sarah sofiyya

Gravity experiment

2012-02-01T19:43:00.001-08:00

The materials.

The experiment

The outcome

The baby experiment

Today we learned about gravitational force as our first physics lesson for this term. I have pretty much given up trying to carry out experiments based on household items as I realise I end up searching for items and forgetting about them and not doing experiments at all.

We bougth our kit from the Science Centre for about $50 and I plan to use this for the next two months for our physics block. Although its meant for Ihsan, the other children, including Sarah, joined in. Ihsan does the extra of having to record what he did, saw and learned from the experiment.

To satisfy national requirements, Ihsan also studies the national schools curriculum and (get this!) he likes doing the assessments. I do this for the other subjects too. So, the children goes through the regular school books, reviews and tests to make sure they know the national syllabus as their written work and reading load for the day and we carry our own homeschool lessons which I feel enriches and extends on their regular work.

October

2011-10-02T18:28:00.000-07:00

I've started to wind down on the job side, with the worksheet writing work ending after I'm done editing the holiday program. Though the editing seems to be taking forever, at least the worksheets don't need to be urgently produced. With that, and the ramadhan and raya season over I managed to return to planning for homeschool.

My new resolutions are:
1. To consciously teach Malay grammar and writing
2. To review lessons every month
3. To have a review test every 3 months
4. To conduct science experiments and practical life once a week.

Last week, we learned the dua after wudu' as an extension to our review on wudu'. For both lessons I used the Learning Roots cards 'What comes next?' and 'What to say when...'. I did my first Montessori presentation after a long while with Umayr and Sofiyya on 'Division with recording with the golden beads' and 'The Big Picture' (place value to 9000 with golden beads) respectively.

I managed to come up with Malay worksheets for the children on 'Kata Ganti Diri Pertama', ' Adjektif' and 'Warna'. I taught the verse 'Bangun Pagi' for Sofiyya's theme and Umayr stuck labels of things around the house for Malay Vocabulary. The words on the labels were also used for his 'Ejaan'. I had a hilarious tIme marking Ihsan's karangan, something he had not done in a while.

We are learning Flight & Movement and made spinners from the template in the book 'More Mudpies to Magnets'. Umayr knee what it was before I started explaining. Boys and flying objects have a natural bond, I guess.

Home Visit

2011-08-20T07:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we had our first home visit by an official from the Ministry of Education. It was our first meeting with them and I was quite anxious, well moderately. Cleaned the house up, which was good since Eid was coming anyway, and in the end threw away around ten bags of run- of- date stuff that have been quietly filling up the house.

We are very lucky in Singapore to have a ministry that goes all out and try to be in touch even with those outside the system. I mean, they sent a senior officer with many years of teaching experience to drive all the way to remote Choa Chu Kang kampong to explain to me the content of the information sheet that was e- mailed to me earlier.

I was even more touched when they gave recognition to homeschoolers here by putting us to a higher standard of requirements. For those who are not aware, our children can only continue to secondary school if they meet the cut off point of the lowest 33rd percentile (194 last year). Anywhere less than that they have to take PSLE for up to 3 times and cannot continue to secondary school till they meet this requirement even though their peers from national schools can do so. I mean, with all that attention and customized teaching, like the official said, our kids should be doing better.

I could see what this visit was truly about when after explaining that my child has to attend school if she fails, she went on to talk about how I have to approach secondary schools myself for my child to get a place. What confidence in how independent we homeschoolers are in searching for the best for our children. With our considerable size we must really ease the burden of the ministry each year by not being included in the posting exercise. We have forgone the subsidised system and the use of our edusave, what's the big deal with posting?

The ministry has also started a partnership with us homeschoolers in the education of our children- they will now require those at primary four, starting from this cohort, (although I thought I heard the same for a friend's last year) to sit for an examination to see their level of abilities. From sharing with us what they are best at, our children will hopefully two years later be exam-wise.

This is a great start. In future, I hope the ministry will consider some humble partnerships like- sharing of facilities and educational materials, mixed schooling, participation in co-curricular activities and a channel to tap into the knowledge and experience of teachers, all in the spirit of nurturing our children and embracing diversity.

Lastly, in this blessed month, I pray that Allah bless this country where we can practice our faith freely and have the space to be different and continue to be able to be so. While we welcome the fresh ideas and talents from foreign lands and lands we have ties with, we should also nurture those who dare to be different from within.

Our Second Princess

2011-06-22T19:28:00.000-07:00

A slight diversion from homeschooling- Our second princess arrived exactly on her due date determined to be different from the start. I started having contractions from Tuesday night but tried to manage it because it would usually stop 12 hours later for the past week. I even had to go back home from the labour ward on Tuesday as they stopped when I arrived. That night though they grew more frequent and intense but I still thought it could be another 'practice' and would wait till daybreak.

The baby had other ideas of course. I very quickly progressed to the final stage of labour from half- past three that hubby had to call the ambulance. I thought I was going to give birth at home : ) ten minutes to NUH, my baby was born on the PIE near Clementi Ave 6. Apparently, my water bag had not burst as I thought and the Medic, Sgt Luo, had to do it in the ambulance.

We arrived at the hospital with the baby wrapped in a foil-like wrap to keep her warm.

It was a lesson in how Allah will decide what's the best for us no matter how hard we planned. How the ambulance came on time, how the only female medic Sgt Luo was part of the team who came, how it didn't rain heavily as it did the same time the next day. I can only say Alhamdulillah for His blessings.

I also contemplate on the cycle of life in how in one week I have gone from looking at my late aunt in the D.O.A (dead on arrival) room at SGH's A&E to my child being labelled as B.B.A.( born before arrival). It might sound cryptic but it makes me see how fragile life really is and how only Allah is the One deciding for you. Wallahua'lam.

Long Break

2011-06-20T05:59:00.000-07:00

In preparation for the new addition to the family, I managed to push myself to do some planning and copying work materials for the children. We have not been doing much hands-on stuff and outings in my state and I have only managed to stay on the work we find with our books. A break from my personal leaning pursuit has now turned into a pre- natal break which will soon become maternity leave. Well, I take comfort in the fact that the children are not just lazing around and still go outdoors for some physical activity.

Not that they are ever short of ideas, there's always reading to do of course, other than that they'd be playing badminton in the hallway, building tents, drawing and playing cards or boardgames. Lack of TV on weekdays has only made them more creative with their time that I feel ashamed when I get bored.

Today I did a review of classification with Ihsan. We used DK's Internet linked encyclopedia as the text for natural life and referred to the natural world chart which you can download for free at www.montessoriforeveyone.com as a visual reference. It was timely that there was an eclipse recently as I could link it to how important the cycle of night and day and of sunlight was and how an eclipse was a reminder of the day the world ends when even the sun, an element of life, would be destroyed.

Sofiyya has been having a thing for France and all things French lately, thanks to the books she has been reading. One of them is the 'Fancy Nancy' series where the main character likes to use 'fancy' words, especially French words. Today, I used two of the books from the series for her to start her own collection of French words. She digged it. I also downloaded a French alphabet app on the iPad for her. When she saw an ad by Alliance Francais where you could win a ticket to Paris if you signed up with them, she was ecstatic. It was right out of the Anastasia book she has been reading. No, we are not signing up for French lessons,at least not yet.

Kring Kring Kring Ada Beca

2011-03-15T21:28:00.000-07:00

I was reminded of a song I learned in my childhood today while teaching Umayr Malay. I can't remember if my dad sang it to me or whether I learned it from a movie. Could be both. The song goes:

Kring kring kring ada beca
Beca beroda tiga
Ku naik dengan ayah
Pergi keliling kota

Tuk tuk tuk ada sepatu
Sepatu ku sepatu baru
Ku dapat dari ibu
Kerana rajin membantu

You can find it on YouTube if you've forgotten how it's sung.
While there I found another beautiful children's song called 'Pelangi':

Pelangi pelangi alangkah indahmu
Merah kuning hijau di langit yang biru
Pelukismu agung siapa gerangan
Pelangi pelangi ciptaan tuhan

Weekly Review

2011-03-12T16:59:00.000-08:00

We had a late start this week,with distractions all coming at the same time. It took great effort to try to sit down and synchronise my lessons like before again into a theme. I think we tend to fall back on text and workbooks because they help us to manage our time even better and are easier alternatives although not necessarily the best to instil the love for learning in our children when used on its own.

It was refreshing though as I feel conflicted when I see my children fighting against their will at times when tasked with the rudimentary challenges of the text and the workbook. These watered down sources of information and exercises hardly inspire me, what more the children. I see a spark returning to their eyes when listening to stories of everyday things spelled out in more miraculous descriptions, (how in the world do you make dropping things more interesting?) and a stronger desire to carry out what was needed to find out more and even carry out independent research (which can range from just reading more of the book we are using for the topic or going on a full-scale project about it)

On Friday, we learned about famous buildings around the world, in connection to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which was used as a base for Galileo's experiment in the storybook. The children enjoyed learning about the tallest buildings in the world ( I never knew a double-decked lift existed) and Umayr, the former anti-academic, went on to read about the rest of the buildings on his own. A little quarrel even ensued over the book until mum managed to appease one with a similar book although one touching on famous works of art.

I hope to connect the children's academic lessons more with the topic of interest next week as I return to doing what I think is best for my children now that I have the time to.

Stripy, Spotty and Checked

2011-03-09T04:56:00.000-08:00

I'm getting rusty at carrying out lesson plans, but hey, you need to start somewhere. At first, it was as usual my always enthusiastic student, Sofiyya, who wanted to carry out the 'dropping' experiment. However, when the boys saw it involved climbing a chair and dropping things they started to fighting to do it. Only managed to calm them down after much 'persuasion' myself.

I had initially plan to do it at the playground; it has a balcony like feature at the top, but changed my mind, I have to admit it, for my convenience as that would mean I would only be reading Galileo's Leaning Tower Experiment after the kids are done with their outdoors.

The children were very interested in the book. Ihsan and Umayr hypothesized that the book dropped first before the paper as it was heavier. I will not talk about the science behind it with them yet but instead go along with the exploration as we go along.

When we got back, we had time only for some snacks before their Arabic tutor came. As the kids have their sessions separately, I did an exercise on patterns with Umayr and Sofiyya based on the book we read for our reading session this morning called Pink Pyjamas.

I was surprised Umayr was enthusiastic about the exercise as, you know, it was a 'pink' book, but he seemed deeply engrossed in drawing his stripy,spotty and checked pyjamas and was irritated when his efforts at designing his fonts in colour met with some accidental errors. He only calmed down when I showed him how it could be taken care off with some colouring over.

Later in the day, Umayr converted one of our clothes hanger into a skating board. He got into quarrel with his sister when he wanted to overtake her, Sofiyya was riding on a buggy, from the kitchen, I suggested they make a STOP sign, just like those used during roadworks which has a GO on the other side.

For a while there was silence and a scurrying of little feet searching for materials to make the sign. After some problems deciding who to hold the sign, Ihsan was too busy reading to be the signholder, Umayr stuck it onto a cone and blocked off the hallway with his 'skateboard' and the buggy. Together with his sister, they declared his room a construction site. While I was busy preparing dinner, I could hear the construction 'noises' being made. Hmmm, could this be a theme forming?

Earlier in the day, Ihsan was asking me how the government earns money. I told him from taxes, COE, ERP and other government services. I could see the theme forming up with him and I thought with the coming elections it would be a good time to learn about government. Oookay, it's back to the drawing board but we'll stick with Galileo for the time being.

Galileo

2011-03-08T07:54:00.000-08:00

The business of the past few months had made me sink into the text- workbook routine. The children I find no longer go beyond what I ask them to do. They just want to finish up quickly whatever work we are doing so they can get back to playing. In fact the children challenge each other who finishes first. That's not a very healthy competition.

That is why I finally pushed myself today to sit down and look through a book to use as a base for our new theme ' Galileo'. To make myself get back to coming up with a theme to encourage the kids, I got over the mental barrier of planning in detail but to just go with the flow about what I know the kids like from experience.

Galileo's Leaning Tower Experiment by Wendy Macdonald tells the tale of how a farm boy got acquainted with Galileo as he was throwing stones over a bridge to find out how fast they go which later grew to them experimenting about forces.I will be linking the book, which I will be reading in parts over five days, to history (Galileo/mathematicians), mensuration, Renaissance Art, physics, geography (Italy/Europe) and Language Arts.

A natural progression would be thinking about field trips and projects which I will think more about based on the directions given by the children.

Book List

2011-02-16T00:13:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to get organised now with my crazy schedule cut down and Insyaallah I hope because I've now learned to balance working part-time with homeschooling. Here are the list of books I currently have for all my kids. They are all wonderful books and I look forward to actually being able to use all of them this year. You would notice that some overlap the grades, and some should have been done with years ago while others are ahead: that's the beauty of homeschooling- we go with the flow.

General

Science

Usborne Spotter’s Guides: The Night Sky
Handbook of Nature Study, Comstock, Anna Botsford

Art/History
Hands-On Ancient People: Volume I, Merrill, Yvonne Y.
Hands-On Ancient People: Volume II, Merrill, Yvonne Y.

Islam
My Ramadan Fun Book, Goodwordkidz
My Hajj Fun Book, Goodwordkidz
My Quran Workbook, Goodwordkidz
The Holy Prophet Workbook, Goodwordkidz
Our Prophet Muhammad saw, Life in Makkah, IQRA International Education Foundation
My First Book About Islam, Emerick, Yahiya
I am Muslim, Grade K, Douglass, Susan
Eid Mubarak, Grade 1, Douglass, Susan
Muslims in our community and around the world, Grade 2, Douglass, Susan
Ibraheem & Imaan: Perfecting the pillars of our faith series, Al-Asma Ul Husnaa, Part 1, Ad-Duha

Kindergarten

General
Learn at Home, Grade 1, American Education Publishing

English
Silent Letters Loud and Clear, Pulver, Robin
Behind the Mask: a book about prepositions, Heller, Ruth
Merry-Go-Round: a book about nouns, Heller, Ruth
Kites Sail High: a book about verbs, Heller, Ruth

Science
The Kingfisher First Human Body Encyclopaedia
The Usborne Internet-linked First Encyclopaedia of Science
The Usborne First Encyclopaedia of Our World
More Mudpies to Magnets: science for young children

Grade 2

History
The Story of the World Book One, Peace Hill Press
The Story of the World Activity Book One, Peace Hill Press

Math
My Pals are Here Workbook 2A Part One, Marshall Cavendish

English

Writing With Ease, Workbook Level 1, Peace Hill Press
First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind, Peace Hill Press
Punctuation Takes a Vacation, Pulver, Robin
Silent Letters Loud and Clear, Pulver, Robin
Behind the Mask: a book about prepositions, Heller, Ruth
Mine, All Mine: a book about pronouns, Heller, Ruth
Many Luscious Lollipops: a book about adjectives, Heller Ruth
Merry-Go-Round: a book about nouns, Heller, Ruth
Kites Sail High: a book about verbs, Heller, Ruth
The Wise Enchanter, Davidow, Shelley

Science
The Kingfisher First Human Body Encyclopaedia
The Usborne Internet-linked First Encyclopaedia of Science
The Usborne First Encyclopaedia of Our World
More Mudpies to Magnets: science for young children

Malay
Buku Teks 1B, Mekar
Buku Aktiviti 1B, Mekar

Grade 4

History
The Story of the World Book One, Peace Hill Press
The Story of the World Activity Book One, Peace Hill Press
The Story of the World Volume 1: Ancient Times Tests and Answer Key, Rountree, Elizabeth
The Usborne Internet-linked Encyclopaedia of World History

Math
Primary Six Mathematics Tutor 6A, Casco Publications Pte Ltd
My Pals are Here Workbook 5B, Marshall Cavendish

Science
Lower Block (P3&4) Ultimate Science Guide, EPH
Adventures with Atoms and Molecules, Enslow
Chemistry for Every Kid, VanCleave, Janice
Physics for Every Kid, VanCleave, Janice
Earth Science for Every Kid, VanCleave, Janice
The Human Body for Every Kid, VanCleave, Janice
Biology for Every Kid, VanCleave, Janice

English
Writing With Ease, Workbook Level 2, Peace Hill Press
First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind, Peace Hill Press
Fantastic!Wow! and Unreal!, Heller, Ruth
Up, up and away: a book about adverbs, Heller, Ruth
A Cache of Jewels: and other collective nouns, Heller, Ruth
Behind the Mask: a book about prepositions, Heller, Ruth
Mine, All Mine: a book about pronouns, Heller, Ruth

Malay
Buku Teks 3B, Mekar
Buku Aktiviti 3B, Mekar

General
DK web-linked e-Encyclopaedia
Children’s World Atlas, Igloo Books Ltd

And that should be it!

2011-02-15T20:08:00.000-08:00

The children were down last week with viral fever after an activity-filled five-day-long Chinese New Year Holiday. Sofiyya was down the longest with her temperature coming up again after being well for a day but she is now up and running as usual and her appetite has returned.

We managed to start off school today after spending yesterday morning at the library for school. I tried to start Ihsan off on his azan and iqamat competition at his weekend madrasah with Syeikh Misyari's rendition of the azan but I guess I was too ambitious but the beautiful azan must have inspired him cause he was not fussing too much about it. We'll just have to continue practicing.

I found a treasure of a book yesterday for Sofiyya called Renoir's Colors by Marie Sellier. The book introduces children to colours with two introduction pages in a particular colour with a focus on a part of a Renoir that a child can see on opening a window. The next page then describes the whole painting in relation to the focus area.

Luckily for me, Sofiyya is not colour blind and she was the one who confirmed for me what some of the colours are. Ihsan was found to be colour blind at a recent check up. He had inherited my other medical condition- thalassaemia minor- too. Alhamdulillah, at least they are nothing serious.

We are looking forward to the kids' introduction to rock climbing at Safra Yishun tomorrow. I wish I can climb myself : )I'm sure Umayr would enjoy himself, he's been climbing all over the house since he's been mobile.

The New School Year

2011-01-18T03:45:00.000-08:00

It's been more than two weeks since we've sauntered back to homeschooling. It has been quite smooth other than Umayr literally fighting with his will which was still on holiday once in a while. He would groan that he could not do his work and he'd start fidgeting.

When we started out, I had at first had tearful outbursts, both for him and myself, then I had the lax period where I would let go at any sign of rebellion. I have learned to now balance between the two by sitting through with him what we had to do and finding out that sometimes even when he doesn't want to, he could. When I'm lucky, he could go from grumbling troll to eager beaver when he realised he could do the job.

Sofiyya had over the past week had a spontaneous learning moment; she suddenly wanted to read the books we borrowed from the library by herself and whatever she saw when we were outside.

I think it was partly motivated by her brother, Umayr's - the anti-academic- newfound interest in reading. She saw how we were pleased with Umayr's progress and being the charmer that she is, wanted to please us too which was a win- win situation for all of us and I think it's so intriguing to see what motivates the girls and the boys.

I have yet to enter into formal planning; we have been moving along what we read and continuing what we have been doing last year. I like to call it my 'unschooling'part of home education. It's like what the Waldorf followers call the breathing in and breathing out parts of their school days. We have structured and unstructured learning spread throughout the year to keep us motivated and inspired.

The new term had seen me more disciplined with my different roles so far. I'd finish my home- based writing job by around eight in the morning, prepare breakfast, have a good sit-down breakfast with the kids who are already bathed by then, do the essential housework like wiping the table and sweeping the floor and start off the laundry before kicking off school.

Insyaallah,I hope I can keep to this because I feel more balanced having taken care of my kids' food and the house, somewhat, instead of rushing to have school within a particular time. When we start late, we just stretch it to the afternoon now.

Year-end Beginnings

2010-10-31T21:13:00.000-07:00

Before you know it the year- end creeps up on you and it's time to reflect on how the year has been and how you can improve for next year. It is also the time for most of us here to 'evaluate' our children. Of course it is just a minor hassle compared to some other places and the issues that come up with public schooling.

Due to some changes in my various commitments, I have been doing more structured lessons. It is a hole all of us fall back into when time gets the better of us or maybe I'm just a product of the system that no matter how much I believe in alternative education when it comes to the crunch I am not able to put into practice what I believe as much as I should.

Right now we are very much in a holiday mood. Much helped by the extra dough that companies give out here at this time of the year, we've been going out since last Thursday. Sadly, although I must state that I enjoyed myself, those visits have been to the malls which did nothing for the kids.

So, today I took them to Choa Chu Kang Park to enjoy some roughing out time. Although they don't walk through forests like those pictures of Waldorf kids which I always envy, it was much better for me to see them playing in the sand pit and the playground amidst the lush greenery of the park than the concrete surroundings at home.

Besides the lack of nature, I find the children's enjoyment much reduced with the crowds that seem to be everywhere now, what more during school holidays. I feel that this totally reduces the quality of their play. Even at a young age they have to fight for space. While one can find spots like Upper Pierce reservoir or Macritchie reservoir such places are not accessible to heartland families like us who don't own a car.

There you have it, even for play our children don't get a level playing field. I am thankful that being HSed means I can take my kids out on weekdays. Probably why my inner clock wants to go out now. It'll be school holidays soon. I want space ... I need space.

Back to our roots

2010-10-05T19:28:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since my last blog and I miss reflecting on what we did as a homeschooling family. Today I made up a story about a seamstress whose three children helped her and her husband make a dress so beautiful , the princess loved it and ordered nine more for the ten nights of dancing that was coming. They were rewarded with ten bars of gold for each dress which meant that they earned 100 gold bars in all. The mother was reluctant to accept the orders at first but when the children revealed that they were the secret helpers she became confident of carrying out the work. She then decided to keep only fourty of the gold bars and divide the rest among her three children. As their mother was fair, they each got the same number of bars; 20.

