May Projects

This week has seemed so busy, subhanAllah, I don't know why! As Maghrib is getting late now, the days are longer, the children go to bed later. Whatever it is, the days feel more helter skelter than usual!
Ia has finished another lapbook, using a combination of cheap unit study materials and the free www.homeschoolshare.com materials. She wrote two stories for this project, and now even feels confident enough to enter a story writing competition! She hasn't entered one yet, but is ready and waiting!

The boys finished their mini projects on Vikings and Aztecs. Each produced a few pages on their topic, and also did lots of reading and other activities online. I don't think it is necessary to buy unit studies ideas, if you can Google effectively you can do it yourself, but I found it was a useful exercise for the boys in terms of reading instructions and then following tasks more independently.

Tigers

Ia and U have finished their Tiger Lapbooks. They have spent about a week learning about tigers, but for me the actual tiger information is not the main point. More importantly they have been doing language work through the medium of the tiger project, and they have been learning about learning.
Much of this project was based around a Homeschool Highlights project pack, available from Currclick. JazakAllahkhair to Umm Adam, who sometimes comments here, for the encouragement to investigate Currclick further. I had been to the site before, but the huge volume of items on there, and the difficulty of knowing what could be useful and what not put me off at first.
Anyway, it turned out that this pack had some activities that were too easy for Ia but good for U and plenty of others that were just right for Ia, so she enjoyed herself! She was also able to read through the information booklet by herself, which was a bonus.


There was lots of colouring. There were several poems, but we just did one, as that part was a little harder. The types of tigers and tiger diets bits were from Homeschool Share.

U had less to do. But she made up for this with extra cutting out.

I liked that this project had pages for filling in missing letters, copywork and a wordsearch, all focussing on a small group of vocabulary items. This is a good idea to take into our own lapbooks.

The lines for the copywork were too wide for Ia. She prefers to write a little smaller.

Fish

Yesterday was all about fish for the girls. They spent the whole day working on these lapbooks. (We had begun them earlier in the week). These are Hands of a Child lapbooks on the cartoon film "Finding Nemo". Now, you might think that a lapbook based on a film is a total waste of time, but actually the girls have learnt a lot about the sea creatures of the Great Barrier Reef. In between making the mini books they ran away to play - fish games. I could hear them using the vocabulary they had been learning, talking about habitats, prey, having some fish being aware of predators, etc. So, in one way or another their whole day was spent on this topic.
For this lapbook Ia was able to do the reading in the mini books, so I just needed to tell her which bits to cut round, then she could assemble the books by herself. U needed more help of course, but she really improved her cutting out skills during this project, maashAllah.
This morning they did the colouring for the front covers.

Ia's above, U's below.

So, do you think that is all over now, time for a rest?

No. The glue had barely dried on the covers when I was being asked what the next lapbook could be about. In search of inspiration we popped out to the library, but didn't find a topic there. And NO books on fish of the coral reef, or any other fish. Hmm.

So back home I followed Umm Adam's tip about visiting Currclick, and they chose something on tigers, which they got started on right away.

Arctic Lapbooks

Once again this morning U was in an URGENT RUSH to get her lapbook done.

As you can see above, attention to detail is not a top priority for U. Getting things DONE is far more important, as is making sure you have a lapbook with your name on it filed in the lapbook storage area.

Below is Ia's lapbook on Arctic animals. As you can see I used many printables, partly due to the lightning speed I was expected to conduct the project at.

Useful links:

HighlightsKids

Homeschool share

Albright News

Other than the lapbooks nothing much got done today. J is ill and the boys spent the morning reading, being read to and watching documentaries. J then went to bed. Later Ia wasn't feeling too well either.

Ia's 5 Pillars of Islam lapbook

Ia finished this lapbook today. We had been working on it for some time. I copied the idea from a friend, maashAllah.

Along the way I did extended work on the topics of the Shahadah, salaah and zakat. That work has not been included in the lapbook. The lapbook is a kind of summary. InshAllah I intend to do further work on fasting and Hajj when the appropriate seasons come along.

Zakat Lapbook

Today was Ia's turn to finish a project. Her zakat lapbook. I used lots of colouring sheets, and other worksheets I had from old work, to quickly put this lapbook together over the last week or so. I intend to describe it further on Always Learning Resources in the coming weeks, inshAllah.

