Work and play balance

So far this week the kids have been able to spend lots of time with friends, alhamdulillah. Yesterday friends came to us, today we were the ones to go out visiting. Ia and her friend decided to do matching colouring pictures, with lots of glitter too. As you can see the two girls co-operated closely on their work, maashAllah! I think they were just let down a bit by some of the felt tips running out. By the way, the sheet is about putting the right shoe on first.

These meet ups with friends have been in the late afternoons, so we've been getting the work done in good time.

Today the boys began by finding out their pulse rates. We compared their pulses while lying down, then after gentle walking, then after lots of running. R also managed to take the cat's pulse, at least he thinks he did.

Next they did some English work, finding out some information about football, and writing a brief report on it. I'm thinking of making some time table changes to our English work, probably reducing the number of days I include it in the plan, allowing more time for the other subjects. After all they can easily develop their English skills through the other subjects, and since adding the Pashto work the timetable can feel a bit crowded.

Also today, for Islamic studies, we made use of the new TJ unit on the month of Muharram.

Ia did her usual work, bit of workbook, bit of lapbook, bit of Education City, reading, Quran.

I am grateful for this pleasant and productive day, alhamdulillah, although there is something strange about such normality, in the face of the ongoing horror in Gaza.

Monday work

Over the weekend I was feeling in need of a bit of a kickstart. Everything seemed to be going so slowly. Maybe it is the cold weather, the dire news coming out of the radio.
I wasn't expecting much out of today, but, alhamdulillah it was a good learning day.
The boys studied the tafsir of Surah Ash-Sharh. The tafsir is short, but a good reminder about how we should spend time worshipping Allah. We have a lot of spare, easy time, compared to our fellow Muslims elsewhere.
The boys wrote out the meaning of the surah, and I stuck the work on the wall.

Later on we were having some trouble with factor trees. If you ever have such a problem, try this link.
All four of them looked through this information about having tonsils out.
Another trip to the newsagents for a small treat was also required today as R has memorised Surah Al-Alaq.
The boys got this and the rest of their work done by three, after which time they had a friend over to play.


Ia is progressing with her Arabic letters studies, although I think the type of worksheets above take more time to colour than they are really worth, alhamdulillah!

She is enjoying using this book, we add one new page per week. Nice and slow! Then practice it every day. She also works through the short vowels fat'ha, kassrah and dhammah every day on Tajweed in English. All this was frustratingly slow at first, I used to restrict her to only the first half of the fat'ha section, but the fruits of the effort have shown through now, alhamdulillah, as she is now comfortable running through practice of the whole lot.

As well as her other daily bits and bobs I have started a new literacy lapbook project with Ia. It is called "All About Me", and the aim is to help her develop independent writing skills, beginning with simple sentences about herself. As I've mentioned before I could just as well do this in an exercise book or journal, but nothing motivates Ia better than a lapbook and she'll be much happier doing the work in this format, even if the actual sentences are the same.

New post

today at Always Learning Resources.

Review of the week

It has been an odd week. Plans were made, then unexpectedly changed.
The boys enjoyed attending two football fun days, during which time I had planned to do more with just the girls, but I got a bad cold, and had to scale down my expectations to match my reduced abilities!
Then there was the issue of the car, which you may recall went out of action the day before Eid, and was finally declared unfixable. H had to trade it in, and is still waiting to collect its replacement. We certainly were not expecting that.
We've also had guests, and today H has borrowed a car to visit his relatives, (as postponed from Eid). The car can't fit all of us in it, so U and I stayed home. This morning we went out to the park.
So, does all this mean that the home education timetable, carefully scribbled out on to task sheets last weekend, went out of the window? Of course NOT, alhamdulillah. Obviously today I have had to abandon the plan, but the rest of the week we've squeezed the timetable around the rest of the goings on.
As posted below Ia finished the Elmer lapbook, and she's continued to add bits to the rainforest project. I have found this to be an excellent way of working on a factual topic with Ia. While she colours in, or cuts out bits of lapbook stuff we talk about the rainforest topic. The book on the rainforest comes out at every session, while we recheck bits of information, or decide what colour to shade the flowers in. I have read that whole book through to her, but this frequent revisiting really helps to secure the topic, making it something familiar. The process of making things during these revisits prevents them from becoming boring. Alhamdulillah, this really works with Ia.
The boys have been continuing to work through their various subjects. They are learning about the heart at the moment in science and this week they used this excellent link to learn more about the circulatory system. I think the explanation on that is really clear.
In their private reading they've finished reading the Great Explorers book, and are now reading the "Usborne Encyclopedia of Planet Earth", (both recently given to them).
Now I'll just get back to my extremely over quiet day with U.