Umayr has just learned division and Sofiyya is working on counting to hundred and was just introduced to the decimal system. There was nothing new for Ihsan but he enjoyed identifying parts of the story that I borrowed from classics. The children then drew the lesson into their lesson books.

Day 22

2010-08-31T08:32:00.000-07:00

Circle: The eight asnaf

Watch video on giving zakat on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZX2AQBYq1M

This is a Malay cartoon about two kids who are cared for by their grandmother and sister. It tells about them witnessing people paying zakat and them following their grandmother to pay when she almost forgot to phone.

Refer back to the zakat information sheet provided by MUIS and read the ayat about the ruling on zakat and the eight asnaf.

Look at the cards representing the eight asnaf.

At the back of each card explains what the particular asnaf is

Younger children can match the labels for the pictures and check against labeled cards.

Activities

Writing

High/Medium

The eight asnaf in Arabic
This will be the spelling words at the end of the week

Low

Writing

Zakat

Colouring : Giving zakat

Medium/Low

Zakat activity for lapbook

Geography: Continent Nomenclature

High

Making sentences in ‘My Ramadan Fun Book’ p. 30
Country Research: Saudi Arabia

The Last Ten Days

2010-08-31T06:35:00.000-07:00

We got distracted a bit this week with buying clothes for Eid for everyone. In fact, we have been going out since last week, having been confined to the home for the first two weeks of Ramadan, which was quite the limit. I was also more confident of the boys ability to fast for the day without me taking them out causing them to want to break their fast.

For these last days of Ramadan, we're tying up loose ends and just adding zakat and Eid to the lessons. To teach the kids about zakat, I made use of the letter sent by MUIS which explained the requirement to pay zakat and the eight asnaf who qualify for help.

We also learned who the mufti was, his face happened to be in the information card on zakat that came with the letter, it was a good way for the children to know the different types of leadership that exist for Muslims living in a non-Muslim country. Our moon phases chart is almost complete and we are left with the zakat section on our lapbook.

I will mostly use the Eid Mubarak book from Goodword for learning about Eid and tie it in with our study of Muslim countries based on the material provided by Ad-Duha Freezone that we started with Saudi Arabia the last two weeks. We hope to finish everything by Wednesday latest before we take a week or two break for Eid and spend some time catching up with family especially since the children will meet their only cousins from Brunei whom they have not met for two years.

May the blessings of the last ten nights, especially lailatul Qadr, be with us, as we continue the last ten days of fasting which have lately been hotter and drier than the earlier part,InsyaAllah.

Mid-Ramadan Week Planner

2010-08-22T08:36:00.000-07:00

Insyaallah, this is my plan for this week. I hope I don't get too distracted with the 'cultural' side of the upcoming Eid and will persevere for the coming weeks, insyaallah.

Day 13

Circle
Aim: Seeking the right guidance in life

Talk about the special things that we do during Ramadan; fasting, terawih, read more Quran, learn more about Islam…

Read this verse and its meaning;
Ramadhan is the (month) in which was sent down the Qur'an, as a guide to mankind, also clear (Signs) for guidance and judgment (Between right and wrong). So every one of you who is present (at his home) during that month should spend it in fasting, but if any one is ill, or on a journey, the prescribed period (Should be made up) by days later. Allah intends every facility for you; He does not want to put to difficulties. (He wants you) to complete the prescribed period, and to glorify Him in that He has guided you; and perchance ye shall be grateful.
Ayah 185, Sura 2 (Al-Baqara), translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali[7]

Remind the children of the lesson on the Prophet’s first revelation last week.
(we read from Prophet Muhammad by Iqra Foundation)

Talk about how this month is special as the ayat said that the quran was revealed in this month.

Talk about how Angel Jibrail would come and the Prophet would revise his Quran with him.

Highlight the part of the ayat about the quran being a clear sign for guidance and judgement.
Give situations like a disagreement, taking something or pretending to do something.

• How do we decide if what we do is right or wrong?
• We can ask an adult, teacher,or look up a book. However, best reference is the quran and hadith.
• If we don’t know where to find an answer or dare to ask anyone, we can also make du’a to Allah for guidance.
• We should especially make special effort to train ourselves to stop and think of our actions this month as Allah has chained syaitan and closed the door of jahannam and syaitan would not be able to whisper bad deeds to us. Hopefully, in other months we have trained ourselves well enough to counter him.

Quran

The Night of Power

As we approach the last ten days of Ramadan, this week we will be reading and learning the meaning of surah al-Qadr.
We will be using our Ad-Duha mini-tafseer book for this.

Arabic

Copywriting ‘Al-Layl’, ‘Al-Qadr’, ‘Salaam’, ‘Al-Fajr’, ‘Malaikat’.

Activity

High
Fundamental Needs of Humans
Spiritual needs- Factsheet on the Four Holy Books
Editing- The Wudhu (p7) in My Salat Fun Book

Medium
Months of the year
The long ‘I’ reader- The Kind Knight

Low
Days of the week/Introduction to months of the year
Blends with the Small Movable Alphabets
Reader- My Ramadan Colouring Book
Sight Words- been, when, away

Day 14

Aim: To instill a sense of Muslim identity that crosses political and geographical boundaries.

• Read ‘Food and Mealtimes’ from the book ‘Saudi Arabia’ by Cath Senker.

• Identifying Muslim countries in Western Asia/Middle East on the Asian map.

(You can also review reading directions on the map to locate the different parts of Asia)

• We are using Lesson 26 of the Al-Ummah book from http://www.ad-duha.org/freezone/assets/applets/Al-Ummah.pdf for ideas and the Asian map

Arabic

Spelling ‘Al-Layl’, ‘Al-Qadr’, ‘Salaam’, ‘Al-Fajr’, ‘Malaikat’.

Craft

Making a Western Asia flag banner from the Al-Ummah book.

Activity

High
Converting percentage of Muslim population in Western Asia to decimals
Research- Prompts on the Middle East

Medium
Fraction Insets – equivalence
Labelling world puzzle map

Low
Fraction Puzzles (1/2, 1/3, ¼)
Colouring world puzzle map

Day 15

Circle

Aim: To instill the spirit of exploration with a knowledge that whatever we know is with His blessing only.

Read ‘The Space Race’ from DK Eyewitness’ ‘Moon’.

O assembly of jinns and men! If you have power to pass beyond the zones of the heavens and the earth, then pass (them)! But you will never be able to pass them, except with authority (from Allâh)!

33: 55

Talk about how the Russians and the Americans competed to get to the moon first.

Relate the competition to the verse above.

Would they have made it without Allah’s blessings?

Talk about how we have not been able to go to other planets.

Stress that knowledge itself is not enough, that one can only achieve the best of this life and the hereafter with Allah’s blessings.

We must not be proud of the knowledge that we have because whatever we know is a gift from Allah.

You may want to quote some of these verses with relation to pride from http://www.islamicemirate.com/discover/personal-development/1728-luqmans-advice-to-his-son.html;

7. Arrogance is an attribute of Allâh alone and not for man.
The Creator and Owner of the universe is the only One who deserves to be Arrogant. Allâh threatens arrogant people with punishment in Hellfire. Luqmân said:
"And turn not your face away from men with pride." [31:18]
8. To be moderate is a great attitude anyone can possess,
"Nor walk in insolence through the earth. Verily Allâh likes not each arrogant boaster." [31:18]
Allâh does not like that man is arrogant and proud of themselves.
9. To be moderate in walking and talking is also one of Luqman's advises to his son,
"And be moderate (or show no insolence) in walking." [31:19]
Islâm offers a code of conduct in every aspect of life. Even the way Muslims walk and talk are regulated. Islam offers guidelines in this regard that will produce the best behavior and generate respect.
10. Luqmân reminds his son that being harsh while talking will liken his voice to the braying of a donkey. Shouting does not win hearts, rather , it will offend and alienate people,
"And lower your voice. Verily the harshest of all voices is the voice (braying] of a donkey!!" [31:19]
Luqmân shows great wisdom in his advice to his son.

Arabic

Translation of ‘Al-Layl’, ‘Al-Qadr’, ‘Salaam’, ‘Al-Fajr’, ‘Malaikat’.

Craft

Continued: Making a Western Asia flag banner from the Al-Ummah book.

Baking

Date and Pecan Loaf as found on page 22 of The Sunday Times on the 22nd of August.

200gm dates, pitted and chopped
150ml boiling water
½ tsp baking soda
150gm butter
120gm brown sugar
2 eggs
100gm pecan nuts, chopped
220gm flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 180 deg C. Grease a 23 cm loaf pan.
2. Combine the dates and boiling water in a bowl, stir in the baking soda and set aside.
3. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then beat in the eggs one at a time. Add a little flour if the mixture starts to curdle.
4. To this, add the date and water mixture, and chopped pecans. Stir in the sifted flour and baking powder.
5. Place into the loaf pan and bake for about 50 minutes.
6. Turn the loaf onto a rack to cool. Serve warm, sliced with a little butter.

Day 16

Circle

Read Young Muslims Worship Allah in ‘I am Muslim’ by Susan Douglass.

Craft

Iftar at the masjid accordion book.
I was inspired by ummabdulbasir’s but I think my boys’ are too old for the illustrations so we’re are just making one that is dome shaped or looks like an arched doorway. Inside we will write/draw about:

i. parts of the masjid
ii. People in the masjid
iii. Things you do at the masjid
iv. dua when entering and leaving the masjid
v. Ramadan at the masjid
vi. Why I love the masjid

which should fit the six (back and front) colums of the book.
I will just do the printout available from the sister’s site for my five year old gal.

Activity

‘The Book of Allah’ and ‘The Quran’ in The Holy Prophet Workbook.

High
Prefix/Suffixes revision exercise
Revision- The Animal Kingdom Hierarchy

Medium
Parts of Speech- an introduction
Revision- Types of Vertebrates

Low
Arabic alphabet puzzles.
Revision-Animals and their young nomenclature

High/ Medium

Revise memorization of surah al-Qadr

Day 17

Circle

Islamic Trivia game using the Knowledge Quest Board as found on http://rplanfamily.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/game-knowledge-quest/

Activity

Revelation of the Quran (p22,23) of My Quran Workbook.

High/Medium

Translation of surah al-Qadr- I will read the Arabic and the children will find the cards for the matching meaning.

Baking

Sticky Date Pudding as found on page 22 of The Sunday Times on the 22nd of August.

Ingredients
1 ¾ cups dates, pitted and chopped
1 ¼ cups water
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
60g butter, softened
2/3 cup raw or caster sugar
2 eggs
1 cup sifted self-raising flour
Thick cream or ice-cream to serve

Sauce
¾ cup brown sugar
100g butter, chopped
¾ cup thickened cream

Method
1. Preheat oven to 170 dec C. Grease and line a 20cm-deep cake pan.
2. Place dates and water in a saucepan and bring to boil. Remove from heat and stir in the baking soda. Let stand for five minutes.
3. Beat butter and sugar together until creamy, then beat in the eggs one at a time. Stir in sifted flour, then the date mixture. Pour into the prepared pan.
4. Bake for 50 minutes to one hour, or until cooked. Let stand for 10 minutes, then upturn onto a serving plate.
5. To make the sauce, place all the ingredients in a saucepan. Heat, stirring continuously until boiling. Reduce heat and let simmer for five minutes.
6. Prick the pudding all over with a fine skewer. Spoon half a cup of sauce over the pudding and allow it to sink in.
7. Serve with some of the remaining sauce and ice cream, or a dollop of cream.

Day 10

2010-08-19T08:39:00.000-07:00

We take stock of the first ten days and review what we have covered.

Islam
Verses and Hadith on fasting

Astronomy
The Moon Phases
The Eight Planets

History
Gregorian and Islamic calendar
Suhoor and Iftar

Science
The digestive system
The food pyramid

Akhlaq
Dos and don’ts of Ramadan
Good Deeds

The first ten days in perspective

Day 9

2010-08-18T09:05:00.000-07:00

Read ‘My Country’ from ‘Saudi Arabia’ by Cath Senker.
Review the names of the continents with the children.
Zoom into the middle-east and Saudi Arabia. Point out the location of Mecca and Madina.

Group Activity
Make a map of the neighbourhood near your masjid.

Activity

High
Child continues with research on the Gregorian and Muslim calendar.
Review Hadith learned last week.

Medium/Low
Child continues with mini-kindness book for Ramadan Lapbook.
We go through ‘Eight Great Planes’ book/song again.
Child makes a mobile from
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=35012 .
This one has nine planets though, you have to decide whether to throw Pluto out.

Cooking
Honey Cornflakes as found in http://www.bestrecipes.com.au/recipe/Honey-Cornflake-Cups-L802.html

Day 8

2010-08-17T01:16:00.000-07:00

The Hijri Calendar

• Print two copies of the calendar at http://sukukbay.com/index_files/islamic_calendar_2010.htm.
• This is a Gregorian calendar with the Islamic dates in red and the civil dates in blue.
• With one piece cut them up according to the months.
• Mix the pieces up and arrange them, referring to the main copy on and off.
• Check that you have arranged the months in order.
• Mix the pieces up again and invite child to do it.
• Child carries out the work and is only corrected at the end of it.
• Point out that the months that they have worked with based on the information in blue is based on the Gregorian calendar (refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar for an explanation of what is the Gregorian calendar).
• Muslims use the Islamic calendar, in red. Point out that the Gregorian and Islamic calendar are not the same using some examples off the calendar.
• Read off the Islamic months from the calendar.

Activity
Make a Hijri calendar as seen in http://ummabdulbasir.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/ramadan-lapbook/

High
Make a comparison between the Hijri and Gregorian calendar.
Child may refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_calendar

Medium/Low
After making the Hijri calendar, watch ‘Bulan-bulan Islam’ by Alarme on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z5LwjXF7U0 . Use this together with the Hijri calendar work to learn the months in Islam.
This is in Malay, if you want something in English you can use ‘Months in Islam’ by Zain and Rashid Bikha on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBQHEC6-hfY.
The nasyid in Malay also highlights important historical/religious events for every month. This can be used as an extension to the Hijri Calendar work.

I know I break down the work to High/Medium/ Low ability but this is just to provide a variety of work that can be done to different ablity levels as most of us would be homeschooling different age levels and we would usually be covering the same theme for everyone. In no way is this to confine the children to certain expectations. My eldest usually enjoys joining his siblings and the younger ones sometimes get interested in what their brother does too. One enjoys being a little kid the other two sees what they can do in future.

Day 7

2010-08-16T14:38:00.000-07:00

Dos and don’ts of Ramadan

Aim: That fasting is a school of discipline that trains us to be better Muslims.

O ye who believe! Fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you, that ye may (learn) self-restraint, – [Quran 2:183]

Narrated Abu Huraira(r.a): The Prophet said:"... whoever fasts during Ramadan out of sincere faith and hoping to attain Allah's rewards, then all his past sins will be forgiven." (Sahih Al-Bukhari).

• Print out the Ramadan Highway Code from http://www.yanabi.com/forum/Topic338444.aspx
• Look through the poster and highlight that things in red are what we shouldn’t do and things in blue are what we should do
• Discuss the things that we should do.

Zikr
So increase during this month of four qualities: two with which you shall please your Lord, and two which you cannot do without. The two that shall please Allah are the repitition of La Illaha Ill Allah and Istighfaar (asking forgiveness), and the two qualities you cannot do without are asking Allah to be allowed into Paradise and taking refuge in Him from Hell" [Taken from the Prophet (salallahu alayhi wasallam's) khutbah on the last day of Sha'baan]

Zakat
Who is he that will loan to Allah a beautiful loan, which Allah will double unto his credit and multiply many times? It is Allah that giveth (you) Want or plenty, and to Him shall be your return. - [Quran 2:245]

Giving
The Prophet said: He who gives food for a fasting person to break his fast, he will receive the same reward as him, except that nothing will be reduced from the fasting persons reward." [Ahmad, at-Tirmidhee, Ibn Maajah, Ibn Hibbaan, Saheeh].

• Discuss the things that we shouldn’t do.
Narated By Abu Huraira : The Prophet said, "Whoever does not give up forged speech and evil actions, Allah is not in need of his leaving his food and drink ( i.e. Allah will not accept his fasting.)" – [Sahih Bukhari, Vol.3, Book 31, #127]
• Read the verses and hadith to support what the poster dis/encourages.

Group Activity
Aim: Communicating through pictures and words
Ask the children to make a poster for their own room.

Material
• Drawing block
• Colour pencils
• Paint
• Pencils
Baking
We’ll be baking chocolate chip cookies again today insyaallah. Always, I try to do it nearer iftar because the children get so distracted by the smells and touch.

Day 6

2010-08-15T13:48:00.000-07:00

Day 6
The Blessings of Suhoor
Reading Time
‘Why you eat’ in The Kingfisher First Human Body Encyclopaedia, p70-71
Highlight that we need food and drink to
- replace lost fluids
- energy to do physical activities
- grow
- repair
- movement

Circle
Anas related that Rasulullah said: Take the Suhoor meal, for there is blessing in it (Bukhari, Muslim).
Aim: To encourage the children to eat suhoor.
Discuss how they find waking up for suhoor so far.
Why do they think they have to wake up so early?
Suhoor is so early and a time when it is difficult to eat for some.

Activity
morning
High
‘How astronauts use math’ by Mary Hense
Read and solve the problems given

Memorisation of Hadith from last week

Medium
Continuation of work on the lapbook: kind acts
Reader: The Kind Knight from readinga-z.com
Highlighting words in the reader with the long ‘I’ sound.
Learn the values of empathy, bravery and kindness
Planets colouring sheet from http://www.coloringcastle.com/pdfs/space/solarsystem01.pdf
Memorisation of Hadith from last week

Low
Continuation of work on the lapbook: kind acts
Reader: A Ramadan Colouring Book from Salafi Sisters
Planets colouring sheet from http://www.coloringcastle.com/pdfs/space/solarsystem01.pdf

Afternoon
Aim: To visualize what happens when food is digested.
Materials
- cut fruit
- cream
- milk
- ice
As you put the ingredients into the blender, tell children that these are like the foods they eat and drink
Blend
The blended ingredients represent the food after digestion
Serve milkshakes for iftar.

Day 3

2010-08-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

Day 3
Circle
• Show the children the Moon wallchart from DK Eyewitness’ MOON. Discuss what they have learnt from Bill Nye’s video ‘The Moon’ which include:
Moon Origin
Eclipse of the moon
Phases of the moon

Read birth of the moon from the same book on p18-19.
• Share the following verses with them:
"Don't the Unbelievers see that the universe was once joined together, then We burst it apart. We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe." (21:30)

• Connect this to the birth of the solar system p18.

"To Him is due the primal origin of the heavens and the earth; when He decrees a matter He said to it: "Be"; and it is." (2:117)

• Highlight how Allah is the creator and that whatever He wills is easy for Him. This can be connected to the creation and destruction of the solar system and life on earth and the hereafter.

Group
• Make a moon phases chart using a black vanguard sheet, white chalk and referring to daily moon phase from TheMoon iphone app.

Activity

High

Research: The Planet Quiz as in p83 of Out-of-this-world Astronomy by Joe Rhatigan and Rain Newcomb.
Math: Use ratio to order the distance between planets and the sun.

Medium / Low

‘Eight Great Planets’ song from the book with the same name by Laura Purdie Salas. The audio file can also be found at www.capstonekids.com/sciencesongs
Solar System chart is used as a reference as the song is sung.
Ordinal sequence: Print out pictures of each planet and ask child to order them as sang in the song

2010-08-11T04:13:00.000-07:00

DAY 2

"The month of Ramadan in which was revealed the Quran, a guidance for mankind and clear proofs for the guidance and the criterion (between right and wrong). So whoever of you sights (the crescent on the first night of) the month (of Ramadan), he must fast that month, and whoever is ill or on a journey, the same number (of days which one did not fast must be made up) from other days.

Allah intends for you ease, and He does not want to make things difficult for you. (He wants that you) must complete the same number (of days), and that you must magnify Allah for having guided you so that you may be grateful to Him" (2: 185).

Circle
Discuss with the children these questions.
Where was the month of Ramadan revealed?
What did the ayat say we can find in the Quran?
When do we start fasting?
Who are the people excused from fasting?

Group Work
Material
• Cards with names of the Quran- Huda (guidance)/Furqan (Distinction)/Dhikr(Reminder)/Bayan (Declaration) printed on one half and their meanings on another.
Method
• Tell the children that the Quran has many names and today we are going to learn four more of them.
• Arrange the cards in a column.
• Ask child to read the Arabic and then the English translation of the names
• Say the Arabic/English names and ask the child to point to the card.
• Cut out the English translation.
• Match the cards.
• Ask the child to try to match the cards himself.
• You can also start a discussion on why the Quran has many names. Why does Allah have many names?

Reference: http://www.irfi.org/articles/articles_551_600/names_of_the_qur.htm

Activity

High
Write an acrostic poem using the word RAMADAN

Medium/Low
Dates Bowl as in
http://ummabdulbasir.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/dates-pocket.pdf
for the Ramadan Lapbook. The medium level child can also be asked to read the translation of the hadiths for the Date Bowl.

Cooking
Chocolate Chip Cookies. I’m not expecting too much of myself and am using a Betty Crocker mix but my favourite recipe website http://allrecipes.com has all kinds of recipes and is not too complicated for a simple cook like me.

Day 1

2010-08-10T15:21:00.000-07:00

This is, insyaallah, what we plan to do today.May Allah bless all the sisters whose works I refer to below and will use in future. They have been a great support and inspiration. Ramadan Mubarak!