We had a calm day today. As of last night Ia is covered with chicken pox. Apologies to those families we saw earlier in the week, I hope she wasn't already infectious, inshAllah. It is hard to think of where she could have got it from, but I suspect a child from her swimming lesson! Alhamdulillah so far it is not bothering her at all, and she feels her normal self, so we did not change our "work" plans, but the hoped for visit to the library had to be put off.

The brighter (although cold) weather means that theboys can get out into the garden to play more often. Already most of the tennis balls have gone over the hedge, but the neighbours are very good about throwing them back, alhamdulillah.

Elmer Lapbook

This week Ia has finished off another project we've been working on for a while. She did this as her English work on Mondays. The main aim of this project was to improve reading and spelling.

We borrowed the book, "Elmer" from the library, and we read it often. I used the extracts found here, to help Ia read by herself. We made use of some of the other discussion ideas from that link too.

The circle book (top left), was for colour vocabulary, so as the cut away slice moves round different colour words are shown.

The folds on the right of the lapbook are also vocabulary based. They all use words found in the book. The green one is for "ordinary" and "different", the centre one is for "rain cloud".

The other two folds at the bottom are collections of happy words and describing words.

The Spot the Difference thing I found by doing an "Elmer" search. It doesn't teach much, but Ia enjoyed colouring it!

I also got her to do some handwriting copywork, using extracts from the story.

Pleasing Allah Lapbook

Today Ia completed another lapbook. This time it is an Islamic one. If you would like to see a full description please visit Always Learning Resources.

Salaah Lapbook

The boy's salaah lapbook. We actually finished this off last week, but I didn't get round to doing the pictures and description for a few days. I have posted a full description at Always Learning Resources. I hope, inshAllah to be updating the resources blog weekly.

So, with the salaah project done and the Hajj days about to begin, I thought I should do a brief Hajj revision with the boys. I think this year it will just be Hajj videos from You tube, or elsewhere, and some pages from Iqra workbooks. We did a bit today.

Also today we've been taking advantage of the free trial from Rosetta Stone. We have been using the trial in French, mainly so that I can understand properly how the software works! JazakAllah khair UmmSuhayb for your previous comment on this.

Senses Lapbook

Ia finished this off today. Once again I used some ready mades, from Enchanted Learning and Primary resources. This started off as a science project, but it became a piece of language work too, when I decided to make pockets of words for each of the senses. Those are the red pockets, inside are yellow cards with sound words (quiet, loud...), taste words (sour, sweet...) and so on.

What looks like plain papers on the left are folded worksheets (printed from Enchanted Learning).

I tried to give the project an Islamic side too, by including ways in which we use our senses aspart of Islam. This was easy for hearing, (azaan, salaam, Quran), and for sight, (reading Quran, Islamic books), but kind of tricky for smell...I only came up with attar! But at least it got us thinking about it!

I could have extended the project further to include thankfulness to Allah for the use of our senses, but I'm planning another project which will include that theme, so I left it out this time.

Another lapbook, done!

We finally finished the "Tamburlaine's Elephants" project, alhamdulillah! This time the boys did a lapbook each, rather than making one together as we've done in the past.

I've written up a full description of the project on Always Learning Resources.

Today Ia started work on an Elmer book. More elephants! I was going to keep it to a quick few activities, but she wants to make a whole lapbook on it. So, it looks like we'll have to do work about elephants, colours....

Owl Babies

Doing this lapbook was completely Ia's own choice, and I printed almost the whole thing from Homeschool Share.
The little bits I added myself were ideas borrowed from looking through the Look Inside pages at Scholastic.

Where resources are free make use of them I say!

Resources can be really old too. I've seen books from this edition of the series in the town museum.

autumn lapbook

Ia's autumn lapbook! To make this we've used lots of resources from the Nature Detectives website, plus pictures from the pack we received from them in the post. The cover picture being the first example!

Inside we have the "Not a leaf falls but He knows it" page, from last week. the "How Many Leaves?" book is a printout from Enchanted Learning.

I stuck the pages onto card which made the book quite heavy, so I used a cut down plastic page protector as a pocket for it.

Under the conker pictures are some adjectives describing conkers.

Inside the apple cut out Ia copied out "Allah gives us fruit of various colours", from the meaning of ayah 35:27.

The templates for the other mini books came from Homeschool Share
and the stickers and pictures came from the Nature Detectives.

Allah Created Earth lapbook

This is Ia's latest lapbook! It is in pizza book style. We used the biggest square cut folder I had and cut a disc from it. Then we folded it into quarters and made one cut so that it could be folded and unfolded one section at a time.

