Exciting Week

The boys had a real fun filled week .  Ds1 and ds2 were really  kept busy with  all excitement by the others .The boys  had good fun with the  Nintendo Wii  borrowed from their cousins . They baked some  cherry cakes and played many  board and pretend games .

The boys went for their football for the past two days . M and J have got a medal . J was really happy and over the  moon  , showing off his medals to everyone . This is the first medal he has ever won and a real boost to his confidence. He can be sometimes over shadowed by his highly achieving older brother. 

Their cousins have left today.  Our outings are restricted for obvious reasons that our 7 seater  has being  sold and dh takes the other car to work .

  Anyways the days are getting closer to leave to Jeddah . The empty cardboard boxes have   arrived which was ordered from ebay    . InshaAllah time to crack on with things . Dh has officially finished his job today . Busy day tomorrow inshaAllah.

Creative Day

I have taken a break along with the children . SubhanaAllah as mothers our chores around the house never ends . Sometimes we work around the clock especially when we have a baby .More than anything all we need is patience and perseverance to continue . Children always seems to look upon their  parents to follow and to take them as role models in their early tender years of their life .So the one closes to them is the mother , we need to constantly improve and enrich our behaviour and manners . Home is the first school for the children .  First foremost reminder to my own self .

MashaAllah ds1 is training herself to go to toilet in the night . She feels embarrassed to do it in her nappy .  She says : ds2 (her sister) is a baby so she  is wearing a nappy , but i am a big girl . She is  very happy that her cousins are here and getting on with everything they do Alhamdulillah .

Today  the  children  came up with really creative idea all by themselves . They decided to have a pretend circus show .Firstly they made a very impressive poster with colourful drawings and urging people to come to their circus . They spend almost half the morning doing this and practising their performance .

They performed their show which wasn't very long but definitely very impressive .They got ds1 to sing tala al badur alaina...... with a drum . Then M did his juggling with orange and kiwi (not good idea ) . He did pretty well . J performed his handstand and certain other moves that he learnt in his gym lessons . Z and S (their cousins) were the presenters of the show . 

They made some  bookmakers Alhamdulillah . It is really satisfying and happy to see that they had spent their time worth while and certainly not getting bored .

 

Off Lessons

Half term holiday this week .So their cousins have come over to spend the week with them .House packed with kids like a nursery .They are having   fun time . The boys went for football as it was cancelled many times due to snow .And their other classes are off . All of them together made rooms service for the adults in house . Designed a  menu  card ,priced it ,took orders and actually made the breakfast and tea.

Weathers improved and snows all melted so they played outside .Read books .

I've posted one of our lapbooks that we made before click here 

More History

M did more fractions today . We seem to be  doing a lot of history these days . We read about the new stone age and did some written work on it . The book we use is Galore park history junior , I find this book easy to teach and doesn't burden with too much information ,provides just enough for their age . Then he did his English Bond Assessment paper which i give him once a week .

J was more willing to do his lessons , he did his usual spelling practise  for Wednesday . I am not very  keen on starting grammar   for J , but wanted to try it so as  to see how he feels . We did few sentences to find out verbs in them . He was happy with it as he  felt he  was doing big boys work.

 J and Ds1 did some painting as it gave me  some time to read to  M from  his history text .

As you can see J has priced his paintings and asking me to buy his work . He has used cent instead of dollars because we use Singapore maths and in it things are priced in cents and dollars . It gave me  a chance to discuss and  compare prices as to which is cheaper and how much was $2 in cent etc . Alhamdulillah these  are the opportunity to teach that comes  naturally.

 

Then we watched some documentary about the people of Pompeii  from the angle of the historians and Islamic point of view . SubhanaAllah  no wonder the people of Pompeii were destroyed as they entrenched in corruption and immorality . In fact they were same as the people of Lut . We watched the Perished Nations by Haroon Yahya   and  The Last day  in BBC .

We finished  another life story of a sahabah  who was a cousin of our prophet - Abu Sufyan ibn Harith .

Just Read

I watched a program on BBC last night on reading .

Just Read by Michael Rosen click here to view 

 It inspired me a lot  as i agree with  his approach to reading . I tried a different routine today and did more reading than before .

M did some work on fractions . Even though he does maths well and gets most of the answers right he lacks confidence in his own mathematical ability and hence immediately panics when presented with maths problem . More than working on maths  I  think  I should focus on his attitude towards it InshaAllah.