DAY 1

1. Ramadan

a. The blessed month of Ramadan
The Messenger of Allah, salla Allahu alaihi wa sallam said : "When it is the first night of Ramadahn the evil devils are chained. The gates of Fire are locked- not a single gate is opnened, and the gates of Paradise are opened- not a single gate is locked, and a caller calls out :'O seeker of good come forward, and O seeker of evil withhold, and there are many whom Allah frees from the Fire - and that is every night. [at-Tirmithi, Ibn Majah, and Ibn Khuzaimah : Hasan]

Abu Sa`eed al-Khudri relates that the Messenger of Allah salla Allahu alaihi wa sallam said : "Fasting is a shield with which a servant protects himself from the Fire" [Ahmad, Sahih]

Circle
Aim: Working towards Jannah through Fasting

Revise the meanings of Al-Fatihah.
Discuss what the Day of Judgement is.
What do the children think Jannah/Jahannam is like?
Ask the children where they want to go and what do they need to do to get there?
Read the two hadith above.
Talk about how their father/mother have to work to get money to pay for their needs.
Talk about how some things are more expensive than others and how we have to work harder to get them.
What could be the best give we can get from Allah and how do we get it ? (Talk about it being Jannah)

Activity

High

Recite the longer hadith to the child who will reord it in his Ramadan Journal (link given below). This journal will be with him throughout the month and remind him to work on it daily.
He will memorise this for the first week

Medium/Low

Make a Ramadan Lapbook cover as seen in http://ummabdulbasir.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/ramadan-lapbook-1430/

Medium
Write the shorter hadith in his Ramadan Journal. Child will copy it.
He will memorise this hadith for the first two weeks.

Low

Ask child to draw a good act.
Ask her to explain how it is good and how it pleases Allah.

Ramadan Journal:
http://yemenlinks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Ramadan-Journal.pdf

Art
Make a Ramadan Banner
Materials
• Cut out the letters for Ramadan Mubarak (In Arabic/English)
• A5 size cards with the same letters written in pencil
• Hole puncher
• String
• Scotchtape
• A large card with Ramadan Mubarak written on it.
Method
• Ask children to match letters to cards and paste them onto the cards.
• Using the card with the words Ramadan Mubarak on it as a reference ask children to arrange their own cards to form the two words.
• Allow children to punch two holes on top of the card.
• Children work together to string the cards in order.
• Hang in up in your school room!

Cooking
Make a dessert with your child to reward them for their first day of fasting. I have bought some Betty Crocker's chocolate chip mix, three boxes of Dadih and bread mix. Insyaallah, this will be a motivation to move on to totally making the full score in future.

The children can also be part of the cooking for iftar. I also like to include them in preparing the table and cleaning up after a meal.

Easing into Ramadan

2010-08-04T06:44:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it'll be Ramadan next week. When we went to the Science Centre today, I realized that it has been a year since we went there with a fellow homeschooler who had just returned from Japan during Ramadan. I wanted to find a proper telescope but realized that the cheapest one cost $150. That was twice the amount I was willing to part with after surveying those available online. I didn't want to buy a cheaper alternative as I did so before and we barely saw anything. Although being the amateur that I am, I am considering the possibility of how highly illuminated we are here and the probable fact that I don't know how to navigate myself around the telescope. Then there is also the issue of missing parts that has become part and parcel of my life now.

I have been intellectually and physically challenged on the preparation part for homeschooling although I'd like to think that we have been pairing unschooling with classical education. The children have been working on their on their texts and workbooks and we have been in and out of different topics of interests. A few years back, this would have put me in a state of disequilibrium as I struggled to keep to the teachings and methods of particular schools of thought.

In between, I have managed to squeeze in some reading, one of which is a refresher on homeschooling: 'The Homeschooling Option' by Lisa Rivero. I have not read far but was particularly amused by the two great myths of homeschooling, the socialization and genius myths. We are all too familiar with the socialization myth and the guilt society puts on our shoulder for depriving our children of peers of the same age contained in the same building for most of the day.

The writer highlighted the fact that in the need to prove how effective homeschooling is a lot of media attention had been given to home educated students who were advanced beyond their years that resulted in the misconception that home schooled children must either be geniuses or behind their peers who go to school. Being average was simply not good enough. I confess I used to feel the pressure that my children are on top of their work, that they can answer their grandparents' questions, quizzes from friends ( and I have many teacher friends) and that they can carry themselves well or even better among people. I still do sometimes.

My second son changed my perspective, he followed his own rules and expressed himself in his own individual ways while I was trying hard to figure out how all the methods didn't give the results they were supposed to when I realised that I was imposing fixed standards and timelines to measure his performance. I loosened up and alhamdulillah, he's thriving now. I'm no new age mummy, maybe a bit, but who needs labels?

Flower Story

2010-07-29T05:00:00.000-07:00

It all started with a gust of wind that made me float through the air and land on a feathery being that caused me to go even higher (brush paper with water sparingly). I travelled across green fields (paint part of lower area area green), oceans (paint area below the green blue)
and pale blue skies (paint area above green a lighter shade of blue). Sometimes the sun would shine through the clouds (paint rays of yellow emanating from a source) that I felt I would shrivel up into the thin air. Before long I found myself on soft, familiar ground.( paint a darker shade of green in the previous green). The dampness and the warmth made me want to stretch for joy towards them (using a finer brush paint the roots and the shoot). I soon found myself looking up to the blue sky each day and I wanted to give back to the beauty that had given me such happiness, that my arms broke out in colours (as you speak make the plant taller, add some branches for arms, leaves and add flowers to some of them). In the day, my friends would come buzzing and rest on my blossoming arms. For their company, I gave them a sweet fluid and in turn they spread my future family through the lands. ( touch up on the painting) How beautiful life is when we give as much or more than we receive.

This lesson is a culmination of what we have covered for the past few months. I chose to not name the actors in the story so that I can let the kids guess what they are and at the same I would be able to gauge their level of understanding. You can also incorporate the colour wheel, botany, giving and bird migration but the main point is for the kids to have fun. They can also see that writing words are not the only way to express their understanding.

Pipe Cleaners

2010-07-25T16:33:00.000-07:00

Last week we discovered pipe cleaners at our favourite Daiso store at IMM. Now I can no longer use that as an excuse to go to Harbourfront. Thanks to a fellow homeschooler, my kids got interested in making crafts with it. I even used it to teach my daughter 'tens'. I bought some beads with rings on top of them and we beaded them onto the pipe cleaners to make bangles of ten.

My kids of course had more creative ways of playing with them. Ihsan started the ball rolling when he made a stick man with a guitar, so Umayr had to make one too. He made one with long hair for his sister holding a mirror. She later brought the 'dolls' (we made another one) to play with when we went out for lunch.

I finally managed to set aside an art shelf. My plan is to put simple craft and paint the kids can use anytime, especially during Ramadan. At present, I've got pipe cleaners, paint and brushes, embossers and namecard sized blank cards, blank papers and colour pencils. I'm thinking of putting dough and Ramadan craft sets like that for lamps and moonscapes.

I'm trying to rejuvenate my science shelf too. For now we have a 'light' tray filled with a kaleidoscope , prism and magnifying glass. Coincidentally, I found my moon phases cards, it's fated, behind the art shelf when I moved it to the living room. Another idea I'm playing with is a food preparation shelf where I can put things the kids, and I,can use to help me with cooking and baking.

Ok, time to get back to my revamp.

Preparing For Ramadan

2010-07-19T18:02:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how fast time flies, I still recall the first year of training the boys to fast where as early as ten o'clock in the morning they would be whining from hunger. Back then, they only fasted half of the day and I can only find solace in the hope that this was just early growing pains. Alhamdulillah, it got better each year and experiences like these always remind me that there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. Ok, there IS a light.

I tend to gravitate to astronomy, history,food and biology apart from trying to do more of the Quran and Hadith during Ramadan. Planning for more cooking, crafts and handywork is also a good way to keep the children occupied. Busy hands really produce busy minds. Thanks to a fellow homeschooler, I will be using the Islamic Social Studies and the My Fun Workbook series by Goodword as the core of my lessons from now till September.

For Arabic, inspired by a discussion on the arabiclearningmaterials discussion group, insyaallah, I hope to go through the meanings of al-Fatihah and the three Kuls. I am one of those parents who I have to admit find joy in having my children memorize more and more surahs without knowing their meanings. The translations of the juz amma from Ad-Duha which have been sitting in their dusty box will also come in handy should we get the chance to look at other surahs. I pray Allah will grant me the istiqamah to continue after Ramadan of course.

Homeschoolers Outing

2010-07-15T04:41:00.001-07:00

Today was outing day for our small group of Muslim homeschoolers here at Choa Chu Kang Park. Being the anxious homeschooler that I am, sometimes I think I have anxiety disorder, I squeezed in some school time before our meeting. Continuing our botany lessons, we read on pollination and animal helpers of plants from the book 'Flowers and Seeds' by Brannigan & Dunne. We got to the park an hour earlier to do some nature drawing.

My initial plan was for them to observe some flowering and non-flowering plants but the only flowering plants we could find was the ginger and ixora plants. The kids ended up drawing the tree of their favourite fruit, the durian.

I found an interesting website on animal sounds at http://www.abc.net.au/children/bananas/games/animal_sounds/default2.htm. We are learning about the ear, sound and farming with relation to planting which of course is related to farm animals which is related to animals; you get the drift.

I first got the children to match the sound to the animals and later let them match the sounds themselves. I was supposed to remake my sound bottles for their montessori work but alas has been unable to find the bottles and am now behind my planned lessons. Through the years however, I have learned to not let not getting things done to plan stop me from teaching a lesson though. There is never a best time for everything and sometimes you just have to work with what you have.

Yesterday, I also found an Arabic writing book for Sofiyya at http://www.yemenlinks.com/Arabic_Download.htm#Writing Practice Forms. I used the Goodword books with her brothers, but this seems good enough and I intend to continue with the Ad-Duha book Umayr is using now when she is more advanced.

Our farm animals rolls.

My latest method of trying to remember my lesson plan for the day, pasting my handwritten plan on my bookshelf.

Flowers

2010-07-13T01:21:00.000-07:00

Nothing brightens up a room than a bunch of flowers, especially when you're surrounded by grey, cold bricks wherever you go. I got myself my favourite pink lilies two weeks ago, they turned out to be different from the ones I usually bought, they had hair-like spots at the center and did not give out as strong a scent.

I of course conveniently used this for my lessons on flowers, which followed my lessons on leaves and was connected to my previous lessons on birds and bees. Did I just put birds and bees in one line?

It would have been wonderful to have been able to go to the Botanic Gardens, however apart from still feeling weak,from all that lazing around when I was down with the flu,the weather was unforgiving.

In my dreams, we would walk through fields of lavender,blow daffodils and eat sunflower seeds. Alas, I think I can only do the last part. So I did the next best thing; use my house decoration to learn about flowers.

We looked at and talked about the great work that the different parts of the lily does; the male and female reproduction system, the corolla, the petals, the sepal. I had help from Comstock's 'Handbook of Nature Study' and of course the internet.

For art, I drew the lily on the blackboard while the children did theirs in their lesson book. We then labelled the different parts of the flower. Everyday, the children would make comments on how the flowers, which I put on the dining table, have changed and were happy when it died because I told them that it meant that now its time for the seeds to do their magic.

Unfortunately, of course our pollens will not be able to carry out their work at our home. I am now busy searching for seeds; I don't even know what broad beans are but that just means I'm gonna learn something new. Seeds are the natural progression to what we have been doing.

I am toying with the idea of studying Spain for Geography, to play on my boys current craziness with the World Cup, and branch out to the study of Europe. Spain of course also holds some of the most beautiful Islamic architecture and was home to a great civilisation. How appropriate to tie in with our greatest month of the year.

Umayr at the 'Living Art Exhibition at Downtown East'

Old Mother Hubbard

2010-06-23T04:45:00.000-07:00

I think it's always nice to have new or more company when you're doing something very much on your own and against the acceptable norm. Of course I'm talking about homeschooling, although on some days it feels like that when you're only trying to carry out your responsibilities as a Muslim.

We had a nice gathering yesterday, even though there was only three of us but I think the children, and the mums, had a ball. We had conversation, lots of dessert and teh tarik; what more can you ask for on a lazy, cool, afternoon at home with ten kids in a flat in Singapore?

I always believe that it's a sign from Allah that you're doing something right when he sends fellow believers to join you in what you are trying to do, even for a short moment, it is a boost to what could have been a faltering fight or a descend into a mechanical routine.

It was heartening to listen from a fellow mother about the activism of our fellow homeschooling sisters in UK: of them coming together, raising funds and even getting a place to carry out their good work Mashaallah. Insyaallah one day we'll be more pro-active.

Today we read, 'Kancil Mencuri Ketimun', actually a Bahasa Indonesia book, which nevertheless my kids were interested in. However, I realise this might be confusing for my children for BI can be very different not only in the spelling but also the usage of words.

After outdoors, we attempted to do an experiment on yeast. After mixing it with warm water and putting sugar into it, there was supposed to be a 'volcano' like reaction, well at least that's what I thought will happen, but we only managed to see a fizzle of tiny bubbles on one side of the jar. If anybody knows why please enlighten us. We did increase the amount of yeast and sugar but it didn't work.

Umayr got a laugh, all the kids did actually, for narration today because he got 'Old Mother Hubbard'. I laughed myself. Now that is what you call good old fun. He then worked on a lesson on 'Insects' with his brother. 'Insects' have now become a 'cash cow' and we need a new product for our lessons.

An attempt with 'Alice in Wonderland' didn't work out and I am now looking out for what the kids are interested in strongly as a group.It is gravitating towards 'Electricity' but the signs are not clear yet...

2010-06-02T21:29:00.000-07:00

Last week, the children watched 'The Bee Movie' which Umayr borrowed from the library which of course inspired me to use it as our next theme.In one week, we've learned that worker bees are females, unlike what was potrayed in the movie, and the only males are drones whose only work is to mate! We've also learned how honey is made and made use of it to bake and not forgetting the hexagon, that great figure of six which can withstand many times its weight. And of course, there is a chapter in the Quran dedicated to the bees (An-Nahl).

To incorporate the study of the bee nomenclature I used a story from mainlesson.com from the Gatty Parables which told of a bee who rebelled upon learning that all bees are divided into their different classes from the food they are fed when young and the cells they live in. Her rebellion in turn caused the death of the queen who was killed by the younger queen bee who came out of her unprotected cell as the bees were on 'strike'. Make you think of class division, fate, duty...etc, etc...

I was lucky that 'The Best of Queensland' exhibition going on at Vivocity till this Sunday included a bee show. My apologies to the bees, but the experience really helped the children to relate what they have learned since I do not know or think we have any bee farms in Singapore.

'The Life Cycle of a Honeybee' by Bobbie Kalman helped us a lot in our learning journey (I can't help but use that term: ) with all due respect to our teachers in public schools)

Here's a picture review of what we have done so far.

Sofiyya colouring her solat workbook after school.

Using glitter glue to draw hives and bees while Ihsan worked on copywriting Stevenson's 'My Kingdom'.

Sofiyya eating leftovers while her brothers prepared another portion.

Filling the cups.

href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1jkvR0uFKhM/TAc08at5JnI/AAAAAAAAAbE/YU2Z8B1i3XU/s1600/bee_cookie_2.JPG">

Making Honey Strawberry Cornflake Cookies.

I wonder why there weren't any aborigine performers?

You can't used these combs on your head.

Beside the honey churner.

Check out the swarms of bees.

This box can fit 30 to 50 thousand bees.MasyaAllah!

Ihsan drawing his hexagonal tesselation with exact angles.

Sofiyya with her's done by tracing my outlines.

Umayr's rainbow hive.

So why don't we just add more and more acetic acid and sodium bicarbonate?

I'm telling you; it's gas.

2010-05-25T08:03:00.000-07:00

Haven't been able to blog much lately. I've been getting the 'going out' itch i.e. I've been going out quite a lot these days. I enjoyed today's class, homeschool mums need to enjoy homeschool too to continue inspiring themselves. We did an experiment on molecules; took two bottles of carbonated water, opened one and put a balloon on it, shook it a little and put it in a bowl of warm water. Voila! the kids learn about how air molecules take up space, are different from water molecules and how heat help to speed up their movement.

Inspired by a newspaper article on how parents today are willing to fork out money to send their kids to classes which teach table manners, I read a book on it for storytime which I found in the library yesterday. From the book, we did a drawing of how silverware is arranged during a meal and I got them laminated for the children to use as placemats during their meals. A wonderful idea I got from other Montessori mums.

We then proceeded with my presentations; division of a fraction by a whole number for Ihsan, dynamic subtraction with golden beads for Umayr and the tens board for Sofiyya. I used the fraction pieces to explain the lesson to Ihsan. It's like dynamic processes in that you change them for smaller denominations before you can distribute to each skittle that represents the divisor.

What was hard to grapple was the symbolic part of it. Ihsan couldn't understand why we multiply the inverse of the divisor. I tried to make it more concrete to him by relating it to how the denominator increase by the amount of the divisor as seen with the materials.

I must admit that the process of carrying down the denominator of the fraction when the divisor is placed below to show the process of division make me myself question my mechanical understanding of this. I'm not looking forward to dividing a fraction with a fraction at the moment.

Umayr wasn't as defiant on doing his processes today but I took some time with Ihsan that by the time I reached Sofiyya she was already out of her flow and making silly antics like looking through her messed up hair when I presented to her. She's lucky that I think her the most adorable thing in the world.

Of Sparrows and Sheeps

2010-05-19T21:43:00.001-07:00

We started off today's lessons with a book about sparrows as an extension from the activities we had with the US states and the Salar de Uyuni. It's strange how you can find birds in a lot of themes. I read the book 'Sparrows' by Haans Post and Keiss Heij which incorporated the life cycle of the birds and the seasons into the story,among other things. I mean, you can draw a lot of topics from one story book: )

For memorisation for the coming fortnight, I read 'The English Sparrow' by Mary Isabelle Forsyth for Ihsan from Comstock's Book of Nature Study. He then copied the poem into his lesson book, yes I've returned to Waldorf again, but didn't want to decorate his work as encouraged to and was satisfied with just the bare words. I didn't push and thought that future lessons could inspire him as we go deeper into the subject.

I retold the story of Princess Cranky Pants to Sofiyya with the paper puppets. Today we touched on rhyming words that can be found in the story of the things that the princess requested.

For Umayr, we did double letter words and distinguished between what happens to the letter when it is a consonant and a vowel. I drew the words into pictures like WordWorld, although I feel this is a tradition that has always existed in Waldorf where we incorporate letters into the pictures we draw during storytelling for the younger children. I then let Umayr choose three words he'd like to draw/write into his language arts exercise book.

Yesterday, we played a game of arranging things in the universe from the Milky way to atoms and so on using cards which displayed the pictures of the items and had numbers to show which one is bigger. As the numbers ranged from positive to negative numbers, I had to explain to the younger children that it's just like when we owe money to others that we actually have less than zero dollars. Hmmm...not really sure they got the concept but they looked out for the negative and positive signs in front of the numbers and really enjoyed it. I mean, why arrange pictures of buildings and pebbles when you can arrange the universe and cells?

For Ihsan, I printed out the periodic table and explained how it is read. The piece was laminated and accompanied by a blank laminated table which he can fill in himself for fun and at the same time learn the tables.

We had been visiting museums since last Friday and brought home a bundle of stuff and activity books. So, on Tuesday, we put together the crafts we did at the museum and stuff like tickets and pamphlets onto our lapbooks. That took half the morning and we didn't even get to the activity books. We also did a diorama of "The Enchanted Forest", one of the exhibits at SAM at 8Q that we visited.

I happened to have 'Maisy at the Museum' at home which Sofiyya borrowed and happened to ask me to read that day. Could this be the next theme? Hmm... I wonder. There are a lot of activities to look forward to at the museums in June and the Circle Line which we explored last Friday has opened new possibilities for travel.

As a swingin single I was a museum lover and spent a lot of time alone in contemplation in the different museums; although I have to admit some exhibits can leave too much in the imagination of the freaky sort, something I am very sensitive to when I take the kids to the museum as children may not be able to come to terms with such items which may internally destabilise them.

Spring Cleaning

2010-05-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

We didn't have school today. After storytelling, the kids had breakfast and started playing shop soon after and they seemed so into it, that I didn't want to pull them out of the moment. Sofiyya was at her clinic, Ihsan was selling toys and Umayr was the grocer.

I started clearing the study, which I intended to turn into the schoolroom. The study was smaller than the other rooms but it fitted most of my materials nicely, although just my kids and I can fit in there during lessons. Previously, the study had also been my brother's temporary room till my parents' got their new place, Sofiyya's room, the solat room and the dumping room. I do not know how long it'll be the schoolroom. I find that the children are not interested in looking at the materials that they see every day anymore and wanted to give it a new life by putting it together in a nice cosy room.

After Zuhr, we went to IMM where we got some tiny cacti for tomorrow's lesson. Umayr bought a Boston Fern, I don't really know what kind of plant it is but he was using money he got from his brother who in a moment of gratitude had given it to him and was enjoying having purchasing power of his own. If children themselves love having this power, is it then a nature of Man or are they merely trying to emulate adults?

Going home, I put the plants at the boot of the taxi to which Umayr questioned why since a moving taxi might overturn his plant and splatter the soil all over. Fortunately it didn't happen, and I will insyaAllah think twice when I put things in the boot next time.

Aymara

2010-05-10T03:23:00.000-07:00

Today we did the Aymara flag, which I thought is so beautiful and almost like one of those colour codes newspapers use. I initially just wanted to explore the flag and let the children weave the strips of coloured paper I bought from the $2 shop, but then I realised that it was not that complicated and I used the opportunity to teach the younger children fractions as I fold and cut the strips into halves, quarters and eights.

