Thinking ahead a little

Ramadan is only a few weeks away, inshAllah, and this year I'm thinking of doing things a little differently.
In previous Ramadans I have always kept some organised Islamic Studies work going, and before that when they boys were younger I did other subjects as well. Now things are different. One thing is that now Ramadan will fall during the summer holiday period, but the main difference is the age of the children. Younger children, I have found, need more help keeping occupied, but as they get older they get much better at keeping themselves busy, maashAllah, to the extent that sometimes they don't want to take time out from whatever they are doing even to do a fun activity such as art which I may have ready! I'm not complaining! This independance is a good thing, maashAllah.
So, for this Ramadan I'm not planning to list or organise their work in any way, instead, inshAllah, we will focus on the practical side of doing ibaadah, reading Quran, reading books and maybe listening to some lectures. This will mainly be me and the boys of course, but the girls can improve on learning their salaah inshAllah. U is now becoming keen to join in with salaah, maashAllah!
As a result of planning this way I decided to get started now with a Ramadan lapbook with the girls. Ia has not done one before because I was waiting for U to be old enough to join in properly. We began work on the lapbook yesterday. I'm afraid that I'm far too busy these days to come up with many new ideas myself, so I'm not being original with this lapbook at all, instead I'm looking at two example lapbooks made by other sisters and am putting together our own out of those two, maashAllah.
I'm using the Raising Muslims Ramadan lapbook and UmmK's lapbook which I put on Always Learning Resources last year.
I'm not sure how long we will take over the lapbook, but inshAllah we'll do a little everyday, especially as our other bookwork is now finished for the summer. I'm thinking of it as preparation for Ramadan!

Marzipan sweets

Today we made a simple marzipan paste which the girls then rolled and cut out. It was the first time we had made this. The dough was soft and did not crumble. It was just right for little ones, maashAllah. As long as the rolling surface remained dusted with icing sugar it did not stick either. This makes it a good dough to make with under 5s I think, especially if you have lots of fun shaped cutters. We just had round cutters.

This is the receipe:

50g icing sugar (sifted)

50g caster sugar

100g ground almonds

red food dye

100g sweetened condensed milk

Mix the dry ingredients, then add the condensed milk and blend to a paste. Add some food dye if you like. Wrap in food wrap and refridgerate for at least 20 minutes. Roll out and cut out on a surface dusted with icing sugar. Let them dry a little on a sheet of greaseproof paper.

History Through Literature

We don't do much history formally, as I have mentioned before. My sons are interested in history and seem to get to know plenty about it in their own ways, maashAllah. Imagine my surprise as we walked over to the park last weekend to hear them discussing together the actions of the Axis powers and Allies in World War II, the sequence of events etc! I've certainly not taught them about any of that, I don't prefer that sort of history myself!
I have always read a lot of literature set in history books to the boys. Some books give you plenty of historical information along with the story, especially the "My Story" series, while others just give you little bits of information amongst their story line, for example "Carries War" by Nina Bawden. Even E Nesbit's "Treasure Seekers" or "Railway Children" give you a little social history through their setting. Other books we've read include Ian Serraillier's "Silver Sword" and "Theres No Escape".
Currently I'm reading them Meindert Dejong's "House of Sixty Fathers" which is set in the Second Sino Japanese War of 1937-1945. Dejong has what seems to me a very individual style of writing, which is very simple and direct, but full of humour and insight. The book is about a boywho gets accidentally separated from his parents and his journey as he tries to get back and find them again.
I find that reading this type of literature with the boys gives them little windows of insight into different times and different places and sparks their interest to find out more.
As they grow older I have other books in mind for future reading inshAllah, such as "Empire of the Sun" byJG Ballard and " A Single Tear" by Wu Ningkun. There are so many more. Of course these books must always be seen as portraying one side of the story, the author's viewpoint and they are not intended to be historical accounts, but they give a flavour of their period and can lead on to further learning, inshAllah.