J did his maths test today and did extremely well .To my astonishment he got almost all  his word problems right . I read to them about Pompeii and it's people lifestyle and how the town was destroyed by the volcanic eruption. And had the opportunity to discuss Islamic history as well of how the people of Ad ,Thamud and people of Lut were destroyed for the wrong doings in the same way .

They listened to more audio tapes .

Then i read to them more from the "Our Island Story".

After that it was time to go out and play with their friends . They spent hours on end shawling the snow as if they were digging for gold  MashaAllah .

We finished the day with me reading the life of our beloved prophet's cousin Ja'far bin Abi Talib.

achievements

Today M did the written recount of Hudhaifah Al Yaman.We have divided his life story into three parts . M did the first part almost himself and his sentence formation and fluency of writing has improved a significant amount . Doing this way I realized that we are  not only focusing  on Islamic history but also English Alhamdulillah.

J worked more on his lapbook on "All About Me".  He did word problems in Singapore maths and found it a bit challenging today . He seems to be  solving all the problems in the reverse order which is also correct but the problem is he uses his answer to write the statement . You know what i mean .....

They love  to  listen to   audio stories at lunch after which they went out to play . I  joined them a while later after putting the girls to sleep  for a game of badminton . We didn't play for a long time as it started to rain and the ground was quite slippery .

Then I had some quiet time  to read to the boys . We started this new history book which seems to be  popular and  easy to read as well, it's called "Our Island Story" by H.E Marshall. 

As I was not a great fan of history myself I am relearning it .Well ! English history is new to me anyway.

They had their football  lessons cancelled again due to snow today but they were at least happy to go for their  swimming lessons . Before the swimming lessons we had to dash to the library as we haven't been for ages . The boys were happy to get their hands on  new books .

M has started  reading a set of new fiction books in which the chapters are numbered in Roman Numerals  .He has not come across RN . So that  became an informal  lesson out of curiosity.

By bed time he had learned how to write up to  2000 with  some  help from  dh.

MashaAllah ds2 has learned to stand on her own over the weekend . Now all she does is practise just that .

Philosophical thinking done by someone but i like it .....

Olives are pressed for oil , fruits are squeezed for juice . Flowers are crushed for perfume. So if you feel pressured it's just Allah 's way of getting the best out of you :-)

More Craft

Today they got on with their normal work  pretty quickly and smoothly as they were very keen to finish and dash to the snow .

We finally finished our lapbook  on volcanoes(InshaAllah we'll post pictures of our work soon).J is working on another lapbook"About Me ".

He finds it really interesting and exciting  as it is all about himself.

Then I read to them about the  stone age and ice ages.We had previously watch some videos related to the topic ,so it was easy for me to discuss things with them .

The book does talk about  evolutionist and creationist .Generally in support of Darwin's theory of evolution .I think it is quite valuable to bring these topics  and  discuss so as to keep them  informed and explain the Islamic stance on these matters.

Alhamdulillah M grasped it well as he said to me the opposite is true-the monkey didn't change into man rather Allah changed man into apes when they disobeyed Him.

later they designed some tools and weapons used by the people in the stone ages using cereal boxes . 

I  was meaning to buy geoboard for a long time ,but didn't realise that i had two of them already when I bought the Right Start Maths set with manipulative,Alhamdilillah they really got involved and tried to make  different patterns with them even ds1 loved it . 

J made this using pipe cleaners .It's meant to be leaves with stem and flower pot at the bottom .

Soon after lunch they got to go out and play with their friends next door in the snow .

Alhamdulillah we finished about another great sahabhah from the Ansar .He carried the title "keeper of secrets of the messenger of Allah " He is Hudaifah al yaman .In summary he showed patience when his dearest father was killed by the Muslims by mistake during the battle of Uhud .In this upsetting situation he forgave the Muslims . secondly he  was trusted with holding secret of names of the munafikoon (hypocrites).His participation in the battle of the trench .As like  all the other sahabahs he lead a very simple life even after he was made the Governor of Persia subhanaAllah .
May  Allah help us all to be grateful for all His blessings Ameen

Enjoying Snow

MashAllah ,Allah has put beauty and perfection in nature, be it plain white or vibrant colours .

As we have worked hard week before , I've let go off them with bare minimum .They are enjoying the snow and me too with them .

Dh couldn't move his car from the drive ,so had to call off work and work from home .The childern were all excited as it was different from the norm .They all dashed outside after their breakfast to make their snowman ...well a snowman  figure .

Using snow as an opportunity ,we read some facts about them.

We tried viewing  the snow patterns under the microscope ,due too much light out side and obviously freezing cold ,we didn't have the patience ...and didn't achieve much .