On the first page inside is a picture of the earth, as a globe, with the words "Allah made the heavens and Earth". On the next page are a sun, planet, moon and stars, to represent the heavens. On the last two pages are pictures of trees, fruit, animals, mountains, to represent all that is on the earth. Above those pictures are the words "Allah made everything on Earth".

Auntie Z helped a lot with the design and presentation of this book, alhamdulillah. She had the idea of making a second pizza shape inside the large one, using the scraps of card left from the folder. The inner section also opens out one piece at a time. On each piece we stuck a verse of the Quran.

On the earth page: "Say oh Muhammad "Do you verily disbelieve in him who created the earth in two days?"" (41:9)

On the heavens page: "Then He completed and finished from their creation as seven heavens in two Days and He made in each heaven its affair." (41:12)

On the other pages: "Allah it is He who has created the heavens and the earth, and all that is between them in six Days." (32:4)

"He placed therein (the earth) firm mountains from above it, and he blessed it, and measured therein its sustenance (for its dwellers) in four Days equal, for all those who ask. (41:10)

Of course Ia cannot read those verses herself yet, but we discussed the meanings of them. I think, inshAllah that it is good to establish the principal of the Quran being our source of knowledge early on, even if the child cannot read the words herself.

Lapbook on Surah Al Qadr

This lapbook is based around the printout for Surah Al Qadr from Raising Muslims. If you click on the link you need to scroll down to find it as it forms part of the Ramadhan lapbook.

The printout is the surah in Arabic, followed by the meaning, which you can cut out and have the children glue into the correct places. May Allah reward the sister for posting this material.

On the two sides of the lapbook we have:

1. Simple fold with the dua for Laylatul Qadr, "Oh Allah verily, you are the Oft Forgiving, you love to forgive, so forgive me."

2. "1000" cutout repeating the information that the night of al Qadr is better than a thousand months, and then the maths problem to show that 100 months is just over 83 years.

3. Fold on Quran, explaining that the Quran was sent down on Laylatul Qadr.

4. Fold on hadith on reward, concerning the reward of spending the night of Qadr in worship.

5. Sun fold, describing the appearance of the sun when it rises following Laylatul Qadr.

6. When? fold, containing the hadith about which nights in Ramadan Laylatul Qadr should be sought on.

Minibook on Surah Al-Mulk

The boys have been working on these mini books for the last couple of weeks. Today we put them together.

Page 1: Copied out the hadith on the virtues of Surah Al-Mulk.

Pages 2,3,4: On these pages the boys found the Names of Allah which occur in this surah, copied them out and noted their meanings.

Page 5: On this page the boys used silver pen on black paper to note what this surah mentions about the seven heavens and the stars.

Pages 6 and 7: These pages are about the description of Hellfire and those who will enter it.

Pages 8 and 9: To cover the rest of the tafsir of the surah I wrote some comprehension style questions and the boys wrote out the answers. The questions and their answers covered these two pages.

The whole project was studied from the tafsir by Ibn Kathir.

The H is in yellow

THE H IS IN YELLOW, cos I do know how to spell "Allah", but, should I override Ia's choice of colours for the sake of the photo? Should I avoid posting photo? Too late. It shows up just fine in real life, lemon yellow against the mustard folder.

The solar lights work well.

Mini Book

We've made mini-books for the study of Surah Al-Adiyat. The cover is card, and one page of A4 is folded inside for the pages. Inside there is a translation of the meaning of the surah, a list of ways in which people are ungrateful to Allah, (always complaining, saying life is unfair, why does it always happen to me, etc) and a list of some of the favours Allah grants (food, water, health, security etc). There is also a piece of creative writing for which I asked the boys to imagine themselves looking at the horses described at the beginning of the surah, and describe what is happening, what they can see and hear and so on.

Apart from this we mostly did maths today. As we are nearing the end of the school year, we have nearly completed the maths course. The last few weeks seem to be dragging by and all of us are looking forward to a break from the daily maths lessons. So I decided to suggest doubling up the maths for a week or so in order to get through it faster, and then get a longer summer break. This means we will do less other work in the mean time, but we can afford to relax on that, having got so much done, alhamdulillah. The boys agreed to this plan, so, it will be double maths for a bit now, if we can manage it, inshAllah.

Ia's first lapbook

With lots of help from Auntie Z, Ia completed her first lapbook today, on Allah's Names, alhamdulillah.

Under each of the five names chosen for this book is written its translation and brief meaning. On the right Ia copied out "Allah created everything. Allah has 99 names."