As the same colour goes diagonally across the flag it was also a chance to teach what is diagonal to them. Sofiyya had a bit of difficulty with this and needed a lot of guidance on where to put the pieces of paper. As a guide, I put the colours of each diagonal in a column so the children can just continue from there. Ihsan was pretty independent and did everything himself.

Here are their work:

Since they were on flags, I figured it was a good time to review the national anthem. I laid out the flag onto the mat as we sat around it. We watched a video on youtube and thereafter sung the anthem ourselves. The kids were still stumbling over 'bersatu' and 'berseru' but overall it was ok.

We then looked at the different Asian flags cards and played general knowledge, more for Ihsan, and language games, for the younger ones, with them. After school I managed to continue my attempt at making a skirt for Sofiyya, a roughly handsewn one, I don't have a machine,minus the hemming and a dress for her doll. It was a fruitful day except for the brokendown looking house which has been pretty much neglected today as I am a bit lethargic and was only able to do sit-down work.

Spikes and Leaves

2010-05-06T23:01:00.000-07:00

Today I discovered that the spikes on cacti are not a type of leaf alternative like the needles on the fir trees. Instead, the stems do the work the leaves do for other trees and the spikes are there to prevent other animals from getting to the water inside the cacti. This came up when we were discussing what was similar and different about cacti and other plants.

After reading ' Deserts & Dry Lands' under 'The Changing World' series to the children about cacti, I drew on the blackboard and allowed them to put in a cowboy in their drawing if they wanted to. Umayr was the only one who did so, complete with text bubbles about spikes getting stuck to his behind...: )We also labelled the parts of the cacti and I also emphasised on how the plant has adapted to its surroundings.

Before that, I covered 'Fundamental Needs of Humans' with the children by looking at the chart and reading " Start Up Religion: Belonging" by Ruth Nason which looked at different religions of the world like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism and related it to how religion brings people together.

Our salt solution and rock experiment to produce salt crystals did not turn up well so I decided to put it in the oven to dry up. Alhamdulillah, no major chemical reactions occured when I put it in the oven.

We did cacti because this is a vegetation common in the Salar de Uyuni and it also provided a variation to our plant study and enabled the children to study a variety of plants beyond what they observe in their environment.

Salt is part of our chemistry lesson on solutions and of course the Salar is the biggest salt flat in the world. I am going to continue with it next week where we will go deeper into what we have covered so far and go into light (the Salar is so clear, they calibrate satellites there), economics and math (the Salar has 10 billion tonnes of salt)and what should be my daughter's favourite; the pink flamingos and maybe even the pink algaes so we can do domain eukarya.

I am also trying to put together what I plan for lessons in the form of unit study books that yours truly is guilty of buying too many of. This will be given to my children in different levels of difficulty at the last week where we will review what we've learned and I can evaluate the children's understanding from their work in the activity sheets.

By golly, its already May, but hey, we've come a long way from messed up, on the spot planning, although I still do a lot of that you know, it's more interesting being spontaneous as long as you have one foot in the curriculum.

PINK POWER

2010-05-03T21:40:00.000-07:00

This week we started with our new theme of 'Salar de Uyuni' a beautiful place in Bolivia which has been called the largest mirror in the world because of how the water reflects the sky so clearly for stretches of land. We continue with our study on birds as the PINK flamingos breed there and it is double happiness for my daughter because South America is PINK in the Montessori continent map.

My friend, Safeenah sent me some pictures on the Salar which is Spanish for salt flat and I was in awe. After looking at these pictures and more on the web and discussing what we see, we looked at the coloured globe to find South America and the atlas of the world to find the same continent.

I had maps printed out from www.eduplace.com. Sofiyya located South America and coloured it pink, Umayr did the same and labelled the continent while Ihsan labelled all the countries in the South American continent and marked Bolivia with an 'X'.

Sofiyya always says that she will work in South America when she grows up and always get teased by her brothers for wanting to do so because of the economic conditions of the country but she nevertheless tells me that she still wants to go there. The power of PINK....

2010-04-29T07:03:00.000-07:00

When having no choice but to depend on yourself, you sometimes function at a better level than when there's someone there to catch you when you fall. The past two weeks, I have managed to handle housework and errands on top of schoolwork better than ever before, alhamdulillah. Now question is, can I continue to do so....

I think too often when a woman gives up her career, ambitions and financial independence to stay home for the children she sometimes forget how capable she is of doing things herself and that she can even do it better.Ok, enough of my mamble-shmamble and apron burning...

I've been trying to get back to my alternative roots too...storytelling, baking, painting while trying to keep up with the Montessori curriculum. Yesterday, we successfully made our own playdoh. I have tried to make this before but they are always sticky or too hard. This is the recipe from 'More Mudpies to Magnets':

250 ml (1 cup) of flour
85 ml (1/3 cup) water
85 ml (1/3 cup) salt
15 ml (t tbsp) vegetable oil

On one of my funny attempts to get back to nature by going to parks we almost got chased by a wild dog. We live near a farming area which is considered very rural compared to the rest of Singapore. Its funny how different the other side of the highway is. Alhamdulillah, it ran off when I stood firm and shouted at it to stop. Allah was protecting my children and me really. Since then, I've picked up other skills on what to do should this,nauzubillah, happen again.

Anyway, we continued with baking cookies today and managed to catch up with some other homeschoolers. My kids even wanted to work on the dough again today and I relented because I think I'm falling into the local text-workbook downfall not that that is bad but it's one-dimensional which kids are not.

Meeting the other sisters was good. It got me thinking on how the direction our homeschooling will have to evolve into in not so many years to come and future challenges as we move to secondary level which is something I have not consciously thought of.

We also continued with 'Birds' this week; I used Comstock's 'Book of Nature Study' to learn about migratory birds with Ihsan and used the bird nomenclature for art where I used the different parts of the bird to draw one. I've got back to using Montessori curriculum with Ihsan on fractions and we did division of fractions with whole numbers.

I realise his understanding is shaky while doing problem sums with him and this might have been due to the fact that I have casually taught him the theory of doing operations on fractions and not continuing with the Montessori method on this.This is done by using skittles and fraction puzzles of halfs to tenths. I simply divide the fractions puzzles equally between the skittles so that the child can see what happens when a fraction is divided.

Additions and subtractions is fine but multiplication and division of fractions and fractions is strangely a challenge for me because I have learnt to do it by formula and am having problems visualising what really happens as how it is taught in Montessori's elementary method.

The NIghtingale

2010-04-22T04:12:00.000-07:00

For read-a-louds right now, I am reading 'Heidi' for Umayr and 'The Railway Children' for Sofiyya from the Ladybird Classics. The children enjoy listening to stories of the children from a time gone by and I enjoyed reliving the days when I read the original books myself.

After playground time, I told them the story of 'The Nightingale' and drew on the blackboard as I told the story for the children to copy into their school books. We then talked about what makes birds special and I presented on parts of the feather to Ihsan and later the nomenclature for birds with the younger kids.

I chanced upon a site that had colouring pages for the different state birds of the U.S.A and since their father is in San Diego right now, I decided to combine the lesson on birds with geography.

Umayr wanted an eagle, so I had to find a picture of the national symbol instead while Ihsan asked for the state bird, of Minnesota, the Common Loon, as my husband stopped over there before going to San Diego.

Sofiyya took the state bird of California, the Valley Quail, for the state her father is in now. Ihsan then labelled the states on a blank map of the U.S.A as a revision for his Geography lesson.

All in all a fine day and it's nice to skip the usual written work on in a while...

Puff The Magic Dragon II

2010-04-19T17:20:00.000-07:00

My kids have been reading and singing Puff the Magic Dragon more enthusiastically than expected, even Umayr. Yesterday, while the children played at the playground, I copied the illustrations of the dragon and made dragon cutouts. At home, the children wrote their favourite part of the song on one part and why they love Puff on the other. I put them up on a piece of vanguard sheet and bluetacked it onto a wall. The kids would pass it by from their room and read their work. After that, we watched Bill Nye's "Forests" and Ihsan did his work on the Yanomamis, with a lot of whining as he did not want to do the KWL work before reading the book. Umayr practiced his clockwork, skip counting and animals and their young while Sofiyya did her penmanship. In the evening, Ihsan asked for test papers, so I printed one from a local website and gave Umayr a paper that a friend passed to me. Umayr grumbled ( and grunted) at parts he didn't understand but persevered but Ihsan got overwhelmed and had to be persuaded from giving up. I tried to show him that the questions aren't impossible if he'd only calm down and think them through. He's an anxious boy who only wants to do something he can excel in. They of course kept asking me questions and talked despite being told not to. From this experience, I think it's good that the kids get regular exposure. I benefit too from being aware of the vast difference in test and exam papers compared to what they practice in workbooks especially for Math. We started before six for the papers and finished at eight. I was actually excited at being able to solve a P5 ratio problem, some of these questions can baffle me most of the time.

Theater,Thunder & Theory

2010-04-13T08:17:00.000-07:00

The kids forgot outdoors time today. I have become the mind weaver who deludes them from their own desires....

Actually, after storytime we made paper puppets and a cardboard stage. The night before, I cut out the characters from the 'Princess Ruckus' language arts unit I bought from currclick.com. I matted them with blue vanguard sheet and let the children colour them in the morning. Later, I intend to laminate them and place them into Evan-Moor style holders that I can file with the rest of the materials that the children can return to anytime.
When the children finished colouring them, they put up an impromptu show. I realised that Umayr was much the set expert and Ihsan the scriptwriter or rather talker in this case.
We did our 'school' work after that and went to Tanjong Pagar after lunch to collect Umayr's bus pass.I then brought the kids to Vivocity to play but a thunder storm broke out after a ride on the very expensive gokarts and scooters so we went to do asr at Harbourfront and have early dinner instead.

Ihsan summed the day up by saying 'We went to three places today and each time we went to a different place we went to many more'.

Puff the Magic Dragon

2010-04-12T06:29:00.000-07:00

Today we read 'Puff the Magic Dragon'by Peter Yarrow and Lenny Lipton. I don't know why the name was familiar to me when I borrowed it from the library last week. Somehow, I had a feeling that it was a song and managed to find it on youtube.Funny how memories can be buried deep in you. Till now I don't know why I was attracted to the book. I found out that the words in the book are actually the lyrics of the song. We watched the video together and sang along...the folksong is poetic and I think sinks deeper than it sounds; of lost innocence and wander, life and death and disillusionment. I like the musicfactory version but the full length one is the one by Peter, Paul and Mary.

The kids stopped complaining about not going to the playground earlier....

Coming back, I read 'The Twelve Dancing Princesses' by Rachel Isadora, it had African characters (we did Africa last week)for Sofiyya but Umayr joined in. I used the decanomial beads to do skip counting of two to the song of "two Princesses went out to dance, out in a royal ballroom one day, they had such enormous fun so they ask another two princesses to come...four princesses went out to dance...twelve princesses went out to dance..."

I did quarter past the hour 3-part clockwork cards with Umayr today. Before doing so, I read 'What's the Time Little Wolf?' by Ian Whybrow and Tony Ross about a little wolf who had to find dinner with his younger brother who kept asking him the time that other animals thought it was a game and wanted to join in. They of course became dinner.

During dinner yesterday, Ihsan asked me what 'stalactite' and 'stalacmite' were; so Alhamdulillah for the iphone, I managed to google it and show him there and then. Today I found a site about cave formation for him and at the same time he learnt the chemical symbols for the chemicals formed during the reaction in creating a limestone cave.

I managed to finally do a performance review, after going through written work that can be discarded to base my thoughts on. I wanted to do it in December last year.It's a start. I finally have space to put Umayr's papers, next Ihsan and Sofiyya...

Africa

2010-03-29T02:57:00.001-07:00

We are doing a theme (yeah!) on Africa. I don't remember, maybe we've done this before but then again, nothing wrong with that.There's so much to learn from it. The main reason was because Ihsan was doing Ancient Africa for history so I happened to borrow some stuff about it from the library.

After reading the info-book we borrowed which talked about Africa in general, its weather and the desert, we watched Bill Nye's Desert. It was not as interesting as his chemistry and physics dvds but entertaining and informative nevertheless. Ihsan enjoys doing the quiz section.

Sofiyya plucked a bunch of bougainvilleas on our way home from the playground. That inspired me to do some nature study, so I googled for 'local Singapore flowers' on my Iphone and we identified the flower from a bunch of pictures together.

Thereafter, we read some information on wikipedia. Never knew that the plant originated from South America and was named after a French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville. I sketched a picture of the bunch of bougainvilleas on the blackboard and labelled it for the children to do the same.

Ihsan somehow started labelling the parts on his own and on seeing this, I grabbed the chance to put Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study to inspire him but alas he was inspired to only label the rest of the flower parts and not read the whole book...

As a continuation to the theme, I read the section on deserts from The Usborne First Encyclopedia of Our World. It was simple enough for the younger kids but touched on things that I can expand with Ihsan.

For example, from the plants and animals that was mentioned, I talked about the concept of adaptation that was also brought up in the Bill Nye's dvd. Ihsan then copied the definition of adaptation from the wikipedia and identified and described the different adaptations of plants and animals that can be found in the desert.

The younger children refused to do any shelf work today and moved straight to their written work...sigh...I need to give new life to my shelves.

Coming Back from the lull

2010-03-22T16:28:00.000-07:00

I have not been posting lately because I have been too caught up with my other interest. Am now crawling back to blogging about my homeschool...

Yesterday started at a crawl as I caught up with the hours of housework lost after the long weekends. Things only started at 10, when I finally managed to get most of the housework done and read the abridged 'Much Ado About Nothing' to Umayr and 'Clifford; The Big Red Dog' to Sofiyya.

Henceforth, it was off to the usual outdoors. While the boys played with the skate scooter and soccer, Sofiyya insisted on playing with her fairy stickers which Umayr just found after being lost for a long time.

Back home, we started on written work straight away as we were short of time and I confess the unexpected trip during the weekends threw my plans to plan down the drain. Ihsan reviewed his Ancient Africa for history and did work on the Sahara Desert that I got from currclick.com. We looked at the map labelling he did on a prior session on the different countries in Africa to find out how far the Sahara stretched too.

Umayr struggled with is dynamic subtraction but eventually got the hang of it without using the golden beads. Basically, I would have preferred he worked with them still but he seem to think them a hassle.

For Sofiyya, we worked with the plastic insets and since she was into the fairy stickers, I asked her to decorate the shapes she drew with them. We also did sight words; 'are','the' and 'you'.

After Zuhr, I managed to do some memorisation revision with the boys, they plain forgotten most of the surahs as I have left the Quran part to DH for the past few months. However, as his time is limited, he does it before going to work, they don't have time to revise their old surahs...guess I have to do that again.

For Arabic, we did the activities for items around the house together and have moved on to names of clothings. I then read 'Stories from the Quran' which talked about Habil and Qabil- apt for my two sons who are constantly bickering...: )

In the evening, the children got interested in colouring. To stop Umayr from fighting with his sister to colour Aurora from the Princess magazine, I printed out colouring pages for all of them and they worked on them till it was time for bed,which took a while to get to as they were so into tracing the pictures after colouring them.

Cookies n Cream

2010-02-28T22:07:00.000-08:00

We baked chocolate chip cookies today and the kids loved it. I cheated though, I used Betty Crocker's pre-mix flour which just needed butter and egg. Sometimes, I think homeschool mummies need all the short cut they can take though it gets tempting to do it all the time. I admire friends who can do things from scratch but I need a lot of pushing when it comes to cooking.

We went to Asian Civilisations Museum yesterday, and especially enjoyed the jewels from the Mughal empire exhibition. There was a colouring table, stamping and dress up corners for the kids. I of course loved the jewels and I found it most interesting that they used jade too. There were some exhibits in one gallery that I thought kids would find disturbing, so choose your galleries, although you need to get past them to go to certain galleries, this is where parents get to be creative.

Hinhede Nature Park

2010-02-23T05:28:00.000-08:00

Today we had a diversion from our usual routine, something I think the kids and I need. We read 'Lakes and Ponds' by Fran Howard during lesson story time. Ihsan then wrote down his narration in his geography book and I wrote Umayr's for him. I let the children draw their own lake and try to put their own ideas of what lives and grows there. Sofiyya was drawing her 'family' people.

Then, for outdoors, I took the kids to Hinhede Nature Park which is actually the other side of the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. Strangely the kids weren't crazy about the slides that go down the slopes of the hill as they were on our first trip there but were more interested in exploring the trampoline, swings and the flying fox.

At the lake, we got our papers out and made sketches of what we saw. Sofiyya apparently was not in the loop and was drawing her usual 'family' people. Only after looking at what the rest of us were sketching did she realise her error; not that I mind. Two retirees were also with us there; one sketching and one making a huge oil painting. Umayr was mesmerised; more with them than the scenery I think.

He sketched an extra picture with his crayons, as did Sofiyya who was more into joining her brother than anything and two more after lunch which we had at the pavillion nearby.

On our way back, we walked on the hanging bridge. It was not high and very short but having to care for Sofiyya who was walking at 10m per hour and balancing the picnic basket, it was one of the longest journey in my most recent life.

I loved it and I think I can see that the children loved it...an escape from urban life...

Monday, Monday...I wish it was Sunday

2010-02-21T21:47:00.000-08:00

Phew,got through Monday though not without its glitches and tops blown. For Arabic Ihsan did his an-Nawawi 40 hadith copywork which I got to know about from this Arabiclearningmaterials mailing group. Today he looked at the actual book to put the shaqal; I realised that there was a misarrangement towards the end of the first hadith but I need to check whether it was my printer or the actual document that did the mistake.

He of course took an hour to do this, in between fiddling with anything nearby and disturbing his siblings. The younger children did an extension on 'Animals and Their Young' which we started by reading 'Farm Babies' by Jacqueline McQuade last week. Today I got them to read the repetitive lines from the book and match animals and their babies from www.sparklebox.co.uk. The children also drew their favourite animal and its baby into their science notebook.

Earlier in the morning, after our storytime, we read 'If You Were a Capital Letter' by Trisha Speed Shaskan. I got the younger ones to highlight the capital letters in their reader for this month and cut out a newspaper article for Ihsan, which was about his favourite topic-FOOD!

Sofiyya got it right the first few pages but started highlighting without a pattern that I can discern thereafter and Umayr was highlighting every first letter of all the words! Ok, I think we need another lesson. Ihsan was ok, he should be, but he had to explain to me the reasons why the letters were capitalised and use the book if need be. Actually, he still writes capital for no particular reason sometimes in his work and it just frustrates me sometimes.

Yesterday, we went to Vivocity after a wedding; we were all dressed up and can't possibly just go back (which I should have considering the housework and homeschooling and everything else piling up at home)The boys bought remote control cars (we'll see how long this one will last) with the money their grandparents gave and Sofiyya got a new tiara to replace her nth spoiled/lost one.

We had a nice surprise when a group of drummers dressed like toy soldiers played at the children's play area and made silly antics as they performed. The kids truly enjoyed it,plus they got to play the water afterwards; except Umayr who didn't want to get his nice clothes wet.

Is it gonna be March already?

2010-02-20T20:17:00.000-08:00

I was feeling the strain of homeschooling last week or more of boredom with the routine and it became hard concentrating that my children were asking me about work and I'm like saying 'Oh, maybe we can do that next time or tomorrow.'Maybe it was the long weekend that was so fun, going back to school was a dampener...funny, this is the mother talking.

This is where I go on remote and try to pretend I'm interested and usually it's the kids who help me; like Ihsan who wanted to find out what 'xylem' and 'phloem' were after a botany lesson and ended up listing the factfile of a few dozen countries in his geography book after finding a long list at the back of his dictionary or Umayr who, of all things, insisted that he needs to do his Arabic writing and narration when my mind was at Ion. Sofiyya somehow managed to see the joke in learning about counting teens and was laughing and making silly jokes as she worked on her materials with me.

Hopefully, this lingering feeling will end but homeschooling should be taken as professionally as any teaching job. So mummy went back to reading her homeschooling book for inspiration ( The Well Trained Mind) and is back to planning her lesson instead of just following the manual sequence that she has compiled for this year(that's my remote mode data system).

Anyway CNY was a blast (and very tiring); we went to my parents on Saturday, IMM on Sunday, Pasir Ris Park on Monday and East Coast Park on Tuesday. I do realise that things are more hectic on holidays and weekends. Compared to them, schooldays are a breather, not?

2010-02-02T10:08:00.000-08:00

Umayr wrote his first sentences today right out of the blue. It was after six and as I was preparing dinner when I saw him quietly sitting down, to draw, I thought. He was soon calling out to me that he can write and showed me his rhyme- 'The car of The Barn wen tu the yarn.' So delighted was he that he called his brother to read his work and letting him know that he can write. Ihsan of course was more interested in reading his newspaper.

Nevertheless, he continued to write a few more sentences and proudly pasted them on the wall near the kitchen for his father (and all?) to read when he comes home. Incidentally the sentences noted down all his brother's faults for the day and credited him as having been a good boy : )

This reminds me of Montessori's description of the children at the Casa de Bambini, who excitedly called out to her when they realised they can write out words and continued writing with much enthusiasm at this great discovery.

Umayr might have come to it much later than them but it was still a heartwarming feeling nevertheless, Alhamdulillah, and it points out the wisdom of following the child and allowing for their own individual realisation of the self.

We are trying to speed up everything in schooling these days that sometimes we (myself included) don't realise how this deprives the child of deeper and true knowledge and a love for it but instead the system can turn it into a pursuit for material satisfaction.

Egg Sandwiches and Milkshakes

2010-01-31T23:28:00.000-08:00

I always find Mondays the most difficult after the mid-week; so I tend to not rush Mondays. Actually, not rushing is something I have struggled with, being a typical Singaporean. I find myself rushing even when I don't have too and its only been recently that I have been able to hold myself back and question what I am rushing for.

