Spider Diagram

Sometimes I feel like I'm a spider diagram, it is me in the middle, with all the lines coming out as the things I'm trying to do.
So, I think I'm on the verge of some more re-organisation, alhamdulillah. There is just so much we could all be doing. I could fill each day for the boys, and each day for the girls. Doing this for all of them all at once is the problem!
I want us to be going for outings, going out for walks, visiting the library, meeting friends, reading aloud, doing art and craft, learning through projects and textbooks and wider reading and documentaries and so on and on and on.
I didn't mention baking ...or sports, or fitting in the daily Islamic duties.
I really need the boys to be doing more independent projects. It is good for them, and will help me to find more time for the girls and more variety for everyone. I was planning to make some changes next academic year, but as usual I can't wait.
This morning I asked the boys to choose from a whole range of unit studies on all kinds of topics. It doesn't matter what they learn (pretty much), just that they develop study skills through the process. R chose a topic on Aztecs and J chose Vikings. They wanted to get started on it today.
Also today Ia's friend came over and the three girls made the Lil Muslimah cut out dolls from Umm Abdul Basir's blog, and played with them for ages, maashAllah. If you have young girls do go check the dolls! I think everyone is making them!

Tuesday Summary

I rounded off the volume and capacity work with the girls today by making our own calibrated measure with a jam jar and small cupsof beans. We poured a cupful of beans into the jam jar and marked the level, and so on. Then we checked it back by filling the jar up to the one cup mark, then pouring it back into the cup again.
Ia also wrote her second story today! I printed out another sheet of the same piece of paper for her to write on. I think notebook pages might suit her, she can't stand the sight of an exercise book, (except the project style ones). This story was about our cat. I'm letting her make spelling mistakes, as I don't want to put her off trying to write independently. She asks me for some spellings too.
The boys finished reading the play of Wind in the Willows and did a piece of written work on it. I asked them to write a bit of playscript in the style of the play. They enjoyed doing this, and captured the style well I think, maashAllah.
This morning all three bigger ones watched a documentary on BBC iplayer about man eating tigers in Bangladesh! It was not as gory as it sounds, but showed the serious problems some villagers were having with tigers coming into the village. It was in the natural world category, but it showed strategies the villagers were using, so that includes geography - right!

Monday summary

After days of sunshine the rain came down today, alhamdulillah, and we got back into the home ed routines.
Today Ia moved onto Peter and Jane book 10. At level 9 I only had one of the two books, and this level 10 book we picked up in a charity shop last week. She really wants to read all the way to the last level, level 12. We only have one book per level for levels 11 and 12, and it is not worth getting the others as by now there is so much more she can choose from, alhamdulillah. She just wants that completed feeling with the Peter and Jane books. She is reading other things by herself now too, for example a lovely Usborne lift-the-flap book on sharks we found in the library at the weekend.
Both girls did some more volume and capacity work today, finding out how many cupfuls of water fit in the teapot, and comparing that with the capacity of saucepans, bowls etc. I'm not using any other standard units of measurement with them, just estimating and comparing with cupfuls. They also tried out measuring with cupfuls of dried beans.
We began the morning by all watching some clips from a farming documentary featuring the dairy farm from where our milk comes. It was great to be able to see the actual farm and actual cows whose milk we drink! We didn't watch the whole programme, just the highlights for us!
Later the girls watched some short videos on a pet care site recommended by a sister on the Ihsan forum (link in side bar). They were amazed to see a cat having its teeth brushed. Can't imagine our cat tolerating that!!!
The girls have also played with their new toy kitchen, and with the old and rarely used lego pieces, Ia did her daily bits of work and U decided to do a few pages of a maths workbook.
The boys are brushing up on the Wind in the Willows play we read some weeks back, so that we can do some further work on it. Somehow I couldn't make time for it any sooner. They also continued with the usual stuff, and began a new topic on classification in science.

Flowers and a goat

I took the girls to an art workshop today, where they spent an hour and a half making these flower sculptures. First they painted the pots, then they designed their flowers, threaded them onto wire and stuck them in oasis in the pots.
The boys are now back from their days away on the canal, operating locks, keeping a log book and enjoying the sunshine. Whilst they were away the girls enjoyed lots of playtime and seeing friends. I also disguised some maths as playing with water, and we did some volume and capacity work. They also had the chance to touch a newly hatched chick, and U had her elbow nibbled by a goat.

Lots More Fish

No time for lapbooks today, as I took the girls to the aquarium, to follow up their recent Nemo/reef project.
London Aquarium has recently been changed about a bit, and seems more geared towards younger visitors now, so just right for my girls!

2nd Heron Spotting Post

Out and about in the beautiful sunshine today, alhamdulillah, investigating canals, locks and spotting a heron. (Can you?)

Tigers

Ia and U have finished their Tiger Lapbooks. They have spent about a week learning about tigers, but for me the actual tiger information is not the main point. More importantly they have been doing language work through the medium of the tiger project, and they have been learning about learning.
Much of this project was based around a Homeschool Highlights project pack, available from Currclick. JazakAllahkhair to Umm Adam, who sometimes comments here, for the encouragement to investigate Currclick further. I had been to the site before, but the huge volume of items on there, and the difficulty of knowing what could be useful and what not put me off at first.
Anyway, it turned out that this pack had some activities that were too easy for Ia but good for U and plenty of others that were just right for Ia, so she enjoyed herself! She was also able to read through the information booklet by herself, which was a bonus.


There was lots of colouring. There were several poems, but we just did one, as that part was a little harder. The types of tigers and tiger diets bits were from Homeschool Share.

U had less to do. But she made up for this with extra cutting out.

I liked that this project had pages for filling in missing letters, copywork and a wordsearch, all focussing on a small group of vocabulary items. This is a good idea to take into our own lapbooks.

The lines for the copywork were too wide for Ia. She prefers to write a little smaller.