Science

The boys are very nearly at the end of Galore Park Science book 1. We spread this book out over two years. Most of the biology was done last year, with lots of diversions into further work, while the chemistry and physics sections were done this year. The questions can get a little dull, but all the information is clearly presented in there so the boys can read it and understand for themselves, maashAllah.
So, time to think about what to use next year. I looked at the second book from Galore Park, and will probably get that, but it is not appealing at all to find that most of the topics on the contents page look very familiar. This is the trouble with National Curriculum science, you seem to be going round and round over and over the same topics again with too much regularity. Yes, more depth is added each time, but it really would be more interesting to put two years worth of depth into one go, then give that topic a rest for a year at least! I can do that myself of course, I don't have to use a curriculum as a guideline at all. I have not kept to it exactly in any case.
With history and geography I just ignore the National Curriculum completely and we do our own thing. I don't need the guideline as I feel I know my way round those subjects sufficiently to find my own way. I recently heard a professor (whose name I forget) speaking on the radio saying that in his opinion a national curriculum for history was an "abomination". I took note, as this seems like a handy response for when asked why I'm not following NC.
So, the only reason why I feel I need a textbook "spine" for science is that without it I'd be wondering what to do and how to start. As I'm not a sciences person it doesn't appear as obvious to me as it does with humanities or languages. For many other home educators it must be the other way round. It is no co-incidence that our most structured study areas are maths and science.
But in any case looking at the on going curriculum content I can be reassured with my decision not to structure any science for under 7, and just to pick and choose the most interesting topics to enjoy after that. It is not like you can really miss anything. It will all becoming round again, like an unwanted dish on a sushi belt.

Literature studies

As we ease into summer mode, inshAllah, I thought the boys would enjoy a literature study. We've done these before and they usually find them interesting, maashAllah. This time I chose "Lord of the Flies"by William Golding and read it aloud to them, a chapter each morning. They were gripped by the story and were interested in the motivations and behaviours of the characters. The story is very violent too of course, and they were quite shocked by it. J couldn't wait for the last chapter, so he read it himself the afternoon before I read it aloud to them both.
Having finished the reading and all the discussion along the way I set aside time for them to do some essay writing . In this "end of term" mode I just cancelled a couple of other items of the shedule to give plenty of relaxed time for the writing.
I gave them the title of "Discuss the theme of authority in Lord of the Flies". In preparation I had made a series of sub-questions designed to be the content of paragraphs (eg, How is authority established on the island? How and why does authority breakdown and change? What are the symbols of authority? Discuss the differering natures of authority as shown here etc.)
We discussed the ideas for the paragraphs and then they got writing. It may seem like a lot, but because this is something they enjoy and find interesting the ideas flow, maashAllah. It is certainly a lot less stressful than a lesson on division of decimals!
I have a couple more topics up my sleeve for next week, inshAllah, "Discuss the many forms of the Beast" and "Playing with fire, fire as destruction and survival in Lord of the Flies". I think three topics altogether will be enough, although this book is so rich in themes and ideas that you could go on with it for weeks! Might take the edge off the enjoyment though! Again I've already sketched out an outline for these topics, which we will discuss and then they'll use to support their writing, inshAllah.
I asked R if he wanted to try rereading the book by himself, but he said he'd prefer to go back to it in a while, when the memory of it is not as fresh. I think if he does that then he will discover much more with a second reading.
Reading this novel as a Muslim it does strike me how the novel illustrates the need for divine authority, and how without that humans can so easily fall into oppression of each other. This is shown in both the island world and in the outer world, where a war is taking place. Critical analysis is often done through the lens of the critic's belief, be that Marxist, Feminist or whatever. This novel does lend itself to being looked at through a religious (or anti-religious)lens, but an Islamic lens in our case.

Garden pics

It is nearly the end of June already, subhanAllah. We are getting on with finishing off our work for the year, and spending time in the garden alhamdulillah.

The strawberries are starting to ripen. I think we've had three so far! Not exactly a bowlful, but we only have a few plants. Strawberries are very easy to grow, alhamdulillah, but to get a meaningful sized crop you do need space! Still, it is beneficial to even have these few, and they do taste good, alhamdulillah!

The garden is generally bloomimg, maashAllah, so time for a few pics on the blog!

Lion Lapbook

We have not done a lapbook for a while. Sometimes you can get too much of a good thing! But by last Thursday the girls were asking to do an animal lapbook and we got started on Friday. They did some over the weekend too and finished off today.

The whole of the lion lapbook was printed off from Homeschool Share. I added a story page, for some creative writing. Ia wrote her own, but U told me her story, I wrote it down and she traced over it.