Today, we looked at anger management and read "Anh's Anger" by Gail Silver. Thereafter we talked about occasions when we get angry and tried to identify some of the symptoms like my son said that feeling of wanting to just shout out and punch someone, I somehow sensed a sinister joy from all this. We did a breathing exercise which Sofiyya enjoyed and took a walk along Brickland Road after that.

The boys took the opportunity to try out the skate scooter they just inherited from my brother. I just find it amazing my brother has so many things in good shape, he's 22, when my kids just break their stuff in days or weeks if I'm lucky. The scooter must be at least ten years old.

When we got back, the children helped me prepare lunch. I taught the kids how to cut bananas for our milkshake. The children also helped peel the eggs I already boiled and cut cucumber for our egg mayo sandwich. Later, I let them to pour the bananas, milk and ice and put together the sandwich.

In between and after lunch, I did my presentation on days of the week for Sofiyya and half-past clockwork for Umayr. For Ihsan I did 'The Three Fundamental Tenses' and after finishing all that we did our written work. The kids are now playing, quietly(!), so mum can write this.

Schooling round the bed

2010-01-19T22:30:00.001-08:00

Sofiyya working on her small number rods.

Trying to re-enact the rope stretchers of ancient Egypt

The Boys making coffins for their mummies while my daughter is more interested in just hamming it up for the cameras.

I have been stricken with infections;the flu bug, indigestion and food poisoning for the past week and have only been up to strength today. As I was worried that the children will miss out on school; we continued. I was lucky that my mum only moved out to her new place last Sunday, or the house will not look very much like one.

When I couldn't get up, the children will just sit around me as I teach them. As this is inconvenient when I do presentations, I try to push myself till its time for them to do written work. Alhamdulillah, they didn't miss much school, maybe just one or two days and I have to say I'm thankful for the purification that comes with every illness.

Planning however became incidental and I am now catching up with my main lesson plans which have much jumbled up with the weekly ones. I now go on a format of one personal presentation, one group work and personal independent work which is basically their review each day. With outdoors and written work; a good four hours pass by quickly.Of course, there are days when nothing seems to be getting done.

I was down in the earlier part of the morning today; so we only managed to do our language arts; the key lesson for exclamations for Ihsan, the long 'e' digraph for Umayr and the consonant 'k' for Sofiyya. Thereafter, the children did their written work.

I hope to restart my regular homeschooling in the coming days...insyaAllah...

Sofiyya's First Day of School

2010-01-10T04:16:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Sofiyya went to school for the first time. No, we are not giving up on homeschool, she is attending a weekly madrasah which lasts only two and a half hours. She is our first purely homeschooled child and I had to admit I was worried that she will find a class intimidating.

It wasn't a good start as she fell asleep on our way there, having had to travel from our in-laws in Johor Bharu.She could barely keep her eyes open when queuing up and was holding on to my skirt for a moment.

However, she eventually managed to find her bearings and was following schooling rituals; lining up, walking in line, staying in line and was fine when I left her.

She was the first to come down that day and was smiling and leaping up to me when I got her. When asked what she did she told me that she played with Lego blocks and then it was time to get home. Only later did she fill in the blanks where they played getting to know games and sang nasyids.

When I asked her whether she needed to go to the washroom, she told me she already asked her teacher to take her and went on to open her bag and told me that she was supposed to give the papers in there to her parents.

She could only remember two of her friends' names though; Sarah and Maryam and was proud to announce to her brothers that she now knows three Maryams. We walked home to Lot One and as her teacher was walking behind us she kept looking back and making faces and questioned why she cannot join her teacher home.

I am confident, as I see it repeatedly with my own eyes in my children and other homeschoolers, that homeschooling provides a child with the confidence and ability to communicate well with people of all ages. There is a lot of 'real' interaction with people in the neighbourhood and most of all, adults interact with them in a non-condescending manner which is sometimes unavoidable in a school structure that enforces authority on them with its layers of hierarchy and the constant need to maintain the noise and chaos level.

I see them forming real relationships not based on what they can gain from a friend or being part of a group; but just being what friends are, freed from social pressures of material ownership of what is currently the 'it' thing, ranking in class and popular 'in' groups.

It is especially heartening when they bond spiritually in their love for Allah for example when they come together during Ramadhan or do their jemaah together. Spirituality is something which I think is most critical in their holistic growth because when they attend public schools they are forced to leave their spiritual being at the gate to a certain degree and over at least a dozen years you can't deny the effect of that on them as a person.

101th post

2010-01-06T02:38:00.000-08:00

I just realised that I have reached 100 postings on my previous posting.On some parts of the world, they celebrate every 100th of everything and this is a personal achievement for me because I tend to get distracted a lot.

The third day of school passed uneventfully, Alhamdulillah, I am grateful for simple nondescript days always. God bless us in different ways. Anyway, the kids are still getting into their routine as signified by some unpleasant sighing and groans in the morning quran sessions.

I managed to kick off literacy for Umayr today with the first lesson on the green series and we did geometry for everyone; connecting two dimensional shapes of the geometric cabinet to three-dimensional geometric solids and learning about faces, corners and sides.

I was supposed to do the introduction to the green series yesterday, but while introducing his reader for this month 'Mary Clare Likes to Share' of the 'Step into Reading' series, I realised it was a good opportunity to get him interested in fractions. So we did the first lesson on fractions using the fraction puzzles. I covered halves to tenths as he was just enjoying the tactile experience of putting all the parts to make a whole.It is a good way of integrating lessons, they even highlight the book as a math reader.

As an extension to the geometry lesson, we made paper pyramids; something I picked up from the Ancient Egypt exhibition now ongoing at the National Museum. It got quite tricky when the kids had to do the foldings but I just let them do the pasting so they don't get too frustrated.

I also made use of our previous theme on the Ancient Egyptians as a hook for our topic on Forces and movements by asking them how the slaves at that time managed to carry all that rock/limestone. This moved on to the concept of push/pull and gravity and atmospheric/vacuum environment. Physics has never been my strength but I think what homeschoolers do, from what I see, is far more interesting than what little I read from my texts in secondary school and hopefully this will build their interest in science as they go to more abstract concepts.

After making the pyramids, Ihsan moved on to making an information chart on the Deccan Plateau, the Himalaya and the Gobi Desert. It required him to sieve data from the information snapshots provided by the Evan Moor activity pack on Asia. He was a bit inflexible though and it did not occur to him to look up alternative sources when he couldn't find some information. I do have to give him kudos for finding the activity and figuring out how to make the large chart himself.

Yesterday, when he was doing his geography activity book, I took the opportunity to get him to look up what are plains, plateaus and deserts which I have not covered in our land and water forms lessons.Gosh, he's been doing geography for three days...

Umayr got some help from grandma, who happens to be at my place while waiting for her new flat to get fixed, on his Malay; something I did not formally, and consciously, do with Umayr before he reached primary one level. With her around, my kids have been speaking more Malay and she has promised to come by twice a week for me to have time on my own.

I'm now trying to have Malay storybook reading sessions everyday; right now we are reading the Malay version of 1001 nights. The kids are already familiar with Ali Baba and Aladdin so we started off with that. I never realised how violent some of the stories are till I had to tell them to my children though, as in the case where Ali Baba's slave girl poured hot oil over the bandits and killed them.

It's interesting though, when you compare Brother's Grimm and Classical Asian stories, was it because they were not specifically written for kids or was there a greater tolerance for violence then? Alas, the question will have to hang in the air for the moment because I don't think I'm in the position to research on children's folktales right now...

Halfway through the week now...I pray that Allah keeps us steadfast in this endeavour and also give strength to all my family and friends who are trying their best to live their lives as Muslims and especially those going through Allah's tests right now.

First Day of School

2010-01-04T02:24:00.001-08:00

Today is Umayr's first day at primary level. The difference is we didn't have to drop him off at school and go through the anxiety of him being all by himself in that huge institution we call public schooling. Our plans to start a jogging routine had to be shelved today as it rained in the morning. The kids all had new shoes and Ihsan even woke up and showered at 3 a.m in the morning to prepare, not knowing that it was that early.

So instead, we had an earlier session of Quran reading and memorisation, much to their fresh back from the holidays chagrin, followed by breakfast. As usual, we started with reading and as the rain had stopped we decided to go on with our jog. Unfortunately, on the way to the park, it started drizzling and we made our way to the multi-purpose hall beside our block to do some 'running-round-the hall'?

When we came back, the kids started on their 'work' and I presented the small number rods to Sofiyya. It was interesting how she often seeked my approval when it was her turn to do it. My boys had no interest whatsoever in what I think when they do their stuff.

Umayr meanwhile decided to take the shoebox intended for holding their personal stationeries to make a bird, oh well. I then asked Ihsan to read 'What is a Million' for me to review the concept of number hierarchy to trillion and he then did an exercise on the use of commas as symbolisation to movement in place value.

I eventually got to do my presentation with Umayr on static addition with the golden beads. I initially reviewed his memory of number placing and realised that he remembers static addition with the golden beads and decided to do dynamic addition with a change in the unit place.

While I was presenting to Umayr,Ihsan reviewed his land and waterforms with the Evan-Moor unit on Asia. I proceeded to do sandpaper letters of 'k','u' and 'h' with Sofiyya and she then did an exercise on 'k' and 'l' and a review of 'e', 'f', 'g','h' and 'i' on her Letterland book.

I had consistently put it to Umayr that at primary one his counterparts in school already have to read and it seemed to have motivated him to try instead of whining or relying on me when he has to do written work. In fact, when he was doing his review on short 'o' sounds on his Schoolzone Second Grade Big Book, he was irritated when I tried to help his reading. He then did simple unit addition on the same book.

After lunch, we went to Lot One to return the library books which were due and even though they are not going to 'school' each had a new bag to start the new year and thus mummy can also carry less luggage. After the library session, we went to the rooftop garden where the kids played on the playground before going home and Mummy only bought Umayr's Malay workbook and nothing more.

Its very strange, the kids are doing their work now as I'm blogging...hmmm...maybe I should have evening sessions too and without them even realising it.

Timeline of Child's Life

2009-12-17T02:29:00.000-08:00

Today I presented a lesson I was to have done with Ihsan four years ago- a timeline of his life. Well, at least he had the most pictures and got to do it with all his siblings. It's amazing how one can not notice how much one's children have grown, having spent each day with them. At least that was the case for me when I was rummaging through albums to find a picture for each year of their life.

To introduce, I arranged their pictures in order and then we talked about how they looked in each picture, what has changed and what they remember about that period of their life. I messed up the pictures after that and asked each child to choose their own and arrange them in order.

Talking about not noticing how time has passed; I realised I have missed a lot of lessons with Umayr. One day of him not wanting to do a lesson has turned to many lessons undone over weeks and months and now a year has almost passed us. This is the danger of not assessing one's teaching over the school year. I almost wish there is someone bugging me to finish the syllabus. I've got to buckle up as he enters the primary years.

I have to be like Miss Malarkey in 'Miss Malarkey Leaves No Reader Behind' by Judy Finchler & Kevin o'Malley who continues encouraging her reluctant students to read and tries to find out the interests of every child to hook them to reading. I borrowed the book to show Umayr that there are others like him and that even they are able to find that special book and that he'll find his too; but of course he didn't want to read today...

I bought a homeschool planner- yes 2010 here I come!

Walk Like an Egyptian

2009-12-15T21:21:00.000-08:00

Today we continued with our Egyptian theme with the chapter on pyramids from the book
'Mummies and Pyramids' by Joyce Tyldeseley which I got on a trip to Harbourfront from a Big Bookstore sale for $13! It not only gives you interesting facts about life then but has materials you can use like paper samples of amulets and trinkets, playcards, a mask of Tutankhamen (which I wasn't really too excited about my kids playing and only allowed a try) and your very own Egyptian snake and ladder game and its in hardcover. I'm beginning to sound like a book sales lady.

After a game of table tennis (the boys, I just pushed a ball around with Sofiyya), we continued to make a pyramid from our 'Ancient Civilisations' template from Evan-Moor. While drawing in the bricks, I reviewed the concept of 'horizontal' and 'vertical' lines with the younger ones while Ihsan wrote a narration of what he remembered from what I read to him about the Great Pyramids of Giza from the information section provided.

Sofiyya cried when Umayr insisted on using her scissors to cut out his pyramid and went to her room so I printed out some pictures of her and she chose one to put on her 'My Body' lapbook and did some handwriting exercises to be put there too.

Umayr grew frustrated with not being able to draw perfectly straight lines for his bricks and gave up. I find this an issue of concern, however he has been able to do crafts for hours on his own accord and this might be more of a lack of practice on minor motor skills and his temperament for the day. I'll have to look out for this need for perfection and his inability to stay on the work and having an outburst after only a short time at trying.

I question how much I should really help him, as I did today as it would only result in him not getting the exercise he needs and a mentality that I will always do things he finds frustrating. How much scaffolding do you give a child without doing injustice to him? Sometimes I think it just benefits me as I get things done, or so I think, without the temper outbursts. He later grew frustrated with gluing the pyramid together, but sat down to see how I did it.

He did however, fetch me the square pyramid from the geometric solids box when asked (ok after a few times)to find the one with the same shape as the pyramid work he did. As a group, we explored how the pyramid from the geometric solid box is similar to the pyramids they made (faces, base, sides) and different from the triangular pyramid.

While Ihsan finished off his pyramid, I read 'The Busy Body Book' for the younger ones which explains how the body works and the different systems of the body. This is connected with our lessons on mummification in Egypt where the liver, lungs, stomach and intestines are taken out from the to-be-mummies. Sofiyya's 'My Body' lapbook is also an offshoot of this.

Holiday or Not to Holiday

2009-12-14T01:05:00.000-08:00

As a homeschooler, there is always that sense of insecurity that your child is not getting enough 'academic time'. We wake up at 6 +-,saunter to school around 8.30+- and end at 12.30+-. On good days, we do some work after zuhr and end at two.Thus, even though most kids are in the middle of their holidays right now, I try to do something 'educational' with the kids everyday.

If I could list down five insecurities as a homeschooler:

1. My kids are not 'covering syllabus'
2. My kids do not 'do homework' and hence there is that question of rigour
3. My kids don't do 'exams'; they are thus not 'exam smart'
4. My kids don't follow structured formats in their work; (go back to part 3.)
5. My kids don't follow a timetable but rather a rhythm in their days.

I do plan for what to cover for the year; but we have these little projects that become other projects or BIG projects. My kids are at different phases in their academic growth; one is advanced, one is a grade lower and one is on grade. Well, I guess I can say that at least that balances out.

In terms of practice, its the same; one devours work, one just says 'no' and the other is just fine with anything. One thing for certain they all have to pick up is exam skills; they tend to concentrate on their interests and don't follow formats or what teachers like to call templates or model answers.

However, I'm thinking I've got some years to go even for my eldest; I'll just make them suffer for the year they have to take PSLE and let go after that. Yes,it's painful but from what I hear even with all these changes they are trying to introduce to the local education system; we will always be exam oriented, eventually, even if they let you off in the non-critical years.

Now, maybe we should really go have that holiday, a real one...

Rolling Schoolyear

2009-12-01T19:59:00.000-08:00

I've been on a hiatus after a bout of food poisoning and my anaemia taking a toll due to my bad eating habits. We've also been gallivanting a lot; Vivocity, IMM, Science Centre, the Zoo, the Airport and the like- I get too tired to do anything plus the housework gets piled up.

Its nice to go back doing something structured again.I've decided to catch up on things that tend to get the least attention during school (which should not be that way)i.e. history, geography,physics and chemistry.

Today we did the first writings- hieroglyphics and cuneiforms of the Egyptians and the Sumers. While the younger kids play with playdoh, Ihsan wrote cuneiform sentences using a flat screwdriver and playdoh and help from his Story of the World workbook, a series which I use with a pinch of salt. Prior to that we read chapter three of the text and did the narration.

I revised the days of the week presentation with Umayr and he wrote them down in his exercise book. While he did that, Ihsan revised abbreviations of the months on his 'Writing with Ease' workbook and he then decided to read the stories from the text.

Umayr and Sofiyya had their reading sessions with Level A books from Learningatoz and I then revised the sounds of the alphabets with Sofiyya. She has forgotten 'a' and 'b' so I decided to revise them with a new letter 'n'. Apparently she picked up 'k', 'm'and 'p' from her starfall.com sessions. Oh God, I'm doing literacy again...

We had a fun time at the zoo on Monday and the Jurong East Library yesterday. In between picking up books we had lunch at Cafe Galilee and later explored the youth section of the library which I have never been to in search of Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' to pick up on a conversation I had with the kids on how Umayr can sometimes turn rebel from angel in seconds.

We amazingly came back on the train and bus ( we usually travel one of the way by taxi)It felt like a real achievement till I thought of the real expensive lunch that we had. I'll just take it as a holiday treat even though we are technically not on holiday. I'd like to think we can be on holiday and homeschooling at the same time- sort of a work-life balance.

I have just finished reading a book on homeschooling which I have forgotten to take note of by whom but it's available at Choa Chu Kang Library and one of the author's first name is Matine, the title is 'Homeschooling': ). I think in every quarter I have to read one book on a family's homeschooling experience to remind myself how great a non-institution homeschooling is and how I am doing the right thing for my kids considering our situation in Singapore now.

Matine homeschooled her kids using the unschooling method mainly and three of her kids are in good colleges- I remember at least one of them is in Brown and the other three are still between high school and elementary levels.

Spontaneous Development

2009-11-07T06:20:00.000-08:00

'The spontaneous development of the child should be accorded perfect liberty; that is to say, that its calm and peaceful expansion should not be disturbed by the intervention of an untimely and disturbing influence...' Maria Montessori

Rainforest and such

2009-11-05T07:40:00.000-08:00

This week has passed by more quickly than I expected and is already coming to an end. Its the second week of our Rainforest co-op and I am grateful to Raihanah for preparing some of the materials which I have managed to use in my daily lessons.

Monday morning was mainly the co-op thingy, I enjoyed walking around Choa Chu Kang Park and looking at the trees and trying to identify what type of leaves they have. I was very ambitious because after that we went to IMM and managed to do some shopping, eating and playing at the playground but had to ditch the water area as I realised my lighter than usual baggage was due to the fact that I didn't bring a change of clothes and towels for my children.

Tuesday was a long work session as I woke up half awake to Sofiyya asking for papers and stationery to do the metal insets (what did we move up the school hours?) I managed to squeeze in some housework as the boys worked on the 3D puzzle of the globe. After breakfast, Ihsan was timing himself on the puzzle as I worked with Umayr on his bromeliad model which was unfinished from Monday's session. Ihsan later joined us and made his while Umayr worked on the Darby activity book with his sister.

I put together some materials to make the miniature environment of a farm and asked Umayr to help me get some animal farm figurines. There was some confusion about which animals lived on a farm and this led to a 'modified' presentation on wild and farm animals. The boys searched for figurines and toys of animals around the house and put them into two groups. At the end of the search, we went through each pile and decided whether they belonged to the correct group and why. We then identified the similarities and differences between wild and farm animals.

We then worked on our miniature environment with a hut, bridge,pebbles,a cow and a horse I got from Daiso and a matchbox truck. There used to be more on our old farm but they 'got around' as most things do when it come to miniatures especially.Umayr of course took the opportunity to play with the truck with the excuse that he's working on the miniature farmhouse.

During this time, Sofiyya was working on her painting of fairies who flew through a gate to go back home.(I need to cut down on fairy storybooks)She then related this story to my mum, my dad and my husband, besides me of course. (My parents are staying with us as they are in between houses)

In between the works I've mentioned, Umayr and I actually did a 3 part lesson based on the Lego Knights and Castles book he asked me to read. At first we just read the book and Umayr would reproduce the scene with his magnetic figurines on the book. He then came to me asking which character was which and after I read to him the snippets at the back of the book I suggested he write them on labels.

The next day, he continued to work on this and labelled them to the figurines and checking his answer with the book.

On Wednesday, we somehow managed to start school on time which was not the case for almost the whole of last week. We usually start school at 8.30 and end by noon but I have not been disciplined in teaching the Islamic and Arabic lessons (basic Arabic with much reference to books ya..)if not class will usually resume after zuhr and end around 3p.m.

On that day, I revised with the kids how to take photos of the crafts we made for the rainforest co-op with my handphone and transfer them to the laptop. They then learned how to print out the photos and paste them into their lapbooks with a tagline. Ihsan wrote his on his own but Umayr refused to have any words in his. The boys worked for almost and hour decorating their covers with drawings of plants and animals of the rainforest.

Sofiyya had pictures of herself printed and I showed her how she can arrange them and staple them together neatly. The next day, I found pieces of paper folded together and stapled like an A5 sized book on the floor.

She also continued drawing circles with her metal insets on Wednesday and she came to me saying she couldn't cut a proper circle with her scissors. I asked whether I could show her. 'Oh, you have to turn then you'll get a circle!' Sofiyya said.It was a revelation to her that you have to turn your wrist around the circle outline to cut out the shape.

This continued on Thursday and she was drawing circles with her metal inset and cutting them that I suggested we make a centipede based on the book 'Speed,speed, centipede.' we read last week. Umayr joined in. The book was about counting in tens to hundred and I wanted to cut out ten sets of ten shoes but realised that it was too challenging (mostly for me) and settled on teaching Umayr how to make a paper chain of shoes.

While we were working on the centipede, Umayr said that he will make one that stands up. I was almost commenting that it'll be a complicated process requiring hardier cardboards and joining the pieces together with something ( what kind of explanation is that?) but I stopped myself and let him go figure it out himself. In the end he did make one that stood up. I actually thought he didn't realise that he was joining the head and tail together when in actual fact, he made a three dimensional model.

