Science at KS3

The three school years from age 11-14 are called keystage three in the UK. Keystage three is a strange place to be. It is a kind of waiting area.
For science at KS3I have bought Galore Park's So You really Want to Learn Science book 2.It states that it completes the course for KS3. It is quite a thick textbook, divided into colour coded sections on each of biology, chemistry and physics. Many of the topics repeat and extend what we did in book 1, and I'm pretty sure the same stuff will come up all over again at GCSE level. This makes KS3 either a time of going through the motions while waiting for a GCSE course to begin, or a time to explore in ways that are off curriculum.
Obviously the school going child has no choice in this matter, but home educators do!
This year's science for us, therefore, is going to focus on chemistry, using the book as a base, but hopefully, inshAllah, exploring chemistry generally as much as we can.
Here are some places that might be worth exploring on the way.

Shrinkles

Today we tried out Shrinkles. I got a box of these for the girls as an Eid gift. They coloured the whole lot, then we watched them curl and flatten in the oven, until they came out shrunk and hardened up.

Does anyone else remember shrinking crisp (chip) packets in the oven when they were younger? I wonder whether the packets are made of the same materials now - or would I end up coating the oven tray with a sticky mess?

Quran half hour

As the children grow and change so I keep needing to adapt and change what we do. Also, a bit of a change and variety does us good.
This year I really want to do Quran for about half an hour in the morning and resist the temptation to do read aloud first after that. This would work better really, but it is hard to discipline oneself into not doing the easier option! But more productive is better than easier, plus it makes for a less stressful rest of day!
For the Quran half hour the boys don't just recite. They recite, review the surahs they know, read through duas with the intention of learning them and from this morning I'd liketo get them working on AyatulKursi. They don't find memorisation easy, so the effort is important.
I found this excellent tool for helping to learn Ayatulkursi.
In her half hour Ia can review her Quran reading lesson, review the words for salaah, read duas and review the last ten surahs in Juz 30, using the computer programme. U can listen along and do a little work on recognising the Arabic letters, inshAllah.
Today we got this done in the morning, first thing and it was better that way, alhamdulillah.
Nothing we do is ever fixed permanently in one style, method or time. Change keeps things fresh and is necessary to meet our changing needs.

Back

Eid Mubarak! May our deeds of Ramadan be accepted.
Time to get back in the HE mood! But of course little bits of learning go on all the time, like when the girls decided to weigh some kitchen items!

Ramadan Lapbooking links

The girls finally finished the Ramadan lapbooks which they began many weeks ago! I don't know where they got the idea to colour the cover picture as they did! I find that my children just like to colour things brightly, rather than trying to use more realistic colours.
Inside the lapbook, as I mentioned before I used a compilation of ideas from other sisters. I thought I should mention those locations again as maybe someone out there would be looking for something like this to do with their child in the remainder of Ramadan, inshAllah.
The Raising Muslims blog is an excellent Ramadan lapbook resource.
My friend UmmK made the one at Always Learning Resources
and for many more Islamic Lapbooks on various topics you should go look at Islamic Lapbooking
where you can find 12 examples of Ramadan lapbooks, or lapbook resources, maashAllah.
Its not too late to have a go at something!

With glitter

Yesterday evening U decided that she wanted to make a glitterymobile that she had found in one of our "things to make" books. Well, glitter just gets everywhere doesn't it? Even in the eyelashes, which I do find worrying because it would be horrible to get a bit in the eye. But as the glitter had already come out this pushed me to get the girls making their Ramadan calendars this morning. (I only wanted to clear up once!)
Every year now we seem to be making a glittery calendar. At first there was more of a moon theme to the decorations, but this year it seems to be more about glitter than anything else! Ia had a go at a crescent shape, amidst all the rest! We stick the calendars on the wall, and they cross off the days as we go through the month, inshAllah. (There are boxes with the numbers 1 to 30 at the bottom, bit hard to see in the photo.)

Fun game

Last week my children were given this game as a gift. I thought that I should mention it on here as it is really fun,as well as being educational and it also has the advantage of not using dice.
The basis of the game is to describe a word to your team to guess as fast as possible. The describing player takes a card with a word on it, for example "toaster" and must describe it to the rest of his team, eg "It's a machine you put a slice of bread into to make it hot and browned on both sides." (You can't say "toast"!)
The more correctly guessed words guessed in the time limit the more spaces on the board your team can move on.
The game is aimed at 6 plus. A child has to be able to read the card to play (although someone from the other team could actually help with this). Ia was able to have a go, but she found it a little tricky to describe quickly, but I think it just takes practice, inshAllah. You need a minimum of 4 players to play in two teams and to make it fair the teams need to be evenly matched. It seems good for developing language skills in both listening and speaking, but, most importantly for a game, it is fun!