Friday 20 February 2009

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.



Tuesday 17 February 2009

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 .

 

Monday 16 February 2009

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 

Wednesday 11 February 2009

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 .

Tuesday 10 February 2009

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.

Monday 9 February 2009

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 :-)

Friday 6 February 2009

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

Thursday 5 February 2009

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 .


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