At the same time this was happening, Ihsan was sitting at the same table, working on his rainforest map and trying to figure out where the tropic of cancer and capricorn are on the globe to indicate on his map to demarcate the area where most rainforests are.

He then coloured the map according to the Montessori colours and pasted it into his lapbook. He worked on this for the next hour. I think I should have let him rest but him doing so in the room meant a diversion from his work mode; maybe this is 'false fatigue'. I had worked on the Birds nomenclature, in relation with the birds from the rainforest book we read in the morning,with Umayr earlier and was going to an extended one with Ihsan but he complained of tiredness.

I confess I should have dealt with it more intelligently, but my threshold was up to the neck today and I sadly, threatened deprivation of toys instead of trying to find a hook. He came reluctantly, and stated that he will read everything backwards and spoke to me backwards. It was easy with labelling, but I guess reading paragraphs on the functions of each part backwards ( he was reading from the end of the paragraph and right to left)was too much and he gave up after two paragraphs...hehehe...

I later did a presentation on the 3 part animal puzzle with Sofiyya and we traced the puzzles to reproduce the puzzle into a picture. I let Umayr play with an Oxford Reading Tree program on the laptop later and Ihsan worked on Math games with a Math Lab CD-Rom. Sofiyya got her Wordworld CD. I'm going down the drain with my sensorial and play philosophies with these CDs but sometimes they can be rather attractive.Sigh, I hope I can get the materials done soon, so I won't cave in to this...

Best Buys

2009-10-29T01:43:00.000-07:00

Today was shopping day,Alhamdulillah.I sometimes think I buy too much for schooling everytime I touch something it must be educational. The boys bought walkie talkies which I thought would be a good hook for learning sounds for $15.90 from Children's World at IMM level 2, the shop opposite Baystreet 21.They also bought a box of around 50 country flag erasers for less than $5.00 which they of course use to play 'erasers' but I'm gonna use it for geography lessons. Sofiyya bought wooden cutting materials shaped like food from Learn-thru-Play. We had them before, but they died a natural death (parts got lost).

However, my best buy has to be my 3D globe puzzle from Children's World for $9.90.

The shop has a better one for I think around $60 and Puzzle World of course has the works if you've got the bucks.The boys were interested at first but the small size of the puzzle means they need good minor motor skills so they did parts after I divided them into continents and I put the whole thing together. A spherical base would also have provided more support.

They put numbers at the back; so younger children can start from there but I realise that some of them were wrongly numbered and it can get confusing as they go by layers. There were some spelling mistakes but that can be used as a lesson and for $9.90 this is a very engaging Geography lesson.

Now I need to find one missing piece...

My Little Niche in the Corner

2009-10-27T21:04:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel I am withering my life away at a little corner in a little flat in a tiny Island with no one around, that life will go on perfectly completely without me. I guess that's why cosmic education; which elementary Montessori education is centred upon is important as it links each life with the cycle of life, that each of us plays a part in this world but that there is a whole universe out there humbling us into powerless beings. We are both khalifahs and lowly servants.

Anyway,enough with the babblings; today we continued with the rainforest theme. I read Miss Spider's 'Top O' Big Tree'and used it to connect to the rainforest which is rich in plant growth and insects. I did a language lesson on three shapes of leaves(orbiculate, obcordate and linear) with Sofiyya and introduced parts of the root (3 part cards) to Umayr which I related to the buttress roots of the kapok tree.

Ihsan tried to find the distribution of the rainforest on the world map online and found a good site www.passporttoknowledge/rainforest/main.html. From the main overview of rainforests; Ihsan picked out statistics about the rainforest and wrote them into the factfile that I wrote for him.

From the percentages, he was also required to find the actual areas of rainforest in different continents.It was thus a combination of geography,research,percentage, fraction, multiplication and language as I used the words in the wordsearch game for his spelling, vocabulary and dictation which he insisted on doing today. I do believe that I'm doing this the wrong way though, I believe I'm supposed to touch on biomes in general instead of working from a particular biome to the general idea of biomes.I do really need to go back to reading my Montessori manuals and books.

Beauty of Homeschooling

2009-10-27T11:33:00.000-07:00

I sometimes think that homeschooling is a sanctuary where I can shape my children's life to my ideal vision, away from the harsh reality of this world and of schooling itself. When you scratch the surface of our very efficient and visionary system, it can be rudely ugly that you want to dig a hole and bury yourself or run very far away.Ignorance can truly sometimes be bliss.

Today I finally settled on 'The Rainforest' as a theme, courtesy of Raihanah who's helping to organise some sessions on the rainforest for our homeschooling kids. I do really get carried away at times and tend to reject 'ordinary' themes and before I realise it, it's been a few weeks and my lessons have been disorganised.

I realised I have a book called ' A Walk in the Rainforest', an alphabetical illustration with short snippets of what you can find in the rainforest. What's more amazing is that it came out of a high school project of this teenager which I think is a good inspiration for the kids.

During circle, I used the the map of the rainforest work the kids did yesterday during our sharing session and referred it to the book which had a beautiful illustrated map of the rainforests of the world. We talked about what rainforests are like and some of the animals and plants which we can find there.

Raihanah read a story too during that session that revolved around the kapok tree and coincidentally, it was one of the items in the book. So we got to talking about it and after that we did a diorama of the rainforest which Raihanah prepared for us.

Umayr however, had a bicycle accident that tore the skin of two of his right toes during outdoors. It was pretty bloody (and screamy) and I had to 'stroller' him home. He's fine now and is already climbing the hall walls. He got to be the king for the day, hitting the remote with his three hour special access to TV and was carried around for the earlier part of the day.

Ihsan and Sofiyya of course got distracted. I did articles 'a' and 'an'lesson with Ihsan and used the words from ' A Walk in the Rainforest' for the nouns while Sofiyya worked on the book 'Places Where Animals Live' from www.readinga-z.com,pasting pictures of animals to their proper habitats on the book after I read it to her. I eased the rules for today and they got a weekday pass to TV too. I'm getting lax.

Teaching Your Child At Home

2009-10-08T17:02:00.000-07:00

I have been asked many times where I get my homeschooling resources from. Generally, I think I can divide them between physical (the learning materials themselves)and inspirational resources (how in the world am I supposed to teach these kids?). It is of course easier if there's a list you can tick off from but I prefer to have a list of questions to use when deciding whether an item is going to be beneficial to both my child and my limited resources. This of course differs from parent to parent depending on your beliefs but mine would generally be:

1. Does it engage the child in a manner that will lead to the development of a particular ability for that period of his life?

2. Does it develop his creativity and imagination? (those fancy gadgets usually don't)

3. Does it assist him in integrating his life into adulthood and the world around him?

4. Does it inspire an awe and wonder of life, the universe and all of Allah's creations? (this you can get a lot from nature actually)

5. Can it surpass the test of time (and siblings and age)?

The list is not exhaustive of course; I just like to have not more than five points at a time and depending on context, my questions change. However, mainly I have these questions in my head when I shop(having to think helps to shut out the whinings,complains and squabbles surrounding me).It is thus helpful to know your child's developmental stage as a guide and some theory of learning.

Ok, my close friends would know I am a Daiso fan; so with your questions just throng through Daiso stores and find stuff. For those in Jurong, you can also go to Japan Home at Jurong Point . I personally try to avoid Popular, it's so indoctrinated (although I am more agreeable with it's sister store, Harris)and if you've got more dough; go to Muji.

Of course you cannot forget art stores,and if you have very little time like me, go to Art friend. There is also an art store at Takashimaya near the Art Friend branch there which has good stuff, unfortunately I can't remember the name. The toy store beside it is nice too but the prices are steep. I believe it is at the level where the library use to be.

Then there is always the library, because I live in Choa Chu Kang, I frequent the one at Lot 1 which has greatly improved since they moved. I love story books that teach concepts.

They have a limited number of dvds though, and I go to Woodlands or Jurong West for this as they have a wide range of educational dvds. I don't like the Jurong East branch for psychological reasons, the children section is underground and gives me a claustrophobic feel and the architecture is cold.

Ok, this is all I can say for now, need to get ready for school .Next time, insyaAllah, I'll talk about more technical resources.

Mummy-teacher

2009-10-08T07:43:00.000-07:00

I think one of the most difficult thing about homeschooling is how do you do it most professionally with the personal touch that only you can have as the mother of your children. How you deal with a difficult child in the home should not be any different than in the Montessori classroom or whatever school of thought you hold on to and in the most Islamic environment that they deserve. I struggle with it everyday and not a week pass by where I wonder whether a professional teacher can do it better.

I especially marvel at teachers who deal with great compassion and intelligence,sprites and upstarts, believing in their ideal of a caring learning environment. Sadly, most schools here do not hold on to a uniting philosophy or ideology of what is education but instead practice curriculum implementation.

I had to do some major cleaning today before school. It was a beautiful rainy day and we stayed in. Ihsan finished reading his biography on Marie Curie and did a book review on it. Umayr had to be 'conditioned' into revising his continents (basically that means not letting him off not wanting to do school, contrary to popular belief, Montessori is not about letting a child do whatever he wants but freedom within discipline)Sofiyya did her objects with small movable alphabets.

We did an experiment on finding out what are the best conductors of heat together. The kids were a little difficult on doing their own work today; I had to 'encourage' them a bit and that means trying to find a hook to make them interested; no, I didn't want to share with them the chocolate truffle cake from The Royals that my husband bought for me in place of the Chocolate Decadence from Secret Recipe that I wanted as it was out of the way...LOL...

I managed to slot in time at the library and borrowed some beautiful books; one on Antoni Gaudi , one on different types of families (human, animal, plant, numbers....), one on shapes with a reference to the mooncake festival, one on different cultures and greetings around the world and one on Peter Pumpkin finding a place to call home, I think...

Is it going to be Friday already?

Our School Week in Pictures

2009-10-07T12:18:00.001-07:00

Playdoh Day

2009-10-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

I have been neglecting my lesson reviews;i.e. the blog for the past week. Busy with Hari Raya and cleaning up before my parents and brother come stay here for a while till they get the keys to the new flat.

As of today, I am still partly through the year plan; doing it slowly but surely, I hope I don't finish only next August! Anyway, we've been unschooling, just doing whatever comes up, almost. My planning has been skeletal but with children, things always come up as their curiosity about life is always there.

I bought playdoh yesterday; it's been a long time since we played with clay. In the past, I think I did not manage how the children use the dough; yesterday I set ground rules- no mixing of the colours,playing only on the mat and no violent use. We set aside a container for any dough that got mixed up though, it happens.

So the children spent a good fraction of the morning and afternoon with the dough. Did I get any teaching done? Of course not, it was very difficult letting go of my plans but the children were engaged and there is something zen about working with clay that I find even myself being intrigued by it. Furthermore, they may not be having lessons per se but they are building up concentration and creative skills.

I decided on a science theme; Iconic Scientists for this month based on the books that the children chose from the library. I think the cultural subjects are areas which I have not been giving enough focus on. Maybe it's got to do with the emphasis of my own education on language and math and my own phobia of science or the lack of interest in.

We are currently using The Magic School Bus'and the Science Fair Expedition which introduces children to Scientific thought and a few famous scientists like Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Louis Pasteur and Marie Curie.

I also bought, but have not used the Eureka book produced by the Straits Times which not only introduces children to famous scientists but characteristics that make them successful. A possible off-shot of the governments' focus on the sciences in education and trying to promote creativity and moral education but hey if the tool works, why not use it?

We have been taught to view science too academically I think, with the loads of formulae to memorise, the periodic table, the anatomy....we lost the fun in learning it through experiments and direct observation. I live with these to this day, finding experiments too troublesome to do and I am still trying to debunk that thinking in my head.

Ihsan suddenly told me today that Marie Curie didn't die of natural causes but from exposure to radioactivity. Apparently, he has already read the storybook on her which I have displayed for the theme. I printed out the table of elements when he asked me how many there were and wanted to look for radium. Now mummy really has to revise her Chemistry.

He then proceeded to write Japanese characters from the book 'Mieko's Seven Treasures' and did that for almost two hours. Maybe it was the effect of working with the playdoh earlier...hehehe...

Earlier this week, we read 'Under the Night Sky' something one of the kids borrowed from the library, a story about a boy's experience watching the Aurora Borealis, a phenomenon that occurs only in the northern and southernmost hemispheres where the sky almost seems to light up with the most beautiful colours and patterns ever due to interaction between solar flares and the magnetic field of the earth; I hope I got that right.

As a follow up, we made patterns with Colour Box 3 and watched real live footage on youtube. The next day, we did a watercolour painting of what we observed. It was a good way to revise the colours in German that we learnt from the Hansel and Gretel theme just the week before.

Ihsan also started fiddling with ratios from football scores, when I told him we can start learning ratios; he was elated! The questions on ratios in local exams baffle me sometimes, I really have to pscyh myself up. It is always refreshing learning with them though, I learnt to see topics like Mathematics and Chemistry in more interesting ways without, I hope, sacrificing the rigour.

I mean, what can be more intresting that doing actual experiments instead of just seeing the teacher do it and then trying to answer them in exams? We should have practical in PSLE in the form of a science fair or something. Hmmm, maybe we should have our own science fair, with banners and popcorns and a crazy scientist. I am also thinking of a field trip to the Science Centre and the Botanic Gardens as inspiration for their science projects. InsyaAllah, I hope it will be a reality.

The problem with educating children is sometimes, we have doubts about implementing the ideas in our heads. I'm guilty of thinking too much whether something will work and end up not implementing new ideas and having to fall back on traditional methods of teaching which in the end didn't engage the children, although traditional methods doesn't always not work, it depends on a lot of factors like your student's learning style.

On Monday, we travelled the furthest ever on train and bus; went to Ikea in the evening. Alhamdulillah, Sofiyya didn't fall asleep on the way. We took the feeder to CCK MRT, train to Queenstown and 195 to Ikea. Sofiyya played in the playground for the first time, ' Ummi, I big girl right?'I managed to get my stuff and fetch the kids five minutes early.

We went for dinner, plus the dad who met us after work, at the hawker centre opposite Queensway Shopping Centre. I discovered the cheapest and most delicious avacado juice stall, based on my husband's recommendation, and a rattan shop nearby with all things rattan and wooden; swings, tables, baskets, high chair. Unfortunately, or fortunately for my husband, we had to rush back to Ikea for Maghrib. Ha, I know where to head to next time for rattan.

End of the Week Review

2009-09-25T04:50:00.000-07:00

We are nearing the end of the month, and thus the end of the theme. As it is, I have not completed my planning for the year (I follow the Aug-Sept schedule) and now I need to plan for next month. I'm the most disorganised homeschooler ever. I feel utmost shame when I read other homeschoolers' blogs.

Today, we made castles with boxes and rolls after reading on castles and taking a virtual tour on http://www.destination360.com/europe/germany/castles. That took out half the school-time.

I finally took out my Eid storybooks from Goodword; ' Celebrating Eid Ul Fitr with Ama Fatima' gave me some ideas for activities with kids for Eid gatherings,although some are open to debate. In line with the theme today, we read 'Sleeping Beauty' in Arabic, which happened to have beautiful illustrations of castles. After school, we listened to 'I Look, I See II' and my daughter just had to dance to it. God forgive me.

We've just lost another Arabic tutor due to her heavy commitments, this is motivation for me to learn with the kids, InsyaAllah. Time to go back to http://talibiddeenjr.amanahwebs.com/arabic.htm owned by Umm' Ibrahim mother of 9 and homeschooler of 7. A true inspiration for me.

This week, I am guilty of not doing my grammar, Malay and Mathematics workbooks with Ihsan although he has been doing more work from his workplan. I am also guilty of almost total Montessori work with the juniors...hehehe...we all need the balance. I need more proper scheduling instead of the timetable in my head. We do have to do 'traditional work' at least once a week...not?

I think we need some 'green,wide,open space'; wonder whether we can fit in the Botanic Gardens in between raya visits tomorrow...

Post Raya School

2009-09-22T05:17:00.001-07:00

It was a surprisingly disciplined and engaging day at school today despite it being the first day after Hari Raya celebrations and the first day of post-Ramadan school. We are still on the Hansel & Gretel theme; don't ask me how learning about Islamic communities became a German folklore.

We read a chapter on where Germany is from a book on Germany, thereafter I let the boys do a virtual puzzle of the map of Europe on http://www.yourchildlearns.com/mappuzzle/europe-puzzle.html. We don't have the Europe wooden puzzle map and this sorts of make up for it, not? The boys enjoyed it and even asked to work on it again after our outdoors session.Ihsan even referred to his Atlas to help figure out where to put the pieces, eventually however the boys managed to do it on their own and reduced their time from 14 minutes to 5minutes.

Ihsan then worked on his workplan; selecting information on the Brothers Grimm to write a biography from http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm.html.He sort of sulked through it but managed to complete the rubric I printed out. Contrary to this, he was really into his multi-model long multiplication on http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mepres/book7/bk7i6/bk7_6i2.htm .

While he was working on them, Umayr and Sofiyya were trying to make a collage for the Hansel and Gretel book which is our project for this theme. Sofiyya however was more interested in 'cooking' the paper we cut and took out her own piece of paper to cut and paste.

We also read the "Colours of Germany" and I taught Sofiyya the primary colours in German together with Colour Box 1. She was however interested to know the rest of the colours in the book and we ended up using Colour Box 2 too and Umayr joined in. Eventually, we even revised the names for the colours in Arabic. Hooray!

Forget Your Agenda

2009-08-30T23:52:00.000-07:00

I think the most difficult thing about teaching is to put the child first. As much as we talk about being child-centred in certain pedagogies, in the classroom, we have other agendas we face as a teacher; whether its covering the syllabus, ensuring the child covers processes and so forth,we skip putting the child first and end up struggling to do what we are supposed to do anyway because the child gets turned off learning.

This is made more difficult when you are personally involved in your child's education as a homeschooler; you are not just the teacher, you are the mother and you have certain 'expectations' and you can get really personal about what you want to achieve.I am so guilty of that, I don't realise myself doing it sometimes and when I do, I have to personally remove myself so that I won't push my agenda like today when I insisted on finishing my reading presentation to Sofiyya when she wanted to do her Ballet Movements cards. I should have instead done the cards with her first and slide in the presentation that I wanted to do instead of both parties ending up unhappy for not getting what they want.

For circle today, I attempted to do storytelling in Malay as part of the introduction to 'Muslim Countries:Indonesia' that I'm starting today. Umayr threw a fit, he wanted me to speak in English, Ihsan just lied down on the floor with a blank look on his face. I really have to work with the Malay thing or they'll have difficulty later in PSLE plus I don't want them to lose this part of their heritage.

I did 'Hansel& Gretel' with Sofiyya and Umayr for our alphabet drawing. Sofiyya got the hut part but the rest of the drawing was lost. Umayr's was a good interpretation of my not the best drawing for an adult but hey, you have good and bad days.We did 'H' to represent the pebbles Hansel dropped the first time they got sent to the woods and 'G' for the crumbs which got eaten up on the second endeavour.

While this was happening, Ihsan was finishing up reading the rest of the tafsir of the surahs for memorisation that we have not gone through. I wonder, if I somehow cook up a story for the telephone book, would he read that?

I finally managed to do the hundred chain with Umayr using the story of Hansel dropping his pebbles as we counted to 100 and since he seems to know how to count to 100, I tried counting backwards as Hansel and Gretel were finding their way back home, retracing the places they passed when they got sent to the forest as we counted.

The children also got to learn how to use the laminator, which was not planned actually. Ihsan looked interested as I was laminating some materials and the rest of them got into it soon after, when I was showing Ihsan how to do it.

2009-08-25T21:40:00.000-07:00

Today we discussed animal cruelty and war as part of our storybook session based on the books we read. When asked how we can avoid war, Umayr said that we can share...hehehe...literature mirroring life I guess. He disagreed with the character in the story buying a map instead of bread for his family as it meant the family went hungry even though the map was a source of inspiration for his son through his ordeal as a war refugee in the second world war.I thought it was appropriate, considering that we are fasting this month to consider other people who suffer everyday.

For Umayr today we made nomenclature cards for 'Things that a knight needs'. I traced and he decorated them and then I wrote what Umayr commented or looked up what each item was for or an interesting fact about it. I am now musing with the idea of whether it'll be right for him to make a sword. Maybe, I'll start with a shield first to buy time. Or we can try to build a castle.

Ihsan had to design a lever from household items. He first had to draw the plan in his lesson book and note the materials that he had to find. He of course used the ones right before his eyes. He then recorded what was done in his lesson book, identified weaknesses in his design and how he can improve on them. He tied in with Umayr's lesson when he realised that a third class lever would make a better design than his first class' catapult when he looked up a book on knights.

Here's Ihsan and his first class lever:

For Sofiyya, as an offshoot of her interest in the book ' Angelina's Ballet Class', I printed ballet positions cards for her and we did each action together. I wish I can send her to a real class. She's very interested. Maybe next year. The question is, what if she later wants to pursue it? Of course, I'm being far-fetched here, but there's always that possibility, you know.

Here's something we did a few months back based on the"Earth" theme.

Months in Islam

2009-08-17T05:56:00.000-07:00

Today we continued with Javed Ali's "Blessings of Ramadan" where we touched on the origins of the name of Ramadan. For activity, we made the wheel of the months in Islam, from the previous chapter which we did last week.

To 'enhance' the lesson, I showed the children how to use the compass and used the terms 'radius' and 'diameter' to show them how to use it.

As a further extension, the children had to figure out how to divide the circle to get twelve sections.Of course, only Ihsan could figure it out, Umayr drew everything freehand and I basically did everything for Sofiyya.

I let the kids cycle after circle time, especially in view that they may be tired during Ramadan, unless of course we do it in the evening instead.