But what i found out was that we  could fossilize the snow .

we have collected the specimen ,but you have  to keep it in the freezer for a week ....so have to wait for the result .

We made some paper snowflakes  ,specially as J loves cutting papers.M wasn't  keen at first ,but when he saw the result (the patterns ) he quickly got involved in it .

Even i got carried away at times .You can imagine the pile of  paper cutting around my house .It was worth it ,they loved making it .

we made these patterns ourselves ,later i found out that they have templates for these pattern, makes things easy a bit at www.kinderart.com

J commented to me that he would wish that it would snow all the  time ,but the weather being nice warm and comfortable for him  to play .So,i asked him where can we achieve that ...and he's reply was Jannah ..May Allah make  us enjoy the restricted joy of  this world and the limitless joy of the hereafter ..Ameen .

x

Motivation

Hectic start of the day as I started  cleaning ,the people were coming to collect the sold goods . M after his Quran reading and breakfast prefers to read books for an hour. In the beginning I was reluctant to let him do this, because I felt that his mind would be fresher to do maths and other lessons  first thing in the morning. We were willing to try his way, to see if he would use his time productively and resume his daily tasks without a fuss . To my surprise he seems more alert and in fact faster in finishing his work . I suppose he likes that we respect his views and try his methods .

Today was a rewarding day  for M as he completed his salah chart . Alhamdulillah this method seems to motivate him, especially getting his weekly financial reward! I still have to remind  him but hey!! he is only 8!!!

M has been very much into this book  since dh got him a week ago . This morning he was practising how to make different types of knots . Today he mastered the Taut-line hitch which is the type of knot mostly used by mountain climbers and also used to tie down tent lines because it can be tightened and loosened quickly . He was proud  beause he had learnt something fiddly all by himself .

We discussed more on volcanoes as to the different phases they go through and some terminologies . More cutting ,writing ,colouring and gluing . J is more involved and enthusiastic Alhamdulillah .

They let off some steam by going to visit their friends and a quick visit to the library .

The children were promised that they would  get to watch a documentary today and stay up a bit late . We watched The Secret Life of the Elephants in BBC iplayer :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00gtgd2/The_Secret_Life_of_Elephants_Episode_1/

M has already launched unto his next project on Mammals for which he already created power point p all by himself .

This is a very interesting article which found to be useful in bringing up our children -click on it.

what we should be teaching our children

Back to Work

The last fortnight we were busy spring cleaning .SubhanAllah  unbelievable how much junk we hoard .Still there is lot more to be done InshaAllah .

We have been working on our volcano lapbook  ,Alhamdulillah almost coming to the end .I  have to agree  I always  seem to take my time in finishing  these projects .We are also on our way  in constructing  a volcano in the process -paper mac he'.

Today J has been working on his Singapore English workbook .I find it too basic and not challenging enough as the Singapore maths ,but i choose parts of it thats interesting .J had to write the story looking at the  picture and construct proper sentence.

J is now showing great interest in the times table, which he was doing as a part of his work .

So to feed his enthusiasm i give him a small reward if he memorised .Successfully he has done the 2 and 3 times table and working hard on the 4Th.

As i mentioned before ,for Arabic we are working on animals mentioned in the Quran .I decided to do this a bit different in a book form .As you can see in the picture the information on the left hand side is some facts about the animal and the one on the right is the verse mentioned in the Quran about the animal .And the green coloured paper is where they practise writing the word .

The print outs  are  from the site:   http://www.talibiddeenjr.com/downloads/library_animals_in_the_quraan_print.pdf

Doing this way  we also get to discuss the tafsir of the quran  related to the animal . 

                                                                                                       

Things are moving faster than we thought .As we are going to be moving to the middle east

we put many things on sale and people are showing  great interest .

The house is a complete tip, as many things  are going on ...throwing ,boxing ,sorting........etc.

The boys got on with their work in the morning .As for lunch they made their own self designed pizza .They enjoyed tucking in and topping them .

They helped dh to put stuff in the dump yard.

We are at present reading about another sahabah ,Umayr bin sa'd who was young boy who was an orphan .He grew up with his mother and his stepfather who dearly loved him .Umayr  was heart broken to find out that his stepfather was a munafiq.And Umayr played his part in saving his father from the great torment. 

 

M learnt how to put up a real tent in his scouts ,as they are planning to go for  camping at the end of this month    InshaAllah .     

life moves on.........

Over the weekend ,I became ill with flu and fever and completely knocked out .

