New Links

Sometimes I end the home educating day feeling a little disappointed at not having achieved what I set out to that day. At these times it can help to look back at what the children achieved, regardless of my role in it.
U: Today U achieved her ambition to just dig in soil. Usually there are so many little plants around that I don't let her wield a trowel randomly, but in the newly dug, empty bit of ground she can dig all she likes. As she dug she sang a little song "I diggin, I diggin", much as Winnie The Pooh might have sung had he done any digging, except he would have probably had more verses.
Ia: Spent a large part of the day on the computer. With the help of the excellent iboard she added up the values on coins, and found totals less than 10. Her brothers have often teased her with "You don't know what one plus one is", but now she does.
Boys: Listened to a brief history of Zaid ibn Thabit, the great scholar, scribe and translator for the Prophet Muhammed (saw), and compiler of the Quran. They also enjoyed the last two chapters of the "Treasure Seekers", (I have the sequal), did other bits of maths, English, Quran, baked a chocolate cake, played in the garden, did science stuff online.

Actually, when I look at it like that it doesn't seem so bad after all!
I was looking for more stuff about our current science topic and found some new useful links. I've put them in the sidebar. The Institute for Physics does not seem like a place for primary education, but if you look in the activities section you can find some ideas suitable for primary level. The other sites have a range of resources to explore.

Always a work in progress

Following on from dissolving. Each glass contains water as near saturated with salt as we could get. Between the glasses is a cotton thread. By capillary action the water moves along the thread, then evaporates, leaving salt crystals behind. We have observed the salt left behind from where the water splashes evaporated from the outside of the glass. There is also salt on the thread. The experiment book says leave it for a day or two, and the saucer is in case enough salt gathers to drop down. I kind of doubt that will happen! The instructions said use a thread, but will enough water travel along a thread? Would something thicker be better as more absorbent? Maybe we can try this later. Today I wanted the boys to set up the experiment from the book themselves, as they need the practice at reading and following instructions. They can be so eagar to get a result that they mess it up by not checking what they are supposed to be doing. They also did another experiment holding a cold, dry spoon over hot coffee and finding that the droplets collected were not coffee flavoured.

Also today we read the tafsir from Ibn Kathir on Surah Al-Kawther, following up work from a week ago.Then they wrote a paragraph in their own words on what they had learnt.

Ia spent the day largely on the computer. I refound my iboard subscription and arranged for its renewal. I really would recommend that site, or "online club" as they call it, for children aged 4 to 7. Ia happily returns to those activities again and again. There is lots of room for narrative exploration, and whatever the teaching objective is it is clearly and effectively met, in my opinion. The home use subscription rate is very reasonable, and you can use a free trial first.

I was hoping to get more time in the garden today, but after the days outside the kids seemed to be missing their indoor games, and I only got a little weeding done. A garden is always a work in progress, as they say on "Gardeners World" (TV programme), but then once you think about it almost everything is a work in progress (never finished), housework, learning, improving imaan and remembering Allah better.

Is it really February?

We've spent a large part of the weekend in the garden. Coats were left in the cupboard and we ate ice cream in the garden, lunch in the garden, had tea in the garden. The boys were very helpful as I cleared more grass and other debris. They swept up and dug over the soil.
This morning there is a crispy frost, but later the sunshine will creep from the back of the garden, inshAllah, and we can go back outside.

February Sunshine

Another flower emerges, subhanAllah. Again, I have no idea what it is yet. It closes up its petals as the sun goes down.

This afternoon the weather was so lovely, maashAllah, that we abandoned work to play in the garden. I clipped the conifer hedge and began digging up and relocating some edging bricks along the path. I'm trying to eliminate small patches of grass which are awkward to mow.

All in all in these past few days there have been people to see, phone calls to make and resources to research, so less organised education going on. I do like structure, because I love to plan, research and so on, but I don't feel the need to implement the structure over us as if it were a burden. Sometimes plans don't work out, but then I just adapt them! Since we finished the mountains topic we have not done any geography, except some research into the Dead Sea one day. I'm trying to find another topic to go with. My method for this is to just look around at possible topic ideas and wait for one to stand out as interesting, then I check that there are materials to back it up. I quite like the idea of looking at food and farming, where food is grown, how it is transported and so on. Once I've settled on that I think about how to present our findings, should it be Powerpoint, scrapbook, folder? One project each, or a joint effort? Joint effort is good but often results in one person doing one section , while the other pays no attention until it is time to read it back. I think to myself, what skills will be used to organise and present this work?

I just do think this way. As a child I was one of those who arranged her bookshelves in alphabetical order (outsize books separately), and then set myself the challenge of reading through the whole lot in order, whether I enjoyed the story or not. Later I made out a numbering system, and index list for all books. I also organised holiday task schemes for my sister and friend. Not that we ever finished them.

Alhamdulillah. Please make dua for anyone you know who is in difficulty right now.

