Bathroom Rescue

Today my sister visited, with her two children and her new baby. I had bought "happy you've got a new baby sister" presents for the children, and I got my lot to make some wrapping paper. Cartoon faces and cars for the two year old boy, flowers, boats, hearts and swirls for the girl!

The finished parcels.

The girls had the most fun with their little cousins. And there was a spot of drama when my two year old nephew locked himself in the bathroom and H had to get the stepladder and hoist himself through the bathroom window to get him out. ( The stepladder is not actually high enough to fully reach the window, he had to grab the sill and scramble.)

Getting ready

It feels like I have a lot of getting ready to do. September, Ramadan, new academic year, all from next week, inshAllah. This evening I have been going through J's old file of Year 1 work, taking out the workbooks and getting them ready for Ia to use this year, inshAllah. Neither of the boys liked colouring much, so I can just rub out the pencil marks and make most of the pages reusable.
Today Ia made the Ramadan calender above. The glitter got quite liberal use as usual, and it was a good excuse to practise writing out the numbers to 30. I'm concentrating on counting , ordering numbers and learning to read the number words at the moment for maths. I've been rubbing out on relevant workbook pages and writing the number words into her handwriting notebook for copy work tomorrow, inshAllah.
The boys have been learning more fiqh of prayer today, and revising about ways of avoiding distraction in the prayer, such as not having pictures or designs which may distract, avoiding praying while needing to go to the toilet, and avoiding praying while food is served and you feel hungry. I've also been going through my Ramadan plans with them, no complaints so far, alhamdulillah.

Since I last

blogged we've been having lots of social times with friends, and in between I've been mostly doing household chores. Not much to report on really! I seem to be in a declutter mode as well, although as this does not extend to the rest of the family I have to content myself with small areas, such as kitchen drawer full of batteries and kitchen cupboard full of old receipts.
I'll be back when something more educational happens, inshAllah.

What am I waiting for?

The lone survivor sunflower. MaashAllah.

After a lovely day out visiting friends yesterday I decided to make a start on the Ramadan timetable right away. Not the full timetable, but a start on it. This way I don't need to feel inbetween!

The boys are working on memorising the dua of Yunus (as). Yes, it is only short, but memorisation is a struggle for us. I also started to read "The Prophets Prayer Described" to them as our morning read. They are coming up to the age of ten, inshAllah, so I thought that salaat would be a focus topic for this Ramadan. Of course they know how to pray, but they should be working on improving their prayer and on understanding its detail.

I have also been looking for some simple topics delivered on audio or video on line for them to watch/listen to. This would be good for them, and make things easier for me in Ramadan. Save me having to do more reading aloud/talking. They can only manage simple topics of course, but I'll be searching around using links posted up by helpful sisters on the Homeeducators and UK Muslims Yahoo Group. (Click on the Home educators and UK Muslims WebRing link in the sidebar to take you there.) Any other suggestions from you, Dear Reader, will be most welcome!

Ia has just been doing some workbook type stuff today, aside from hours of playing with U, reading together in the garden and so on. Ramadan activities will not be as different for her workwise. Her Ramadan work will be based more around some colouring sheets I have, and some crafts maybe. Otherwise she'll be learning through practical experience, inshAllah!

Towards the end of August

Feeling very inbetween at the moment. I'd like to get started with more subjects, start refilling the timetable again, but with less than two weeks to Ramadan, inshAllah, it doesn't make sense to start on things, only to suspend them over the Ramadan period. The Ramadan timetable for the boys will include a lot of individual reading, inshAllah, individual recitation and some workbook stuff they can do at their own pace. There will be other things too, inshAllah, but I thought a focus on self study would be useful. Ramadan is a time for reviewing ourselves and thinking how we use our time. As Muslims we have to become responsible for our own actions, our own ibaadah. We need to be able to impose discipline on ourselves to make sure we get up to pray on time, make sure we allow time for studying the deen and so on. So, I will be setting some goals and allowing J and R to manage their achievement, inshAllah.
But in the meantime we've been popping out between the showers of rain to visit some gardens, and H has taken the boys out cycling. Ia has been collaging and usingthe Puzzle Sums. Today she cut out shapes from folded paper and used mirrors to explore the symmetry.
The boys had a quick look through some recycling information, but didn't find much new. (!) I'm always rather dubious about the idea of recycling household items by making puppets/models from them. Ia does enjoy that sort of thing, but I can't possibly keep all that stuff, so it only delays the journey to the bin. Also, once a piece of card or whatever has been contaminated by sticky tape, or paint or whatever, doesn't it make it more complicated to recycle?

How not to do English

This is what they did to the living room this morning. This "tent" had "rooms". One for each boy and one for the girls. Before that I had read the history of Prophet Yunus (as) to the boys and they had done their daily Quran.
Later on we looked into the history of Ninevah, the town to which Yunus (as) was sent. This was just brief as there is nothing to connect a time period with Yunus (as), but it is interesting to know a little more.
After lunch the boys worked through an activity pack on the Cutty Sark. Why??? Two reasons. The first is that we have been learning a bit about ships, and will continue to do so when we resume the English textbook, so it kind of fits in. The other, more important reason is that its a good extended reading comprehension exercise. The text covered 4 sides of A4 and there were 20 questions to answer. They didn't want to bother with the colouring in, or the cutting out, or the game. But they did the 20 questions, and knew the answers to the word search. So, they must have used reading skills, followed by scanning skills. An English lesson by stealth. Because we are not actually "doing" English in the "holiday".
In the garden I discussed living and non-living things with Ia. Seems she is pretty clear on that.
Later on I was doing some garden work (still working on the rockery) and I found this tiny creature under some old planks of wood.

To have an idea of how tiny, those leaves are from privet hedge clippings.

Being thankful

For the four weeks before this week I was feeling really off colour. I seemed to be constantly tired and falling asleep in the afternoons. After lots of dua, alhamdulillah Allah has restored my energy to me. This could only happen by the will of Allah. Everything seems so hard when you lack energy to get things done, and once the chores and so on start to slide, it seems even harder to get back on top of things. All the thanks is due to Allah, we have nothing at all except what He gives, and health is so important.
For the last two days the boys have been out at a football funday. Running around in the sunshine and showers. They really enjoyed themselves, and keep talking and talking about it!
They took packed lunches with them, and I have to admit I did succumb to buying them some ready made bread for the occasion. They are used to the questions they get from other kids (do you really not go to school? how do you learn?), but I thought that a packed lunch of home made bread, home made cake, fruit and cucumber might be a step too far. So I bought bread, and even biscuits! Don't worry, two loaves and a cake being baked as I write, back to normal food tomorrow.
While the boys were out I got through Ia's workbook stuff, she did some painting and some drawing with stencils. Then I used googled images of mountains and we talked about mountains, what they look like and so on. Both girls had to pretend to be mountains. They were small rounded mountains, and sharp pointy ones. This was still related to the Al-Khaliq theme we are on, so I discussed with Ia how, if He wills Allah can knock over a mountain as easily as she can knock over a sandcastle.
The weather was dry whilst the football was on today, I cut the grass too. But this evening we've had heavy downpours, followed by sunshine, leaving the garden looking fresh, green and bright. MaashAllah.