Summery feel

Tuesday we were home, and had a productive if rather stressful day. Boys calmly got on with their fiqh and maths lessons in the morning but in the afternoon they decided to make swords from cardboard, using an idea from an art and craft book. Their overexcitement about this along with U’s whingeing with her illness caused a somewhat fraught atmosphere.
Ia spent Wednesday at a friend’s house and had her group lesson. This evening she wanted to start learning to read, so I read to her from a first reading book. Need to work on her letter sounds. Yesterday I received my Book People order with some more phonics readers from Oxford. The set is called Songbirds. Ia likes the look of them, and I think the books will encourage her with the letter sounds, as at the moment, given the choice she usually goes for maths type workbooks. Yesterday she wrote some of the numbers out freehand, which I was really pleased with, maashAllah.
With L here yesterday we started the plants topic in science. Found that our pansy seedlings are about 3cm tall, while the bulb shoots outside are about 0.5cm tall, and only 7 of the 10 have come up at all. (At this point the organised blogger would insert photos).
They drew a diagram and labelled parts of a plant, answered questions on the functions of different parts of the plant and made a table of the different roots, leaves, stems and flowers we eat.
After that they did the maths assessment during which R had an enormous tantrum over one particular question he couldn’t answer. This put him in a bad temper for the whole thing and meant I couldn’t divert any attention to the girls, which seemed very unfair. Alhamdulillah in the end R and J got exactly the same percentage mark, which restored peace, until I had to explain to J one of his mistakes (which was rather silly), he didn’t want to tell R about it, but he told L, who took an oath never to tell, so imagine the uproar after that.
It was a lovely warm day so I took them to the park after that, however the boys complained of having nothing to do there (it was rather crowded), I think R and J are getting fed up of playground equipment (unless it is a new playground).
In the evening they have been reading Enid Blyton books again. As we have now finished with “The Conquest of Syria” I have started reading a big, thick book of seerah to them.
This afternoon the weather was lovely, maashAllah, sunny and warm, but not too hot. We had a picnic arranged in the park, lots of mums and kids. The boys played cricket with their friends and Ia played with the girls and went on the play equipment. This was the first day of the year for the kids to wear short sleeves.

Book Shopping (again)

Yesterday was sunny and breezy. In the afternoon we walked to town to spend the kids’ book tokens. We really are out of shelf space. The boys chose a Secret seven book, a Michael Morpurgo book and two sets of Top Trumps cards. Ia chose a Dora story book and four Topsy and Tim stories. U was happy with this as she loves “Dipsy Dim”. Later U got a fever, which has gone on today. She feels worse as she won’t take any medicine without vomiting . J had a raised temperature last night too, although, alhamdulillah, he was better by the morning.
Today saw another addition to the group. This time a returnee, he fitted right back in as if he had always been there. Today we concluded our study of Hud (as), continued learning Arabic vocabulary and wrote an adventure story in teams. One chapter per each member of each team. Ia was very patient occupying herself with looking at books, drawing and doing a little of her workbook. For some reason everyone got up very early this morning, so Ia has now gone to sleep without her dinner, and literally half way through eating a carrot.

We laughed till we cried

We are nearly onto the third term in maths, but as I’ve been so disorganised about getting the book ordered it seems the publisher is out of stock, so it could be a while.
Ia took part in the end of term nursery play. She was a traveller visiting different areas of the world. I laughed so much there were tears! Some children said nothing at all, others yelled out their lines. The mother of the loudest one just covered her face and shook with laughter, which puzzled the child, when she noticed! It is hard to say exactly what was so hilarious, but it just was. The doubtful accuracy of some of the geographical information played its part. The teachers continued with determination, apparently it went much better than in the rehearsal. The highlight for U was that “Auntie holded me”, as she recalled today. Afterwards we bought chocolate cake from the food sale and set off home. Ia is much better at walking now, maashAllah, and can often manage the hours walk without going on the front of the buggy.
Today Ia enjoyed the treat of going to a friend’s house. The boys had a friend here. Things seem to be settling down again and I feel like I could get organised into a better work routine again. InshAllah things will go smoothly.

I am still here!

Tues 13/03/07
Sunday was mild and sunny, so we went out and cleaned the garden, sweeping and pruning. Later we got a couple of planting kits and got them started, insh’Allah. Ia was expecting to see pansies the next morning!
Ploughed through another maths lesson on division. They won’t write any of their workings out down, although I suppose that if they can work it out in their heads it doesn’t matter. Today it is halving and doubling, which they certainly prefer!
R navigated for his father through central London, using a route planner printout.

Sun 25/03/07
House moving stuff is taking up all my time and thoughts. We’ve kept up a reduced timetable just about! Hope to get back on track soon, insh’Allah. The pansies have sprouted, alhamdulillah!

After a week

Sat 03/03/07
This morning we saw a pair of jays in the garden. They stopped on the trees and fences for a while. A blackbird appeared, was challenged by the smaller jay, then retreated to a further branch until the jays had gone.
Sat 10/03/07
This week flew by. MIL is staying with us again, there were viewings almost every day, J was ill with a tummy bug and normal arrangements had to be changed almost every day. Ia had a cultural day at nursery, and seems to be getting on very well with one of the teachers. She also joined in with a new Wednesday activity group, although she couldn’t get to all of it this week. She was learning about parts of the body.
The boys HE got a bit behind schedule with J’s illness, but they have continued to enjoy listening to me reading history books to them and managed to recount one of the incidents of the sahabah in great detail in their exercise books. I was quite impressed with their recall, alhamdulillah.
R has been very well behaved in his Quran lesson. They have been learning some more difficult tajweed rules without tantrums! They are generally getting on with it better now.
Today they got games for their new PSP and have been busy with that. Ia has been busy on the computer, insh’Allah she is learning something! U has been demanding lots of books, especially “Ar ra ruff” (The Billy Goats Gruff).

Friday already!

We’ve had a couple of very spring like days. Yesterday we had some time to go to the park for the first time in ages. U was very excited about the slide. The boys were surprisingly cooperative in their maths with L, and got everything done without complaining. On the days before they had complained a lot about pages of the book on which they had to add four two digit numbers! In science they found out about uses of magnets, and used the internet to find out about this. They drew pictures of Maglev trains to go with it.
Ia is noticing the daffodils and blossom outside. Everyone enjoys watching the gulls in the park tugging worms out of the waterlogged ground!

Signs of Spring

We went out for a walk in the (semi industrial) nature reserve this morning and spotted some signs of spring, trees in blossom, buds, some half unfurled into leaves. Boys got excited and muddy. There were lots of big puddles and soon after we left there was another heavy shower, alhamdulillah.
The boys have realised that they can actually follow hama bead patterns, so they have been producing bead dinosaurs today. Ia wants to make them too but she can’t use the pattern so this takes up a lot of my time. I’ve had to stop her now, feel a bit guilty about that.
R has been working on his Turkey project, he found out some more information from the internet, but the typing is taking a long time so he will need to continue another day. He did finish the temperature graph and now they are doing some maths.
U enjoyed seeing a train and a horse today. She sang “Twinkle twinkle inkle tar” and said “Mimi weed it” for her favourite library book of the moment (Maisy flap book) She also loves Topsy and Tim books. Other recent sentence attempts include “Mal dinkie cup in” (J put a drink in my cup)