Ramadhan Mubarak

Once again the blessed month of Ramadhan has arrived. May Allah accept our duas, increase our emaan and allow us to benefit from all the barakah of this special month. Ameen.
Ramadhan mubarak!

What has happened to this blog?

In case there is anyone wondering I am still here, still home educating. No one has gone into school, we are continuing as usual, alhamdulillah.
I stopped updating this blog because I felt that as my kids grow older it becomes harder to blog authentically without somehow compromising their privacy. To write publicly about young children is something I felt comfortable with, but as little children mature into teens it doesn't seem quite right any more and I don't want to write a "half blog" only about my still primary age girls.
I'm not going to remove the blog, and maybe one day I'll return to it, but for now, thanks for dropping by to read this, and if you are a home educator, enjoy these moments with your children. They really do grow up so fast!

Electronics

 This year the boys are doing physics topics in science. I bought them an electronics set which arrived this morning. I'm really pleased with it, it is easy to use with very clear, sensible instructions and there are lots of experiments to do!  They spent a couple of hours on it this morning. Here is the link : Secondary 2

Makkah Lapbook

 Last week the girls completed lapbooks on Makkah. We based this project on the first chapter of  "Muslim Cities Then and Now" by Susan Douglas, from the Islamic School book series. The textbook chapter is called Makkah During the Hajj. The book contains helpful teachers notes and I used these and the workbook pages as part of the project. I just added my own ideas to make lapbook mini books to go alongside.
Our lapbooks contained mini books on the following:
How Makkah Began: A recount of the story of Hajar and Ismael (as) in the desert, Zam Zam and the building of the Ka'bah.
What is Makkah like at Hajj time?: A description based on materials in the book. We had recently watched a documentary on Hajj, which was also helpful to the girls in being able to picture the scenes.
Travelling to Hajj: This mini book listed the conditions for travelling in the past and in modern times. The two lists were side by side, so a comparison could be made.
Makkah and the Kab'ah: This was another comparison mini book, this time comparing how Makkah and the Kab'ah used to look in the past with the modern day scene. The girls did some illustrations. There are lots of pictures online to look at to help with this. This mini book also gave the opportunity to use descriptive language.
The Hajj Journey: This was a worksheet from the book, showing the actions of Hajj.
Where is Makkah?: a map
What is the Arabian desert like? We did this first, as a scene setting exercise, so that the girls could understand a little of the geographic and climatic conditions of the region.
Makkah at the time of the Prophet (saw): This mini book listed a few facts, for example that the Prophet (saw) was born in Makkah and that he later conquered the town and the inhabitants embraced Islam.

The blue lapbook is Ia's and the yellow is U's.

Teaching Ideas

This morning I was looking around for links to writing tasks for year 2 when I came across an activity from Teaching Ideas. They have some nice writing prompts in the non-fiction section and some templates for the writing to be done on the computer. My girls had fun writing newspaper reports about an escaped zoo animal and making lost pet posters. I printed out their work to put in their year files.
Later they used an activity from the science section linked with our current habitats topic

Angels Lapbook

My daughters have completed a lap book on Angels. I based the lapbook around the contents of Muhammad al-Jibaly's book "Knowing the Angels", part of the Eeman Made Easy series. This lapbook has taken a while in coming, I started it in Ramadan, but we had a couple of weeks off here and there so it was a slow progress. I just did a little on the project every day we worked on it. One one day I'd read to them from the book and on the next day we'd make a mini-book on that information so I could see what they had remembered. The book is written for older kids than my daughters so I did abridge it as I went along.

Altogether we summarized the key information into five mini-books.
The Five pillars of Emaan, What are Angels like?, What do Angels do, The Character of Angels and Angel Facts.

 The mini-book above summarizes things about the character of angels.

 This one summarizes things they do.

This one illustrates the pillars of Emaan. That was included to explain the importance of studying this topic.
A couple of years ago I used another of the Emaan series to do a lapbook with the boys. They are useful books for kids, maashAllah.

Book stand

Yes we are still here, still home educating. Not so much I feel like blogging here these days. As children get older I feel that their lives deserve more privacy, but I expect I'll pop back from time to time with something home ed related.
We had a long summer break this year, but are back to full swing home ed now, alhamdulillah.
Today I just wanted to share my bookstand lightbulb moment!!!
We all spend much of our time in a room with a big table in it. However, that table soon becomes filled up with clutter from whatever activities we are doing. Sometimes there'll be someone on each side of the table pushing books into the other person's space, not to mention all the other bits and pieces that end up on there.
Finally I thought of getting a book stand, and what a difference it makes - it immediately seems to expand the table and makes the books easier to see. I'm seriously thinking of getting a couple more!