.

Today we got into the geography farming project. I finished reading to them the library book we had borrowed, featuring four farms in different parts of the world. Then I came across this excellent farming educational resource. InshAllah I will be making use of the primary level materials on there. Today we watched the video about farming, then we discussed these questions:
Where are farms?
What are farms for?
What do farmers grow?
How do farmers decide what to grow?
The purpose of these questions was really to open up the hugeness of this topic, to show the boys how varied farms must be, and the importance of their role.

But we didn't get everything else done that I wanted to today. So much of everything to do!!!

Mountains

This week we started compiling a project on mountains. After having a quick whizz round some mountains facts and photos we looked at some of the references to mountains made in the Quran. Another sister kindly gave me her list of mountains references to use, and the boys have been putting them onto Powerpoint slides.
There are a lot of references, subhanallah, they could not copy them all, so we categorised into sections. For example there are many references to the mountains being firm, fixed, steadying or rooted, such as "Have We not made the Earth as a bed, And the mountains as pegs?" 78:6-7.
Also, "....and has set on the Earth firm mountains lest it should shake with you..." 31:10.
There are also several examples of the mountains in obedience to Allah in worship, such as in Surah Al-Hajj:18, where the mountains are described, along with other of the creation, as prostrating to Allah.
We also looked at the historical mentions of mountains, such as the mountain which crumbled after Musa (as) requested to see Allah, the Prophet Muhammed's (saw) receiving of the first revelation whilst in the cave on Mount Hira, and so on.
Then, today it was time to go to the map to locate the major mountain ranges. I really liked the downloadable World Features Puzzle map I found here. It took a while, and the help of an atlas to correctly place all the features, especially the rivers and lakes! (Later they did the online Europe puzzle map too). I hope we will return to that map in about a week's time, to see what we can remember, inshAllah.
I'm going to try alternating between history and geography projects, from week to week, so that we can have flow throughout the week on one topic, but then have a change so it doesn't get boring. This week was geography, next week its back to Mesopotamia, inshAllah. I'll see how it goes.