For lesson today, I did ballet movements from " Angelina's Ballet Class" from the Angelina Ballerina series for Sofiyya. The story has two sections which showed individual moves. It was useful in attracting Sofiyya and it teaches her how to follow instructions that are read to her with the help of pictures.

Umayr sulked through my long " Vce /o/ "lesson and didn't even finish through. I used Sofiyya as my proxy to teach the lesson as he lied down on the sofa nearby. I'm not sure whether he listened and understood though, only future lessons will tell.

For Ihsan, we did parts of speech.His project for this week is to make a parts of speech booklet with help from the definitions I printed from www.enchantedlearning.com and integrating it with the Montessori symbols. He also did a quiz on the parts of speech.

As I do lessons from the Montessori syllabus, I also teach Ihsan lessons from the local workbook.

Today we touched on dividing fractions with whole numbers. It helped that the previous lesson was multiplication of fractions with fractions.

Then, I made use of the fact that we had to do the opposite when we multiply with fractions i.e. we divide by the denominator instead of increasing by the whole number.

So, when we did today's lesson, I linked how we had to divide by the whole number with the same action we did when we multiplied with fractions which helped with explaining how we got the final answer by changing the division by whole number into a multiplication of a fraction. Fahim?

Although I must admit to myself that this can be quite an abstract process. The child must be able to see that multiplication and division are opposites and be comfortable with the number line so that he can understand why a number gets larger with a whole number and smaller with a fraction. He also needs to link the action of multiplying and dividing to what happens to the original fractions when these processes are carried out visually.

Library Day

2009-08-06T08:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was library day and I think I feel as much joy as the children in borrowing the books even though I usually get only books for the homeschool. Being the disorganised person that I am, I don't come with lists. I tried to do that before, but it seems that I'm limiting myself to tried and tested books and it can be costly booking so many books. Hence, now I come with keywords in my head of what I'm covering and going to cover in homeschool as I roam along the aisles searching for anything that I can use.

Imagine me trying to reason with my kids that they don't need to borrow that one more book. Well, to cover myself I actually limit the number they can borrow, at least five, for leisure reading. Between the three of us we can borrow 52 books, which is usually spread out between two trips, which is usually in a fortnight, as I use some books over a longer period.

Before going to the library, we went to the rooftop garden at Lot 1 , which is also a blessing for me because we used to go to IMM a lot plus over here we can go to the library. Presently of course there is a pasar malam going on and I love going there to get stickers and activity books the kids can entertain themselves quietly with without having to ask me to do it along with them. ( I do need time to myself, right?)

This led to an unexpected fervour for tracing which Ihsan started when he traced the princesses from Sofiyya's book. Umayr, who refused to get anything at the pasar malam earlier, started doing the activities in his sister's book and in fact finished them, and joined in the tracing craze that I had to repeatedly tell them that they have to go to bed. They continued the tracing the next morning and afternoon, working hard on the 'nose' which they both find challenging.
Oh yeah, I must mention that we observed National Day today before going to the library. I briefly talked about Singapore's 44 year history and how we came to be where we are today. For our main lesson, we drew what our dream for Singapore was; I wanted nature at everybody's footstep, Ihsan wanted everyone to play soccer and for everything to be free and Sofiyya wanted heart shaped flowers. Umayr just wanted to draw the flag....

Blue Moon

2009-08-06T08:27:00.000-07:00

Today we followed my husband to the office as he had to send some important documents but couldn't do so remotely as he has lost the smartkey to do it. The first thing Umayr told me when I entered the car was, ' Ummi, look its the full moon and its red in colour.'

As we drove along the highway, we admired how the moon looked like and how close it seemed. When I commented that it's good at playing hide and seek with us Umayr agreed and giggled happily. I tried to take a picture but of course I couldn't. Ihsan was humming 'Blue Moon' almost all the way.

When we almost reached the office, I wondered loudly why the moon was red. No offers from the backseat, so we suggested that the kids will have to find out themselves tomorrow. My husband's theory is that the moon is reflecting the haze.

I managed to get my photo from the office carpark. Yes, the kids are getting it....

For school today, we read ' Boy, were we wrong about the solar system' which discussed how theories of the solar system has changed over time with interesting illustration and a storytelling manner and without overcrowding the book with facts.

We had fun trying to identify the different scientists and the theories they were connected with. We, actually just me and Ihsan because Umayr was by then whining to go to the playground, talked about having to face a situation where we realised we were wrong about something and what we felt and did about it.

I should have of course modelled and started first, but fell into the usual teacher question- student answer mode. My son gave a textbook, literally or in this case workbook, answer. He said he sometimes thought a math problem should be solved a certain way, then he realised that he was wrong and to solve it he asks me. Grin: )

However, by that time I was being pulled to get out of the house, so off we went. When we returned, me being so inspired after reading ' Painting with Children' by Brian Mullard had a painting session with the kids with my 'dear' and I mean 'dear' Stockmar paints.

As I painted, I told this story: ' A long time ago, the sun was very lonely. Even though its rays shone happy and bright ( as I tell this I paint half the paper yellow), it fell as if it was the only star in the solar system. One day his rays reached a blue planet ( I start painting the other half blue). They were so happy, they embraced ( the blue and yellow join to make green) each other and from then on there was green and life was born on earth.'

From then, it just went downwards for Ihsan because I was trying to catch up with written work. He sulked and moaned through his math problems. I had a talk about this with my husband later in private and we both agreed that maybe we should bring in more life into his lessons as much as I try to for his siblings. He's usually fine with straightforward facts that maybe we are overlooking his needs.

Did Isaac discover gravity?

2009-07-29T08:38:00.000-07:00

I am such a tech-less person, having problems with my photo thing again and am not able to upload them. Anyway, today has been a fruitful day, well for me at least, although I think the kids enjoyed it too. I did all my presentations, what's happened to letting the kids work independently and not teaching too much? Hehehe...

Anyway, I started with reading 'Maths Curse' by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith as I am doing Math presentations today, the book is about how you can look at anything in life as a Math problem. The kids find it hilarious. Thereafter, I picked up from my bedtime story to Umayr from the book 'Moon' by Stewart Ross in the chapter ' The Moon as a symbol' which talked about moons being used in buildings ( such as the mosques during the Ottoman empire) and in flags. The book also has a chapter (each chapter 2 pages only but good enough for kids) on Muslim scholars and actually attributed the Quran for promoting scientific thinking and Muslim scholars for being more advanced in astronomy than their western counterparts.They attributed the Muslim scientists for knowing about gravity centuries before Newton.

So today, I took out my dusty flags of the world chart and we started searching for flags which has a moon in them and counting how many and wondering why. Umayr, chose out of all the colourful flags before him, to draw our national flag which was great cause then we can move on to talk about National Day on another occassion.

I presented the number rods to Sofiyya, with a mention of building the steps for Rapunzel as per my earlier story to her, this time with the number cards 1 to 10 for each rod to connect with the quantity reflected on them. I then read ' Little Miss Muffet Counts to Ten' by Emma Chicester Clark to her, which was basically the same rhyme on each page with a twist that ends up in her birthday party. I'm getting very dependent on storybooks aren't I?

I revised types of triangles with Ihsan today with the triangle drawer of the geometric cabinet through the three period lesson and triangle chart emphasising the equality of sides and type of angle. I'm getting carried away with books today and yes we had a book to go with it: 'Archimedes: ancient greek mathematician' by Susan Keating and Stefano Tartarotti where we read the chapter on geometry. The book is written from the viewpoint of a governor sent to Sicily during the Roman empire who wanted to learn more about Archimedes.

Maybe tomorrow we're just gonna go look at trees and insects....

A real Waldorf teacher

2009-07-29T07:44:00.000-07:00

For the first time in two years, I got to meet a real Waldorf teacher again. I keep thinking that I'm living in a parallel world sometimes because the only contact I get with real Montessori and Waldorf practitioners is online and through books. It was thus a joy to hear Katherine Lehman, a Waldorf teacher with 25 years of experience speak beside me, although I was familiar with most of the things she talked about and we got to do some activities.

There was one activity where we clapped our hands in front when we hear a prime number and behind when it is not. Prior to this, the child is introduced to prime numbers through story. Katherine gave an example of a story of a horse that leapt from one island to another and where the golden ashes land it is the prime number. Over the next few days, the class will actually put up sticks and make a horse that will jump over each stick. I of course am not telling the exact story that she beautifully told, but you get the drift.

I am especially interested because my second child so loves it. He loves the stories and the art, unlike his very scientific brother, and one thing that I realised tonight is how sensitive he is to stimulation that art and stories move him in a most positive way as opposed to media. Sofiyya of course loves the princesses and knights but she loves the science of learning too. I have to work harder with my second, he really challenges me. The good thing going to such workshops once a while, is you get reminded of the ideals and practices that you believe in and don't get drowned in societal waves.

Katherine also talked about what is covered in Waldorf schools through the grade and how the movement is gaining momentum there where even in this economic crisis, they are expanding because of the strong parental faith and support that they have. What is interesting about the school she works with is that it is a public school that goes from 1st to 8th grade.I was not able to ask her for details, but they must have greater leverage because despite being in California, they have been able to practice the Waldorf method and content with a degree of freedom and satisfy and surpass state requirements.

I unfortunately had to leave early, with my kids falling asleep in the car outside but am very grateful to dear hubby who specially worked from home today so he won't be held up at work to send me to this corner of Singapore somewhere in Siglap.I love the classroom, they have classes for preschool and kindergarten,it was filled with natural wood, wool,cotton, silk and felt of course and simulated the home. There was talk of having a Waldorf elementary school but I think by the time it is set up, if ever, my kids will be in high school and being Singaporean, might not be eligible anyway.

Katherine will be having workshops till Sunday ( I wish I can go) and if anyone is interested you can ask me for the contact.

1)Workshop for Parents: Bringing Waldorf to Life with Katherine Lehman (CV attached)

This is a special opportunity for those curious about or inspired by the philosophy of Waldorf education. From theory to practice, we will explore Waldorf education and principles of child development while focussing on its practical application in the child’s environment. The sessions will be hands-on, for adults only as it is aimed to strengthen the caregiver’s capabilities in working with their young children. Over the three days, we will cover a variety of topics including action-planning and home assignments to be completed each day. The group will also cover The Kingdom of Childhood.

Venue: Function Room 1, Highgate Condominium, 66 Toh Tuck Road, Singapore (596730).

Dates: July 29th – 31st, 2009

Time: 9 am – 1 pm

Fees: 250 SGD per person for 3-day workshop; 100 SGD for single day participation

RSVP: by July 28, 2009 (they are fine if you register now)

Note: this workshop is strictly for adults and would not be able to accommodate children. There will be a break for lunch – kindly make arrangements for your lunch as it will not be provided at the workshop venue.

2)Workshop for Parents: Flow & Color Movement: Lessons from the Plant World with Katherine Lehman (CV on request). The workshop content will cover three areas:

1. Plant Observations
2. Eurhythmy
3. Art

Venue: Function Room 2 (upstairs), Highgate Condominium, 66 Toh Tuck Road, Singapore (596730).

Dates: August 1st & 2nd, 2009

Time: 10 am to 3 pm

Registration: 9:15 am

Fees: 150 SGD per person for 2-day workshop; 100 SGD for single day participation

RSVP: by July 30, 2009

Note: this workshop is strictly for adults and would not be able to accommodate children. As this is run on volunteer support and not for profit, kindly make arrangements for your own lunch. There will be a 1-hour lunch break.

The Carpet Boy's Gift

2009-07-28T15:53:00.000-07:00

On Monday, I tried out 'narrative object-based inquiry', I love putting all these terms together, based on the book 'The Carpet Boy's Gift'. As we sat, we looked at the carpets around the house and wondered where they come from, who made them, how long they took, how they got to us, what they were made of and so on.

As the children's curiosity were piqued I took out the storybook and we discussed the cover, identifying and comparing and wondering what will unfold in the story. The story, about a boy who was sold off to a carpet factory in Pakistan and how he later escaped to go to school, was set in Pakistan.

The story of course provided the base for teaching the values of being thankful for what we have, for the opportunity to be children and most of all, the opportunity to learn; things I think some Singaporean children,even home-schooled ones, take for granted. The illustration in the book was also beautiful and provided the children with scenes of Pakistan that were new to them.

I was unwell on Tuesday though, and fell back on routine of course and written work. Luckily, my daughter was on a roll already doing her work and we managed to do spelling with the small movable alphabets, even if it was only three words. With Ihsan, I presented the symbols for all the parts of speech with a new twist; I used the rhyme below from ' i before e (except after c)' by Judy Parkinson and thereafter Ihsan labelled sentences with the symbols.

This one, by David B. Tower and Benjamin F. Tweed dates back to 1855-

Three little words you often see
Are articles: a, an and the

A noun's the name of anything.
As: school or garden, toy or swing.

Adjectives tell the kind of noun,
As: great, small, pretty, white or brown.

Verbs tell of something being done:
To read, write, count, sing, jump or run.

How things are done, the adverbs tell,
As: slowly, quickly, badly, well.

Conjunctions join the words together,
As: men and women, wind or weather.

The preposition stands before
A noun as: in or through a door.

The interjection shows surprise
As: 'Oh, how pretty!' or 'Ah, how wise!'

The whole are called the parts of speech,
Which reading, writing, speaking teach.

If you noticed; pronoun is missing in the rhyme above so I also read to Ihsan the anonymous one below:

Every name is called a noun,
As field and fountain, street and town.

In place of noun the pronoun stands,
As he and she can clap their hands

The adjective describes a thing,
As magic wand and bridal ring.

The verb means action, something done-
To read, to write, to jump, to run.

How things are done, the adverbs tell,
As quickly, slowly badly,well.

The preposition shows relation,
As in the street, or at the station.

Conjunction joins in many ways,
Sentences, words, or phrase and phrase.

The interjection cries out, 'Hark
I need an exclamation mark!'

Through poetry, we learn how each
Of these make up the Parts of Speech

It is important to stress on the part that the rhyme is trying to explain since is purely auditory unless you write it out on where the child can see it and can instead emphasis through colour or underlining. It would not be a good idea to use this as a first lesson on grammar as it will be too much to gather at one time, but you know your student best.

For younger children, you can also explore 'virtual' object based inquiry through the Backyardigan's cartoon 'The Tea Party' where they explored, what else, tea!It would help if your child have seen, touched and smelled tea of course.

Total Eclipse of the Heart

2009-07-26T14:41:00.000-07:00

This has been another lucky week for me because of history and science. On Monday, I had the good fortune of it being the 40th anniversary of Man's landing on the moon. So we happily looked at the visuals and stories that was in the papers that day and read 'Moon' a book by National Geographic with a cat trying to explain the workings of the sun, moon and earth. We then reviewed the concept of night and day and the seasons.

On Wednesday, we of course had the total eclipse of the sun and again the newspapers were very helpful. We also watched the coverage by CCTV which totally spooked me with the day getting dark suddenly and then getting light again. Ihsan was commenting on how excited I was and being quite amused that his mother is capable of excitement. I also did solat kusuf for the first time and explained how the loss of sunlight is a reminder of yaumul kiamat where the same thing will happen, only forever and not six minutes, and how the prophet and the sahabat would solat for a long time when an eclipse happen even though it is only two rakaat.

The CCTV coverage was useful in explaining things that Muslims don't do like celebrating or performing rituals to the sun. On the flip side, I was also able to stress on the spirit of scientific inquiry when a group of foreigners were interviewed who came to China just to observe and study what happens.The next day, we were treated to a visual of the eclipse in the newspaper which I happily used for my circle time.

I of course am doing the theme of the sun, earth and moon which is to tie in with Ramadhan preparation. At the moment I am trying to come up with a list of things I need to review/make which includes :

1. Preparation for change in daily schedule in Ramadhan
2. Review of surahs learnt
3. The history of Ramadhan (come to think of it I don't know when and how the ruling came down)
4. The practice of Ramadhan
5. Review of doas learnt and doas for Ramadhan
6. Ramadhan daily fasting chart

I am planning to have a theme based on 'The Ummah', surahs from the Quran or the battles fought in Ramadhan, haven't decided yet, which by right I should have decided because Ramadhan is less than a month away....

2009-07-14T15:38:00.000-07:00

This morning we read the next story from ' The Barefoot Book of Earth Tales' of 'Why the Sky is far Away' from Nigeria. We learned that in some cultures myth is created to provide an explanation for phenomena that people then found unexplainable and to teach values that is shared from generation to generation and that to enrich the story, imagery is usually used. In this case people were taking more of the sky which used to be a stretch away to eat.We ended up talking about the ozone layer and environmentalism, of not taking more from the earth than you need, not being greedy and of wastage.

When we returned from the playground, I presented the red rods again to Sofiyya, this time using the story of the prince trying to rescue Rapunzel from the tower by building a red staircase. Later, she asked me to build the brown stairs and I used the story of Aurora climbing up the castle tower when she was lured to find the spindle. Sofiyya took out the storybook when I was about to present to her and showed me the page where Aurora was climbing the stairs. She was truly interested and even talked about it later in the day.

I also managed to get Umayr to work with me on addition with the golden beads using the story of a boy trying to rescue his wise teacher from being trapped by an evil, jealous villager by solving puzzles.

I have of course been reading ' Oral Storytelling and Teaching Mathematics' by Michael Schiro. This tradition has of course always existed, and is an integral part of Waldorf schooling; I just wasn't really sure of the way how and am not very creative with coming up with stories. Hmm, I really need to work on coming up with stories now; the kids love it.In fact, to this day, I can recall my lower secondary art teacher who always had a story to tell. I loved those lessons.

All the while, Ihsan was drawing the Asian map which came up surprisingly neat and detailed, on his own. Before that, I have presented the symbolisation of decimals which got stretched into representation by fractions as an alternative and the number line between whole numbers, decimals and fractions and negative numbers when Ihsan looked at me with uninspired eyes, telling me how simple the initial lesson was.During the later part of shelf work, the boys also used scrap to make models of trucks.

For written work, Ihsan did anagrams with names of countries, a quiz on parallelograms and a revision of capitalisation and initials for mechanics. The little ones did counting and phonics revision for their written work session.

After Zuhr, we learned our hadith for the week and did our akhlaq lesson from 'My First Book about Islam' which touched on 'Our Community' and the ummah. From a conversation about how there were people of all races and nations who are Muslims we talked about slavery when Umayr mentioned how Bilal, became the first person to be a muazzin.

In the evening, we took a slow jog down Brickland Road, the kids actually wanted to go the whole stretch and we ended up doing so. They later blowed cattails and played throwing sticks over the bridge, they call it 'poohsticks' from Winnie the Pooh, but since there wasn't much water in the monsoon drain, most of them got stuck. After getting our drinks at the petrol station, they managed to even play on the swing at the neighbourhood farm before heading home. Whew! that was a long but fruitful day and I look forward to what we can do tomorrow.

Monday Blues

2009-07-13T06:27:00.000-07:00

To fight my Monday feet from dragging me down with them; I did my chores where possible and started school as soon as I could and stuck to my plan (ok, sort of) and routine. This is cool; I'm gonna do this every time I feel brain-dead.

We started off with Quran and memorisation of the surahs; something I have been trying to discipline myself with instead of doing it after zuhr and while the boys were doing their Arabic writing I showered my princess who has just woken up ( she woke up at 5 after sleeping at 6 the day before).

After outdoors, I read ' On Earth' by G. Brian Karas which touches on why there is night and day, the seasons and the different weather during the various seasons. I then asked the children to draw how they see themselves in relation to the earth. Ihsan drew himself on the globe while Umayr drew vehicles on land and aeroplanes in the air. Go figure...I can't understand Umayr myself, how he sees abstract concepts and struggles with reading, how he forms opinions on human behaviour but refuses to learn his math.

The boys later did extensions with the red rods and knobless cylinders while Sofiyya worked with the geometric solids. We then did written work: Ihsan did a quiz on the Sun and word problems. Sofiyya and Umayr practiced cutting and Umayr later did matching of word to picture while Sofiyya circled words that start with 'b'.

After tafsir of Al Humazah for Umayr and Al-Bayyinah for Ihsan, I managed to get a decent quiet time till 4p.m and read a few chapters. After dinner, we went to Keat Hong Park where the boys played ball and Sofiyya played in the playground. I actually managed to read some more...

Leaf me in the sunlight

2009-07-09T06:23:00.000-07:00

I kind of got really hooked on 'The Sun Mother ' story from ' The Barefoot Book of Earth Tales'; today we read the part of the story on the sun's mothering of the plants on earth again. Thereafter, I presented ' The parts of the Leaf' to Ihsan and we related the parts to the actual leaves we have from Tuesday's leaf printing session.

While doing this, the juniors did the leaf and tree puzzle and looked at books.

From there, I read ' Catching Sunlight' by Susan Blackaby to introduce the children to the leaves' important work of making food and producing oxygen for the rest of the world. Ihsan later did a concept map on parts of the leaf and photosynthesis.

I then read ' We are extremely very good recyclers' by Lauren Child and 'Lost in the Snow' from the Magic School Bus series on request by the juniors. We then did guided reading of ' We Like Kites' from The Berenstein Bears series ; our book for this fortnight.

Sofiyya is into quantification and we have done red rods, sandpaper numbers and cards and counters. Since she likes pictures of girls in pretty dresses so much, I found a book with such pretty pictures of children, plants and animals that look like its from the turn of the century era called ' 1 is One' by Tasha Tudor. Of course, Umayr wanted in too.

I then did bookmarks with Umayr with snowflake patterns; combination of the morning reading session of ' Amelia Bedelia the Bookworm' and the Magic School Bus' 'Lost in Snow'. He was so into it, he made two and some other figures with the remaining paper.

