Today's Geography Task

We've been doing a lot of discussion type ed on our farming topic recently, discussing the food crisis, where our food comes from and so on. I feel that this is a topic that the boys have spent some time thinking about, so suitable for use when the English textbook asks us to write a letter to a newspaper about an issue that we feel strongly about. Well, not sure about the strong feelings from them, but at least they know a little info.
The letter was to be about factory farming. The boys began the task by reading some further information around this topic from the internet. I found them pages on factory farming, (written from a pro animal welfare perspective) and I found some information on what is said in Islam about the correct treatment of animals. As Muslims our opinions on these matters should be moulded by what we have been instructed to believe through the Quran and Sunnah, not just by what we may feel about something. I wanted the boys to be able to address the issue with an Islamic perspective. We read about how a man who denied a sheep a drink of water on its way to slaughter was punished by Umar bin Al-Khattab (ra) for cruelty. Also we noted that animals to be slaughtered for meat should not be kept waiting and animals should not be slaughtered in sight of other animals. Indeed Islam requires high standards of animal welfare.
So the gist of what they wrote was that however animals are to be farmed their welfare should be a priority and factory farming usually (according to our sources) produces hardship for animals. Actually, I have not yet found anything written in favour of factory farming with which to offer a sense of balance. I have to assume it is just mass production for meat hungry populations and greater profits that fuel the industry.
Anyway, they wrote out the letter (it was a joint effort) using a letter template on the computer.

Spring Pictures

Subhanallah, how the sunflower seedlings have grown.

I've decided it is about time I started reading chapter story books to Ia. I started with the boys when they were about five. I read to the girls from picture story books, but without the pictures a little more concentration is needed. We sat on the patio to read today. Ia wanted to read a phonic reader herself. She got on well with help from me. Then we read the first chapter of "Ponder and William", another old childhood book of mine. It is so battered I've put it in one of those plastic jackets to stop it falling to bits, inshAllah. The boys loved "Ponder and William", they laughed and laughed when Ponder (a pyjama case panda) fell into a currant cake mixture. I hope Ia likes it too. U listened as well.

Ia did some more phonic work today, using Education City, a workbook, and copying cvc words into a handwriting book. She is happy with all this, as long as I don't ask her to read anything.

For maths work today she counted out 15 cubes, made shapes from them and drew round the shapes. She also used the 100 chart. I removed some numbers from the plastic pockets, and she had to put them back in the right places.

As for the boys, we've just been continuing with works in progress really. I also began the electricity unit for science, just a bit of theory today, making use of some of the resources on Primary Resources (link in side bar).

Right now they've gone for haircuts. Hope they don't come back in need of a recut like last time.

Am I being fussy?

A city buildings model the girls made with a friend.

The boys have reached a unit of their English textbook where they have a passage about the riches of the rainforest. The passage is written in a brief, breeze through magazine style, with lots of extravagant adjectives to make up for lack of depth. Doing a comprehension on this is fine,doing some adjective related work is fine, but later in the unit the writing task is to prepare an argument to persuade others of the need to stop the destruction of the rainforest. This strikes me as a bit sudden. Asking a child to prepare a persuasive argument on something he knows very little about, something he has only read a few colourfully sensationalised facts about a couple of days ago, does it make sense? Writing an argument like that should come at the end of several weeks study of the topic at least, surely? It can't be good precedent to encourage argument without understanding. In the next exercise they are asking for a poster design to make clear why destruction of the rainforest is an "international disaster". I'm not suggesting that it isn't a disaster by the way, I'm just suggesting that this topic needs much more depth than could be offered in the context of literacy lessons. "International disaster", big words that require serious consideration.Writing an argument is a very good skill of course, but I would think that it is best done in a cross curricular way, using a topic that can be studied in more detail.

I don't even know why I care about that textbook.

Ia was up early this morning, so I did some work with her first. Slowly but surely the phonics is coming along, alhamdulillah. Later in the day we did a little work on number bonds for 8. Colouring in a strip of 8 squares (drawn on squared paper) to match 6+2, 4+4 and so on.

The boys finished the last section of the Engineering Interact activities, did some more on the Yusuf (as) lapbook, plus their other daily activities.

It was a lovely day here, maashAllah, the boys went cycling in the evening and all the children played in the garden until almost maghrib.

Colours

If you have any tulips near you, do look inside them.

I do like to see colour in the garden. Alhamdulillah.

For a while I've been mildly concerned about not doing enough for ICT work with the boys. I say mildly because they do use the computer a lot, and they use it for various purposes, not just games. I suppose it is because I went to school before there was ICT, so I'm less sure about what is appropriate for their age. Today they did some work from a book I bought a while ago, "Letts Use ICT Year 4". It is quite a good book, in that the instructions are clear and easy for the boys to follow. However, in common with other ICT resources I've come across, it contains many pages on using expensive programmes I don't have. So, they'll just be using the practice work for Word, possibly a quarter of the book.