But the children had a nice time with their cousins.
Dh  even  managed  to make  a bonfire with the children .  

The children went out with my in laws to have more fun with other friends as they were invited for dinner.

 

We usually start on the Sunday evening to get home ,but since dh also fell sick ,we had to change our schedule .Finally arrived home around mid morning .I was in bed for the most of the day .

The children were allowed to play in snow ,they had a wonderful time making snowman with their next door friend .They played outside most of the time ,as we don't have snow so often .

 

Then M and J spend their time reading Horrid Henry's 2009 given to them by their aunt. It has lots of riddles, facts ,experiments,tricks ........etc.

The rountine of the perious week has payed off ,as  boys did the washing up .M makes us tea as and when  need Alhamdulillah 

Iam very anxious and concerned about the people of Gaza who are undergoing hardship and misery by losing thier dear and loved ones SubhanAllah .May Allah pour down upon them mercy and peace ,Ameen .

Love is where the heart is

We started our journey which was 1 1/2 hrs drive .We ended up with a number of interesting discussions stimulated by dh about Allah 's love for us that was immense and uncountable  .So the discussion stirred as to how to measure the unit of love ......lovometer ,rose power etc.And that lead J to question ,if the love for someone was from the heart or brain .He was strongly convinced that it was through the heart ,but he could not explain .M was convinced that it was through the mind .So it almost turned it to a debate reflecting their personality. 

Then we finally arrived ,the children ran around in excitement meeting their cousins .I only saw them for dinner and sleep time ...gave me break at least.

Their cousin finished reading Quran ,which is  great achievement Alhamdulillah .

 

MMmmmmm........time  to eat .The children enjoyed it .I

let them loose today to sleep in their own time (past nine),had their so called mid night feast .

SubhanaAllah when I see children playing  carefree without worries or  in fear ,it aches my heart to think about the children in Gaza who are wrapped up under their mother's tender arms knowing not what will happen next .Lets us all pray to Allah to ease their   situation and bring tranquility in their life  ,Ameen. 

Review of the week

Since dh is off work ,the boys got to go for the juma'h  Alhamdulillah.

Most of my day was occupied in cleaning and scrubbing . 

 

Apart from the academic side of things  this week ,I  encouraged the children to do some  household chores .M  and J surprised me  by agreeing to wash up the dishes and actually doing it through out the  week. M washes up after dinner and J does it after breakfast,and they enjoyed doing it .

InshaAllah the other routine we wanted to establish was salah(prayer)for M.So we  came up with this idea of ticking the chart each time he prayed  and he would be rewarded at the  end of week (Friday) a pound  .I got the print out off the net and laminated it and hang it in the hall way so that I and dh can  keep an eye on it ,and remind him in case he forgot to pray.

 MashaAllah as you can see he has achieved it this week .Since the print out is in Arabic ,he has learnt the names of the days in Arabic Alhamdulillah .

The plight of our Muslim brothers and sisters in Palestine brings tears to my heart .May Allah strength their heart and  establish their feet firmly  in eeman .May Allah unite them together and give them victory in this life and the next Ameen.

Maths can be fun!!!

Quiet  start 

After  quick and short lessons, M had to go for his football training today.He came home pleased that he was  man of the match .J couldn't go for it as he was having cough and cold .J continued working .While M was away J and I with help of little ds1 prepared a fun trail for M .

I wanted to do something different to the norm.Doing maths in a work book or worksheet can be boring for the children at times.So, while I cut them to strips from the sheet J and ds1 went around the house sticking them .

The aim  is  to do the maths mentally and look for the answers on the other strip, then read the question on that and carry on until you come back to where you started.M really enjoyed it and started  straight away as soon as he entered the house and noticed them .

I got this idea from www.parentsintouch.co.uk

I prepared for the next lapbook that we are going to make on volcanoes ....printing .

Then I read some  information about volcanoes to them- today it was about Paricutin, a volcano in Mexico 1943-1952. We discussed the damage  caused by the volcano and it's consequences on the people and the surroundings .

 

The next sahaba that we have started to read is about Ummaiyr ibn sa'd Al Ansari  who  was an orphan and entered in to the fold of Islam in his tender age of 10,SubhanAllah.

As a bed time routine we read them books  ,at the moment i am reading The Mysteries collection by Enid Blyton . Next I am going to try reading Sherlock Homes as M and J like detective stories.

Little ds2 decided to help us sort through the books as we were boxing them .Censoring the books with a critical eye of disapproval .........I  am  trying hard  to understand mummy!!!!