Elmer Lapbook

This week Ia has finished off another project we've been working on for a while. She did this as her English work on Mondays. The main aim of this project was to improve reading and spelling.

We borrowed the book, "Elmer" from the library, and we read it often. I used the extracts found here, to help Ia read by herself. We made use of some of the other discussion ideas from that link too.

The circle book (top left), was for colour vocabulary, so as the cut away slice moves round different colour words are shown.

The folds on the right of the lapbook are also vocabulary based. They all use words found in the book. The green one is for "ordinary" and "different", the centre one is for "rain cloud".

The other two folds at the bottom are collections of happy words and describing words.

The Spot the Difference thing I found by doing an "Elmer" search. It doesn't teach much, but Ia enjoyed colouring it!

I also got her to do some handwriting copywork, using extracts from the story.

What is a normal day?

If I'm going to describe a normal day, I'll have to start by pointing out that normal days vary with the seasons, and the amount of time we can have outdoors. Here I'm going to talk about a normal weekday in the winter.
On a normal day we stay home, do not have visitors and we do home ed. On other slightly less normal days, we stay home, have visitors and do home ed. This may happen once or twice a week. (Not including weekends).
So a normal day starts with me doing breakfast. If I'm not feeling lazy I'll cook something, maybe scones or pancakes. The boys read at breakfast and the girls cover the tables with small toys. After that the girls often go to play and the boys do some computer based work; at the moment it is often listening to an audio clip, then using the Rosetta Stone Pashto course. I usually read aloud to the boys at this time too.
Then we start on the lessons for the day. I have a list of what we are going to do, but I let them choose the order in which it is done. The boys usually start first, then Ia will come down and do something. Then the boys will go off for a break and I'll just be working with Ia, and it just alternates like that through the day. If the weather is good enough the boys might kick a football round the muddy garden for a while.
We stop for lunch and prayer breaks, and at the moment Quran work is being done just after Zuhr.
I try to vary what is actually done in each subject area. Sometimes in science, for example, we'll be working on a lapbook, sometimes they'll be doing questions from the textbook, sometimes an online activity or a worksheet I've taken from the internet, set reading or something practical.
Also on a normal day there will often be some physical education activity to attend in "after school" time. So some of us go out to that.
What about the housework? I do bits and bobs in between lessons, or while the children are working on a maths page or whatever. Mostly just the basics, washing up, laundry. I do the main clean at the weekend. I also snatch bits of time on the computer.
Then almost before I know it it is the evening and I need to do dinner, wash up some more, tidy up, get kids to bed, read aloud to the girls, bake, do planning, blog, clean the kitchen, then that is it, go to sleep!
A normal day at home is dominated by the work shedule! We usually start around 9am, and go on to 4 or 4:30pm. We don't work continuously through this period, not all the three bigger ones will be working at the same time all the time.
What I like about home ed, apart from being with my children, and always learning, is that I can just be myself. I think that is why I found the workplace so emotionally exhausting, all that keeping up the act! But a normal day for me, at home, doing the home ed, is a day of me just being myself and enjoying the company of my favourite people. Alhamdulillah. Really such a blessing to have these normal days.

Crafting update!

Ia completed this piece of needlework today, maashAllah, with help and guidance from Auntie Z.
I framed it inside two pieces of card and stuck it on the kitchen door.
This morning I posted another project on Always Learning Resources. Something Ia did in the summer. It featured briefly on this blog, but now I have posted a fuller description, alhamdulillah!