What else did the boys do today? They looked up, made notes on and made a lapbook fold on storks ("Wheel on the School" tie in), revised place value to thousands in maths, wrote unbiased reports from biased sources in English, listened to me read the tafsir of Surah Humazah (from Ibn Kathir), and then made a poster display of the translation.

Actually, I was pleased to find that they already knew most of the translation of the surah, from reading along with the computer recitation, alhamdulillah, they were preempting me as I read it through. The surah is a warning to those who slander, by tongue and by action, and to those who pile up wealth and count it. There is a part of the Hellfire for people guilty of these sins to be punished. That is why we have flames on the poster, and the glittery part is to represent piles of wealth.

I borrowed the idea of presenting study of tafsir in this way from another sister. I display this kind of work on the wall, so it can continue to be reminder for all of us. Keeping awareness of the meaning of the Quran at the fore front of the mind is a challenging task. The more repitition and reminders the better as far as I'm concerned.

For Ia today I finally got round to hanging up my hundred square chart. It's the type with little, clear pockets to display the numbers, so you can take them out, jumble them up and put them back in again. I don't know why it stayed in the drawer so long. So we did counting forward, backward, pointing out random numbers. Lots to do with a hundred square!

We also did a little subtraction game, using 6 rods, then hiding some, guessing how many were gone.

Meanwhile, I bought another history book last week, it is so interesting, I'm having to be very restrained, or I'll spend too much time on it per day...more of that another time.

Sunday

This morning I opened the curtains to a Novemberish fog, but having their friends over today has kept the children busy for hours and hours with practically no input from me. So, I've had time to bake, plant young perennials, clean the bathroom (properly) and write out lesson plans for the week and I still don't feel hurried in the least. Very different from usual!
A slow, relaxed weekend after what was a speedy quick week. On Friday morning even the children were saying "Is it really Friday already, last Friday seems like yesterday?"
On Saturday morning we went to the library, amongst the many books with titles such as "Silly Billy's Flying Underpants" I saw one called "Oranges in No Man's Land", by Elizabeth Laird. The story is set during the civil war in Beirut and is about a girl who ventures across the no mans land to get medicine for her grandmother. It is a very short, simply written story, only 115 pages and the plot goes little further than setting up for and describing the incident mentioned above. But within that it does contain a lot of detail about the child character's experience and lack of understanding about the war. I did find it a little odd that the child's name was Ayesha, and yet she was described as a Shia from the south of Lebanon. But maybe this was away of making an anti-sectarian point, as this was a strong theme in the book. I think I will read it to the boys, its an easy read, but they probably wouldn't read it by themselves because of the central character being a girl. They will dismiss books very superficially, pretend they don't like them, but then I'll hear them discussing the book, comparing the characters and so on. In this way I know they do actually enjoy these things! When we have tried books that really were boring for them we've stopped reading after trying a few chapters!
Anyway, this story will present lots of opportunities for discussion, and a chance for some general knowledge history. It will have to wait for a while in the queue of books waiting to be read however....

Growing

When I wrote the last post I was really too rushed to think! Then yesterday we spent a day out with friends, returning home too tired to do anything much. And now another day has passed.
I'm in a thinking about planning stage, a looking ahead stage. It's not just me though! Whenever I read about other bloggers planning, my mind will turn to reviewing my own plans. It's good to review, reassess and refresh.
My planning thoughts at the moment are not so much about what we are learning, but how it gets distributed throughout the days. For us learning seems to work best when we concentrate on a topic, get it done and move on. This doesn't apply to subjects like maths or English of course, those just tick along in the background, but other topics like the study of a Prophet, or a geography theme need our consistent attention, otherwise we lose our thread. A few months ago I was alternating history and geography week to week, but we just slipped out of that. In the end I try to look at the wider picture and aim for a good mix throughout the year, inshAllah.
So, at the moment we are in a book theme, with "The Wheel On The School", and we are working on the Yusuf (as) project. Today R traced a map (he always chooses the map), of the area where Yusuf (as) lived, and J wrote about Yusuf's (as) family members. the boys are also working through the activities on Engineering Interact, which they are getting into a bit more now. Today they did the electricity section, which they are quite interested in anyway.
Ia and U played together a lot today, and Ia chose to use some computer CDs, including her French one.
We also went into the garden for a while, although it was a little cold. The sunflower seeds are growing well, by the will of Allah. Alhamdulillah, we have seeds sprouting and bulbs emerging all over the place (it feels like). Today Ia and U helped me plant some nasturtium seeds, into the ground this time. I have probably gone a little over board with the seeds!!! But, inshAllah I'll fit them all in somewhere.

Not much to say...

In the Lapbook Handbook I recently bought there is a project based on the children's novel, "The Wheel on the School". I have a copy of that book, from when I was a child, so I got it out and decided to make use of a ready made project. Its not so often that I get to do one of those.
I've been reading the book for a few days in the mornings. Today we did the first piece of work for the project. We looked at pictures of the area where the book is set, then J did a drawing of one of the landscape pictures. R traced a map of the area from an atlas. There was plenty to discuss about the area, especially as I visited it on a school trip years ago (I probably still have that project somewhere in the loft).