Rushing to fill every moment!

It has been a busy couple of days. We managed to get out and about for the time between Asr and Maghrib. Yesterday we went to the library, today to the park.
The boys have been learning about food groups, planning routes using transport maps and kushoo (concentration) in prayer. Ia has been doing phonics work and more work towards a senses lapbook.

There has been lots of reading. The books above are a few of those the boys have recently read, or reread. My brain is feeling drained! Hopefully, inshAllah, I'll recover a bit and be back with something more interesting to post!

Owl Babies

Doing this lapbook was completely Ia's own choice, and I printed almost the whole thing from Homeschool Share.
The little bits I added myself were ideas borrowed from looking through the Look Inside pages at Scholastic.

Where resources are free make use of them I say!

Resources can be really old too. I've seen books from this edition of the series in the town museum.

Making the most of the weekend

I get frustrated when I find weekends being swallowed up by cooking and cleaning. Surely I can be more productive than that I think to myself. I do realise that whatever I do, it will never be good enough to meet the standards I set myself.
The boys enjoyed sports this morning, coming back coated with mud.
Meanwhile the girls and I had been engaged in the much cleaner pursuits of bead threading and baking.

This evening I hope to continue with the Big Clean Out of the boys room, and do some HE planning, inshAllah.

Islamic History of Timbuktoo.

This morning we watched this interesting video about the history of Timbuktoo.

Picture unrelated to post

Today was one of those days, subhanAllah!

Maybe it was because I got delayed doing the (online) grocery shopping first thing, but things just didn't gel well. More triangle work in maths didn't help. The boys find that kind of work so frustrating. They do not want to discover for themselves which kinds of triangles have lines of symmetry, through activities involving drawing and cutting out. No. They would rather just have a table of information to read. Hmm. Why do we care what triangles have what symmetry they ask. (Because we are not intending a career in architecture, engineering......ed.)

Then I spent ages wondering how to present the next phase of the study of Musa (as). Last week the boys finished their context setting presentation on the ancient Egyptians. Next we will go through the story of Musa (as) step by step, inshAllah. I considered a lapbook, but then thought that the whole story is too long and complex for that. There will be too much writing, and I don't want to have to think about more folds! We currently have four lapbooks on the go. Five if you count U's effort I use to assure her she is getting the same treatment as everyone else. Hers is more of a "I know it is there" lapbook, than an "i'm actually working on it" lapbook, if you see what I mean.

So, finally I decided to try a notebooking style. A couple of years ago my father gave me a couple of old tourist board books. The sort with thick, padded plastic covers and plastic sleeves inside, in which to put your sheets of A4. I don't know where he got these from, I'm assuming it was a charity shop. So, I removed the aged information on places to visit in North Somerset, and there you go. A good home for our Musa (as) notebooking style project. For good measure I printed off some free lined papers from here (look in free resources), just to help improve my sons' presentation skills.

I did feel calmer after all that. There were some other mess ups during the day, but I'll just forget about that now.

Anyway, Ia enjoyed having a friend over to play.

Learning Together

The boys got their work done early today, alhamdulillah. They wrote a book report, did a couple of maths sheets and wrote about the time when the Prophet (saw) received the command for the number of daily prayers and how he was advised by Musa (as) to get the number reduced, from 50, eventually to 5. Musa (as) advised him (saw) to ask for a further reduction, but the Prophet (saw) was too shy to do that.

They also learnt a bit about scurvy, as well as Quran, reading and audio. I also do daily spelling with them. I have a book, which belonged to my sister, which lists spellings which should be known at certain ages. It is a list, as good as any other I suppose, so I test them from the list for nine year olds, doing between 4 and 8 a day. They actually know them all already, but when eventually they get one wrong I'll stick it on the wall for a week then retest them.

In the afternoon we all joined in to help Ia enjoy learning about the 5 senses. The only non-blurred photo I got was the one above of her filling in the booklet (sourced from Primary Resources)! The boys were sent off to prepare the taste test, sounds test, smells test and feely bag. Ia tasted jam, cake, butter and a pumpkin seed (amongst other things). She smelt vinegar, soap, toothpaste and orange juice. She identified the sound of an electric toothbrush, scissors and pencil tin (!). All of this with her eyes shut of course. U joined in too, but it was hard to stop her shouting out the answer, which she had worked out using her sense of sight! Her favourite bit was the cake tasting part. MaashAllah.

Ongoing Projects

Today the boys have been learning about different types of triangles. We started here.
Then, also from Primary Resources, I printed off a fact sheet on triangles, and then a set of shape vocabulary posters. So, the walls have had a change around, and now we are loudly faced with SCALENE, ISOSCELES and so on.
Also today the boys have been continuing with their projects on Tamburlaine's Elephants, and on Salaah. Online they are listening to the history of Musa (as). All of these are ongoing projects.
Not to be outdone, I have a new ongoing project! I find that I benefit so much from the shared home ed materials that are available online, I'm really in favour of every home edder sharing as much as possible! Hovever I know that amongst my own friends not everyone has time to get online and share their work, so I thought that I'd share it for them! (With their permission, of course.)
So, I've set up a new blog that is just for sharing resources and ideas, my own and those of friends. There is not much on there yet, but, inshAllah, I have loads I want to post there, I just need the time ......!
And, as if all that is not enough, today the bathroom sink tap snapped off, and this evening I have had the boys bunk beds dismantled and split into two singles, leaving their room in a jumbled chaos. I also need to bake bread, bath the girls...dinner? But I feel calm, because the day's HE is sorted. The rest will get by, inshAllah.