Things done in a day

Another leisurely morning. Things are getting way too slow in the mornings. But this only matters if stuff gets pushed back till 8pm.
U fell asleep before dinner yesterday, after proving to herself that she can walk to and back from a place about 10 minutes from home. How nice to be able to go without the buggy, even if it is just very local. Anyway, she was up early after that, so I spent some time with her before cleaning the bathroom. I also trimmed her hair. She was sure it would hurt. So they’ve all had haircuts in the past few days. The boys went to the barber, but got such a terrible cut that I had to go over it with the clippers afterwards. After Ia woke up the girls had baths. This is how time slips away.
One bonus of having a compost heap at the bottom of the garden is that you have to go out to it every day to dispose of the fruit and veg bits. If I didn’t have to do this I might not go into the garden some days, and what a lot I would miss. This is when I spot new plants emerging from the ground, it’s when l look at the flowers. It’s usually a morning task in winter.
Meantime the boys and girls were playing in their rooms, only coming down when they were hungry enough. Once they were at the table I could take the chance to read to them. This morning we read the history of Rabi’ah ibn Ka’b, from “The Loyal Ansar” by Noura Durkee. R loved the bit where Rabi’ah has a dispute with Abu Bakr. In anger Abu Bakr said something hurtful to Rabi’ah, which he immediately apologised for. Abu Bakr told Rabi’ah to say something hurtful to him in return, and when Rabi’ah refused to do so Abu Bakr went to the Prophet (saw) to complain about that. Rabi’ah was so afraid that Abu Bakr would be angry with him, making the Prophet (saw) angry, making Allah (swt) angry. Lessons for us in our conduct.
After that we read two chapters of the “Treasure Seekers”, then the boys disappeared to their room again. Funny how they said they liked their room to be messy, but since I gave it a thorough clean over the weekend they’ve been spending a lot more time in it. Ia and U played, coloured and before I knew it the morning had gone and it was time to make lunch.
Today I started Ia using the computer recitation programme. Not in an organised way of course, but you can set a surah on loop, so she can sit by the computer and copy along with the qari. She sees the boys using it, so I hope she’ll take it on board, inshAllah. In this way she can focus on what she is hearing, rather than listen to a longer recording. After our focus on Surah Masad a few weeks ago U loves to say “bat yadd”, maashAllah. She babble recites, and I can tell that she has picked up the general tone and intonation of the recitation she hears, maashAllah. Some children her age probably know several short surahs off by heart already, their parents are amazing, I think!
The boys dashed through their maths (word problems), English (sentence work) and science today. U had a nap (unusually), so I had some quiet time to sit with Ia, as she completed an alphabet workbook, and write out the Arabic flashcards for some vocabulary work. Alhamdulillah the boys have Arabic lessons with a kind sister, and she sets homework. I do try to supplement this if I can with some additional work on the vocabulary from the lesson. This week they’ve been covering household vocab, so I copied out the words and got them to stick the word onto the appropriate item. This is a nice, active, thing to do, but it takes me ages to copy the words out!!!

Craft. Sort of.

This morning I needed to do some mending. Almost as soon as I had the sewing things out R wanted to try some of his own. In the end he and Ia made the bookmarks above. They didn't want to try a design. It was enough just to handle the needle and thread.

Continuing to enjoy reading the "Treasure Seekers", lots of laughs to be had.

Creative mess

There has been a creative mood going on in the last couple of days. Sticking, painting, making twisty things out of pipe cleaners and feathers, colouring, playdohing. The boys have been writing stories in their secret notebooks again. There are various ways of obtaining silence from the boys. Have them write an adventure story, have them do a page of not too challenging sums, have them read! Which reminds me that we need to make another trip to the library. Right now they are doing their Arabic homework, which is keeping them quiet too!
Creative moods lead to mess, it would appear. I must have suffered a lapse in housework concentration, or mess blindness, because it seems that one minute it was all under control, and now it absolutely isn’t! Things need a good sort out. Again.

Ia has been working on her counting to 20, while I work on erasing R’s work from the next Heinemann book.

Today the boys have been studying the tafsir of Surah Kawther, again using the Iqra workbooks. They got started with this rather late, as they've been occupied with doing their own thing most of the day. So, once again, it looks like we'll be working in the evening. Not ideal (for me) with cooking, baking, washing up and ironing needing doing. Evenings are peak housework hours for me.
Anyway, yesterday we did lots of science. Looking at melting and freezing, how things can be melted and so on. The boys looked up the melting points and uses of various metals, using Wikipedia. Then they made use of the related activities available from BBC schools. I also made use of more materials from Primary Resources for this topic, so we spent ages on it. All of that combined with Ia’s evening swimming lesson meant that we ended up still having some of the day’s work to complete at around 8pm. Looks like a habit is developing.

Alhamdulillah, tomorrow is the weekend, and it all gets reorganised again!