New Term

Today we restarted homeschooling after a 10 day break. I guess it really was a matter of whether we really needed to have holidays when we are not going off on a trip. Lessons are not just sit-downs where we go through the intricacies of knowledge, but where the kids learn in a fun and active way. Hence, we cut short our break by two weeks.

Ihsan started off on his Ad-Duha Islamic curriculum especially well and liked both the Quran and Arabic lessons on cd. He especially enjoyed the quiz on his Arabic programme. We had a good start and we haven't even explored the books yet. He'd love the stories on the Asma ul Husna texts and the Arabic curriculum is very clear and precise.

We are continuing with another Dinosaur theme with the kids' renewed interest in it. After outdoors we made a Dinosaur hat from the template off a Dinosaur theme pack bought off atozteachers.com. I love their packages for the different themes there and at such reasonable prices too.

When I did my lessons on Verbs, instead of naming general items, I had Ihsan name and write down on paper the names of his different dinosaur models and then asked him the different actions that dinosaurs can do.

Umayr was really taken with using chopsticks to pick up corks today. When I woke up from my afternoon nap, he was doing it by himself and even taught his sister how to do it. On starfall.com, he got to enjoy his favourite dinosaur dance song and learn letters 'd' and 'k'. For math, we counted how many dinosaurs in a row it would take to go from a point in a room to another.

He didn't want to do his readers today though. Oh well... we didn't do our lessons on ten, hundred thousands and millions for Ihsan too as he was bent on doing another activity and was tired off by the second half of the day, having not fully recovered from his fever.

Everything considered, it was a good start to the new term. Alhamdulillah. I am going to continue to concentrate on the spiritual education of my children. When they are stable spiritually, Insyaallah they'll be just fine with learning anything else.

Army Museum

We went to the Army Museum beside the Singapore Discovery Centre today together with my sister's family who were visiting from Brunei, my second sis and Zainah and two of her kids. We got lost at first, why didn't the website just state that the museum was accessible from the Singapore Discovery Centre's entrance?

Anyway, I love the ramp that leads to the museum, there are two apparently. Inside you have to open mysterious doors, if there were signs I didn't see them, that opens up to the exhibits. There you will find installations and props of army life through the years among many other paraphernalia of military life especially on national service.

We love the shows at the object theater, there are two. The first one shows happy, smiling servicemen as they go through their training and the second one is an action pack show of our military might. Love the sound system and the effects; there was also a helicopter and tanks inside the theater for greater impact.

Outside the children enjoyed climbing onto military vehicles; tanks, jeeps, lorries and other things that I'm not really sure what they are called. Beside that, they have the adventure playground; a miniature version of the obstacles course that soldiers go through in their training. The kids loved balancing, climbing and jumping on the different obstacles. I'm not sure whether they'd enjoy the real stuff 10-12 years from now.

Days of the Week

I am in the midst of preparing for the next school year and going through the manuals have been interesting. One point is the history of how the days of the week are named. Apparently, Tuesday to Saturday are named after pagan gods. and the week has biblical influences.Hmm....how am I gonna do this?

Do I skip?

However, I realise that this will not be the only time when I have to contend to explain to my children how sometimes things that we encounter in our daily life are not in line with our faith. Just as I don't skip why people burn joss sticks and hell money or pray to idols, the children have to be taught how Islam views these practices and not be kept in a nutshell.

By doing so, I hope they will not just accept what is considered the norm in our secular society but to study these norms and react to them in a way that a good Muslim should and where possible to change these norms and make them Islamic.

So, we are going to do Creation in Islam first, the Muslim calendar and then the regular one.Wallahu a'lam