Park blossom and garden shapes and colours

Pink blossom in the park today.

Garlic shoots.

Sunny.

Naturalistic.

Dark green and spiky.

Curvy.

Keeps on flowering.

Tall, spiky, light and dark.

Quick link

Some days a lot gets produced on paper, and on other days we use the computer a lot. Thursday was a computer day. We watched some videos from the Harun Yahya site. Its a mixed bag, so you need to be very selective.
In science I started a new topic on solids and liquids with the boys and used several resources from Primary Resources.
The boys also baked another chocolate cake. It turned out well, alhamdulillah, but they need to be a bit more careful about reading the instructions in the right order and accurate measuring. A few more tries and they should really get the hang of it. If they sustain the interest that long!

Calmly organized

Allah (swt) is Al-Hameed, worthy of all praise, and I am grateful for a good day today. Ia is making good progress with her handwriting, as she could copy the French colour chart straight from R's work today, maashAllah. She also enjoyed the company of a friend today, and they did a couple of activities together. First was a maths activity. The girls made shopping pictures, drawing three items, then drawing round pennies to price each item. They also wrote the price, in numbers. Then we talked about how many pennies would be needed to buy different pairs of items from the pictures.
After that we spent some time looking at a book about the seasons, discussing the season of winter. Then we went into the garden to look at all the amazing shapes and colours to be found among the shoots sprouting there. The girls were excited to spot all the little clumps of shoots, including all those hidden under large shrubs or close to the fences. We also looked at the twisted shapes of the branches of the old apple tree, which adjoins our fence at the back. Later Ia drew the picture below, of the tree, the shoots and, of course, the winter aconite! The more closely you look the more amazing Allah's creation becomes.

Having got through all their work at a good pace today the boys made these cakes, with almost no help at all! And they taste good too!

Winter Aconite

So you can see what it looks like, a picture I didn't take.

Calmly disorganized

Today is so calm and still, maashAllah, after all the wind and rain. It must be having an effect on me because although today is totally disorganized I don't mind at all!
We've had some carpets changed today, so this morning I was shifting furniture about. The boys have been very busy in their room, writing in their secret notebooks and drawing detailed maps of imaginary places. The girls have been playing together. I have read to them all, but there is no point trying to do much else until I shift all the furniture back. I'll let them enjoy racing about in an empty room for a little longer first!
The boys have tried out a trampolining lesson, which they really enjoyed. I thought it would appeal especially to J, as he had perfected a forward flip on the bed, before he got too tall for that sort of thing.
The little yellow flowers I posted about recently have been identified as winter aconite by my mother. There are more of them coming up all the time. Any one who feels the drabness of winter should really get some winter aconite!

Painting and project

Its been a busy weekend. On Friday afternoon my computer gave up. The power supply went and it cannot be turned on. Replacing it has resolved the issues I had with photos, and this new one does not make a noise like a plane powering up for take off. The thought of being computerless was not good at all. Alhamdulillah we were able to sort it out.

I may be able to easily post photos again, but this does not improve the pitiful quality of the actual photography. However, the picture above is of the Jannah project we finished last week.

I used fabric as the backing material, which I think worked well, but is not so good if you transport the work anywhere, which is what we did and why it now looks so crumpled! The boys used glitter paints to write the title "Jannah", and to add some other embellishments of their choice. On each piece of paper the boys copied out a hadith or verse relating to the description of Jannah. For example we used a fruit shape for a description of the fruits, gold painted paper for the descrition of the clothing and so on. I used "Jannah, The Garden from the Quran and Hadith" by Adem Yakup as a reference, although I chose to only use hadith from the well known collections.

Always trying to work harder!

I always intend to blog better. More interestingly, more often. But, this is what you get!
Similarly I always intend to make best use out of whatever resources I may have around. Its harder actually putting this into practice, but almost daily I'll promise myself to work harder. I don't do relaxation well. Its constantly "must work harder" that goes on in my head.
Long ago, before printers, there were transfers. Remember those? If you wanted printed lettering you lined up the transfer sheets and rubbed the letters onto the page. Kids had transfers as alternatives to stickers. I still have some, given to me by grandfather, so they must be at least 25 years old! Ia had fun with them yesterday, rubbing the letters onto the page. So 25 years on they work as well as they did new. Unlike my printer, which never worked properly and now doesn't at all.
Ia also read a couple of her easy readers. I'm using a set from Oxford Reading Tree called "Songbirds". U has memorised a lot of the words and, keen to be involved, she often says the words before Ia gets a chance to read them. This is annoying to Ia, I'll need to start sneaking off from U to do reading with Ia.
Over the last couple of weeks the boys have had a focus on Surah Masad. This began with a study session another sister did with them on the tafsir of the surah. Following that up I did some extra work on it with them using the Iqra Short Surahs workbooks, and they recited the surah frequently too. This week they had another study session with the sister where they wrote out the translation of the surah onto coloured paper and decorated the page with cut outs of flames, silvery discs to represent the wealth of Abu Lahab, and a twisted string to represent the palm-fibre rope. the result looks really good, mashAllah, and we've stuck them on the wall.