It's so different from sitting down trying to make him do some 'schoolwork'. I am thinking of letting 'schoolwork' go for the moment and do more hands on like this which still adresses the skills that he needs to learn in a non-literary way which I think is much like what Eisner was talking about when he talked about communicating understanding through alternative avenues like the arts.

Some of the things we want to explore is creating a recycling corner at home with a plant to buy when we reach a certain target; inspired from the book ' We are extremely very good recyclers'. Something else we can extend from today's lessons is exploring snowflakes something that can connect with the water theme we did the fortnight before.

This turned out to be an ok week after all. One more day to go, I still have a long list we can do with the sun theme.

The Sun

2009-07-06T05:35:00.000-07:00

I am beginning to think I am what criticisms of the education system is; a person who can pass tests but not put into action what I've learned. I see this especially in lesson plans that I can come up with but not execute and struggling with implementing theories that I have learned in actual lessons. The funny thing is, I find myself most capable of carrying out my thoughts when I am most relaxed and open to my children's reactions and feedback without thinking too much of theories. I really need to work on this 'people' aspect. Maybe I am the one with Asperger's: )

Ihsan was out today with an upset stomach; the illness of too much of a good thing. He still managed to work on his madrasah homework after coming back from the clinic and I let him watch DK's Eyewitness on ' Rocks and Minerals' dvd; something we touched on recently.

My little James Dean without a cause was an angel in his brother's absence. He sat through my presentation looking interested and even labelled the Australia map he traced without my asking and coloured it.

Sofiyya meanwhile was presented with the first Geography lesson of 'Land, Water and Air'. It sounds grand but I basically had three receptacles filled with soil, water and an empty one that is supposed to represent air. I then do the three part lesson with it, with some stories thrown in here and there. If the air presentation is a bit abstract; you can blow up a balloon to show that something i.e. air is inside.

Today's presentations was kicked off by an aboriginal story from Australia of ' The Sun Mother' which basically talked about their beliefs on how the earth came to life. I stressed to the children that these are the beliefs of non-Muslims and that we are reading it to learn more about what they think of life and filled in our version where needed.

Umayr got interested in the story when I told of Australia's not very glamorous past during the reign of the British Empire. There is something inside that little boy that finds anything rebellious interesting. It also helped that the illustrations in ' The Barefoot Book of Earth Tales' are beautiful. We plan to do art extensions from the story.

From today's work there are a few areas that can be extended. Ihsan can do more research on rocks and minerals based on the video that he has watched today. As he missed our reading on the Sun Mother, he can catch up on the repeat story that I will do with the juniors tomorrow. A connection that can be explored is the effect of the weather on rocks and minerals, where I can also bring in my Sun theme.

I intend to tell the story of the Sun Mother again tomorrow albeit with an emphasis on the sun's effects on plants. We will explore leaf shapes using the leaf cabinet and making leaf printing. Having said that, the leaf shapes in the neighbourhood's surroundings are limited. We'll have to work with what we have, I can't fly to Botanic Gardens all the time.

From this , I will also start on Ihsan's work on leaves for Botany and restart the topic on roots at another time. This will be extended to photosynthesis by next week I hope as we explore the sun and its relations to life on earth more.

The artwork from the book is also an inspiration for my alphabet story this week. Sofiyya however already knows 's', I think I can do the arabic letter 'syin' instead to go with the sun illustration for syamsun.

Water?

2009-07-01T01:00:00.000-07:00

This is the part where the theme gets lost till a new one is introduced. Well, its into its second week, I think we've done ok. I'm going to do 'earth' next week, now is sort of a transition period. I like how it turned out and I think we are going ' theme'y for many more lessons to come.

It rained early this morning, the boys were excited to see how many snails we'll catch sight of today when we went to the playground. It was a record 25 snails from the last high of 15. We managed to get through the presentations for today when it rained. I did days of the week with the younger kids and Ihsan did 'the year and its parts'.

For Ihsan's presentation I basically printed out 6 copies of a one page calendar of the year from enchantedlearning.com, cut out each month and pasted them on a long strip of yellow paper. The strip is then basically folded into half, third, quarter, sixth and twelfth to show the different divisions of the year. One strip was left to show the whole year.

Ihsan was also taught the semester, bimester and trimester. I used fraction puzzles from his fraction work to represent the year in fraction but I plain forgot that they stop at tenths and had to come up with a single twelfth at the last minute.

At the end of the school day, Umayr made 'doll gliders'; dolls with paper aeroplanes strapped with masking tape on them.I wish I could show them here but I'm having problems attaching pictures to my blog. He ended up putting paper aeroplanes on at least half a dozen soft toys.

Watering Hole

2009-06-30T01:23:00.000-07:00

Today we continue with the "Water" theme with activities related to our visit to the Newater Visitor Centre in Changi. I tied it up with tech skills; taught the kids how to transfer the pictures we took there from my handphone to my laptop using bluetooth.
The boys, especially Ihsan, was pretty fast with it. I of course hand held Sofiyya on what to click on. I think it helped that my handphone had a touchscreen.

I also taught them how to edit the pictures which were facing the wrong way. They get to practice clockwise and counter-clockwise. After that I tried to do shared writing with the children but Sofiyya ran off to her dolls, Umayr was only interested in cutting out the pictures and I have to say thankfully, Ihsan was the only student left despite his reluctance.

I am planning to try this again tomorrow with all the pictures. I can bring in sequencing besides shared writing and try to draw a concept map of the process that takes place at the plant.

Thereafter, I did my presentations to the children; metal insets for Sofiyya, cloud cards for Umayr and types of roots cards for ihsan. They were all introductory lessons, I was pretty relaxed.

Umayr did his written work after a long hiatus and my little princess is so into learning her Arabic letters she sat by me to recite and revise and did it again in the afternoon.

Learning and teaching

2009-06-24T06:29:00.000-07:00

We continued with our water theme today, I wish I can let them be more independent but the kids have been a bit restless. Probably, itching for a holiday or just the usual cycle.

I read 'The Faraway Island' by Hofmeyr and Daly about a man who lived on a deserted island and turned it into a garden haven. Sometimes when you meet so many people here, you feel like going away to live on a deserted island,I can touch base with this character.

So from there, we made a model of an island and I reviewed the definition with the children. They were not as eager to make the model though. Ihsan went on to find 45 islands on the globe, when I only asked for 10 and wrote on how to collect water if he is left on a deserted island and what he will use them for.

Sofiyya did botany puzzles with me and I named the parts verbally for her and later she tried reading 'Clifford Barks' to me. Where is Umayr in all this? He was whining about not being able to play longer at the playground.

He did however join us for the island model, storytime and news on the Singapore International Water Week. Today we talked about how many people don't have proper sanitation and the main causes of contaminated water.

Just for Sofiyya, I cut out the picture of Holland's Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, so she can see a real prince who was championing the cause of recycling water and providing proper sanitation. The chatty little princess would later tell her father later in the day that some people didn't have water to flush...

Water

2009-06-23T06:58:00.000-07:00

This is what every homeschooling mum dream of; a theme that happens to be in the news and for my case it was a real coincidence that this should be Singapore International Water Week when our (unplanned) theme is water.

Yesterday I read DK eye know's "water", something dearest daughter picked up from the library last week. Today we looked at the purifying process that used water goes through at the Changi Water Reclamation Plant; though of course we did not go into details.

It was also a great chance to convert figures. We converted cubic metres to litres and tonnes and Ihsan enjoyed how big the numbers were. We also compared the sizes of the tunnels relative to the size of an average man and reservoirs. The kids learnt how we can use common items to relate amounts or sizes in communicating to others.

We made a mixture with water, chickpeas, spices and tumeric and tried to sieve out as much as we can using different sieves as well as to observe the process of sedimentation. Ihsan listed out verbs that are used in the purifying process and Sofiyya used the syringe to transfer water.

Umayr, ever the rebel, of course wanted to read a book for the (planned) theme for next week 'Catching the Moon' by Myla Goldberg. I crayon sketched a moon by the water picture for him but he chose to sketch the picture from the book where the moon was rowing a boat. Now to planning for the rest of the week and next. Sometimes though things turn out best unplanned.Over dinner, Ihsan said he wanted to be a butcher, hmm that's an interesting theme to take in the future...

Hiatus

2009-06-10T01:48:00.000-07:00

MasyaAllah, is it June already?We've been doing a lot of things. I think I have also been influenced by my Waldorf inclinations that I have not been using technology much and I get bored with my TV which I still watch with hubby when the kids are asleep. I don't think I will be able to get rid of it.

Today, we read on the Arabian Peninsula as a key lesson in "Our Prophet Muhammad (Grade Two)" the sirah book that I'm using from IQRA. How apt, I got my chance take out our Asia puzzle map which was collecting dust and highlighted the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf.

I also got to review land and water forms with the kids as we tried to recall what a peninsula and a gulf is.After that we coloured the map of the Arabian Peninsula from IQRA's " The Life and Sayings of Rasulullah (Grade Two)". Then we listened to Dawud Wharnsby's MadinatunNabi....

I am inspired, gonna go and write up a unit now...

Lost in Space

2009-03-28T06:46:00.001-07:00

I have not been blogging much lately and I think one factor that is lost is that I have not been reflecting on my work with the children. Maxine Greene would call it the de-familiarising process which allows one to always look at things afresh. In Islam in muhasabah we take it one step further as the renewal of the self and his (her) relation to Allah.

The beauty of the faith is that there is always that spiritual connection in everything that we do and I am truly needing it with all that Western theories I'm always reading about.

Well, today we painted Cesar Augustine taking a walk and seeing the autumn leaves falling. We didn't really paint his potrait of course but just waves of yellow and wisps of red for the leaves, which of course turns orange when they come together.

So Cesar Augustine was walking along and admiring the beauty of fall and thought he wanted to always be remembered on such beautiful autumn days when the plants and trees change their colours so he decided to name that month August after himself.

I of course told the kids it was just a tale I spun but August is really named after Cesar Augustine. The lesson is a consolidation of Ihsan's lessons on the history of the names of months of the year and the leaf rubbings, leaf shapes, leaf parts lessons we just had.

I of course could also link it to the spring equinox, the revolutions of the earth and Roman history. What joy it is to homeschool....By the way, there are no pictures cause my handphone which I took photos of the kids' works and moments of working are nowhere to be found. I once lost my laptop and it showed up in my son's treasure basket.

Yesterday for Ihsan's lesson on mechanics we did capitalisation of the months. Being the Montessori-Waldorf and whatever else is fun homeschooler that I am, instead of just writing the labels I wrote with Stockmar crayons in my most archaic handwriting and we decorated each label according to the seasons or history of each month.

Thereafter, the labels were stuck to Ihsan's main lesson book in a circle to signify the turning of the earth round the sun ( which he drew with the crayons in shades of yellow, orange and red)through the months to make a y

What is darkness?

2009-03-28T06:32:00.000-07:00

We observed Earth hour today. Didn't really plan what to do. We sort of just didn't turn on the lights after getting home from our swimming session at CDANS. Ok, we cheated a bit when the kids had to go to the washroom for the lack of candles.How dark does it get in Singapore anyway with the streetlights and the lights from the neighbours?

Anyway, at the end of Isya' jemaah, Ihsan turned to my husband and asked, " What is darkness?I mean, I can't touch it. Is it the blurry dots I see when the lights are off?" My husband replied, " It is the absence of darkness..." We went on to explain that when we see, we are actually seeing the reflection of light off the objects around us.

Ihsan then went on to ask how fast light travelled and we cheated, again, and surfed on my husband's I-touch...Well, something came out of it after all. We also shared on how dark it is in the countryside and my personal experience in Brunei and how people in the past and in some communities today go to bed early and rise to the sun....this has been a beautiful experience.Maybe next time we can have earth hour in Brunei, by the river at my sis' house, under the moonlight with a campfire....

Back to full swing

2008-11-03T01:33:00.000-08:00

The past two weeks I have been able to concentrate on my kids as I have stopped teaching my neighbour's kids and won't continue next year too. It's nice to get back to the rhythm we were building before Ummi was itching to try some things other than homeschooling: )

I have been able to finish 95% of the things planned, alhamdulillah. I pray that Allah will always give us the rizki to continue our homeschooling despite whatever the frontpage of the newspapers say everyday.

Last week started with a Raya gathering at my junior, Farah's house. Managed to squeeze a few hours of school even then. It was fun meeting my juniors again especially with two of them home from overseas and seeing how much their families have grown and are growing.

We also managed to move on to the second great lesson, The Coming of Life, with the first lesson on the black line. In the picture you can see Ihsan rolling back the yarn at the end of the lesson.

We had some curious looks from people walking by the pathway but most just went by while some smiled after looking for a while and went on their different ways.

For the lesson, I had 30 metres of yarn and 1 cm of red ribbon with the red ribbon at the inner end of the spool.

As I told the story of how life came to be, based loosely on the story found in 'Children of the Universe' with some adjustments here and there, the children look out for the red strip which signify the coming of Man. They then see, how much later Man came and how long and how much it took before our history began. Montessori first came up with the lesson to teach some children humility during her sojourn in India where most of the elementary lessons started to develop.

As follow up, I did a timeline of the different life forms that I mentioned in my story. Ihsan was very interested and kept to the work. I plan to follow up with the Clock of Eras and journal work with inspiration from Miss Barbara's website.

I thought I'd do a timeline of a day in a child's life for Umayr but the timeline ended up as a crown.

Oh well, at least the prince co-operated and agreed to do his written work despite his royal status for the day.Oh yes, we do written work.
This has been our schedule since we got back
our homeschool day all to ourselves:

6.30: Solat/Shower/Breakfast/Play

8.00: Circle and outdoors

9.00: Independent work and presentations

11.00: Written Work as lunch is cooked

12.00: Lunch/play

1.00: Solat/ Quran/ Islam

2.00: End of school day

One of the new things that we have tried is copywriting. My kids hate writing, except Umayr who loves writing his Arabic letters.So when I came by copywriting lessons in my Waldorf lesson plans from waldorfenrichment.com, I thought I'd try them. Then I thought, why not copywrite the sayings of the Prophet (pbuh)?

So, the aim is in creating a beautiful piece of artwork in the form of letters. There are no lines and the children are free to write in any forms they like.

Last week, I incorporated botany, art and copywriting, akhlaq and quran into one lesson. I only do the lessons with Ihsan, Umayr just likes hanging around. Unfortunately that is my work, Ihsan was hiding from the camera.

What we did was, we studied the parts of the leaf from those that we picked up during outdoor lessons. I told them the story of the happy leaf as it danced in the sunlight while we did leaf stamping as a border in Ihsan's case, his younger siblings were just printing everywhere. I then wrote the hadith in the middle of the paper.

I am planning to use the Hadiths from the Ad-Duha manuals that goes along with the lessons that Ihsan is doing at the moment. So for this lesson we use the Hadith on how Allah will weigh even your smallest deeds as Ihsan is currently learning surah Al-Zalzalah.

My husband was super trying to please me this weekend, we went out most of the time. Luckily, we had the energy for school today; mostly tying up things we missed out on last week. InsyaAllah, this will be a fruitful week too. Here are the kids having a lego session at the hardcourt near the playground.

Story of the Earth

2008-10-16T01:58:00.000-07:00

Today we continued with the Story of the Earth with a wet on wet painting on how early Earth was like with red and yellow. It goes something like;

When mother earth first came about, it was a great ball of fire, cause Father Fire burnt so violently that sparks flew across the skies like fireworks. ( Draw in circles to form a yellow ball as Earth, then from the centre make a tiny red circle with strokes outwards and dripping).

From this great marriage, Brother Air was born (lightly circle the earth with red ) but most of it was carbon dioxide that no life can exist then.

This is like an abridged version of the Story of the Earth. I use the book; "Children of the Universe" by Michael and D'neil Duffy to help me with my Great Lessons. Of course, Miss Barbara's website is a huge help as well . (www.missbarbara.net)

With the upcoming Deepavali, we read "Why is this Festival Special-Divali" from Franklin Watts. In the afternoon, the children attempted to make a rangoli. I put a few scoops of rice into cups of water that has been added with food colouring in the morning and dried them out by the window.

We used the triangle cabinet to make the patterns before putting the glue on prior to sticking the rice onto our designs. I'm not sure Montessori will agree with this.

It was pretty messy but they enjoyed themselves. After that I let them spread butter and sugar on toast for practical life. Oh ok, I wanted to eat some toast.

EZlink cards for homeschoolers

2008-10-11T10:57:00.000-07:00

If you use public transport, chances are your child would need an EZlink concession card once he turns 7. If you purchased the child ezlink card from 1 April 2006 onwards, the card will expire on 30 April on the year the child turns 7. For details go to www.transitlink.com.sg.

Before this happens, send a letter to Transitlink to apply for a concession card. With it you'd need to forward copies of your child's birth certificate, the exemption letter from the Ministry of Education, your NRIC and a passport sized photo of your child. For more information you can call Transitlink's hotline at 1800-2255 663.

Homeschooling in Singapore

2008-10-11T10:39:00.000-07:00

Time passes so quickly, it's been two years since I started my journey. I feel it's only right that I share some of my experiences. I guess the first step would be how I got my passport to homeschooling.

As primary school education is compulsory in Singapore, you'd need to get approval to homeschool your child once he reaches the school going age if you are a Singaporean. Application is done in the year you are supposed to apply for Primary 1.

Contact the Ministry of Education for the application forms to be sent to you via e-mail. I am sure they'd post you a hard copy if you so desire. The application basically requests for information on your curriculum for the whole six years and some personal background on qualifications.

I received my reply about three weeks later. In the meantime, while waiting make lots of dua and Insyaallah everything will be fine.

Try to avoid the primary one registration period around September/October; it's better to send before that.

Map Making

2008-09-15T22:04:00.000-07:00

I have recently taken a big leap into making materials after too much thinking about making materials and coming up with wishlists that never materialise. Imagine that? Come October it'd be two years since we started formally homeschooling. I've made materials here and there but the past year have been more serious. I made the geometric cabinet, the metal insets and finally the maps are materialising.

I tried to make it as simple as possible; or I'll never make anything. So, I went to Daiso $2 shop where I found white cardboards about the size of a drawing block. My one-tracked mind started with Asia because that is the continent we are supposed to study first. HAHA! have I learnt my lesson.

After being carried away with the carving of the countries' outlines, I realised that I had cut off even countries that were teeny tiny bits. Uzbekistan and Tajikistan for example, are just slightly bigger than the fingernail on my thumb.

I'm planning to re-draw these tiny pieces in groups from the same region.The map is backed by another cardboard with the outlines traced onto it.

For the knobs, I used craft blocks of about 1 cm cube blocks from Daiso and hot-glued them to the pieces; the capitals where possible.

Now, I'm moving on to continents that are simpler; namely Australia, North America, Africa, South America and Europe. For Australia, I've hot glued the map onto an mdf board instead, hopefully it'll be sturdier.

The kids of course will have to be reminded more than ever to be gentle with the materials. If any if the countries do get 'terminated', it won't be that much of a hassle anyway. I'll just make another one with the cardboard.

Ramadan Moon

2008-08-24T21:31:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away there was a small village between two mountains. In one of these little huts, lived Ali and his parents. Ali is a 5 year old boy, just like you. His mother, Asiya weaved mats that his father, Ahmad, sells in the town marketplace.

One day, Ali's father came back early from the market. " Why are you home so early, was there not many people at the market?" asked Ali. " Today is a special day, we are going up the mountains to look for the Ramadan moon" replied Ahmad.

So after Maghrib, Ali and his dad set out to the top of the mountain. That night, the mountains was lit up by little lanterns that the villagers carried with them. The mountains looked like they were surrounded by giant fireflies.

" Look, its the new crescent moon!" shouted someone among the crowd as Ali reached the top of the mountain with his father. " MasyaAllah, Ramadan mubarak!" shouted someone else. " Ali tomorrow we will begin our fast and InsyaAllah, you will start learning how to fast too just like us," Ahmad said to Ali. It was a beginning of a wondrous journey....

Presentation

The aim of the lesson is to remind the children of the upcoming fasting month of Ramadan. InsyaAllah, I hope to tell the story of Ali's experiences in the fasting month as the children themselves go through it. The rules of fasting, the spiritual elements, etc can thus be introduced in story form and lessons directed at a particular child can be included as a way to reach to him.

The stories are also lessons on the alphabet; here the mountains make an "M" and there is also a "M"oon. The children copy the drawings into their main lesson book. They of course have their own way of drawing and I don't suggest or tweak whatever they draw.

Extensions

While telling the children the story, I remembered the lamps or Fanoos that Shirin made last year for our Homeschooling event at Istana Kampong Glam. line. I can retell the story, relating the lamps to those Ahmad, Ali and the villagers carried with them up the mountains.

Another extension is the phases of the moon where you make three part cards of the moon phases and the explanations for each phase to match for older children.

Multiplication wood block

2008-08-17T22:04:00.000-07:00

My planned two week break is not looking much like a break at all. Today, for the session with Iman I started off with the story of John the woodcutter. It is basically a combination of 'Snow White', 'Hansel and Gretel' and 'Little Red Riding Hood'.

It goes;

Once upon a time, there lived a woodcutter called John who worked for a wicked queen. This queen had a magic mirror from which she'd ask " Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?". The mirror always replied that it is the queen who is the fairest. However, one day the mirror told the queen that she was no longer the fairest but instead Snow White has taken her place.

Terribly angered by this, the Queen told John to kill Snow White. John took Snow White deep into the forest to kill her, but had not the heart to do so and he let her go. Now, having done that, John could not go back to the castle but instead went back to his family in the village far away from the evil queen.

His wife was not happy as now John did not have a job and as the days go by, they were running out of money and John had no choice but to sell wood at the marketplace. He did not make much money and there were days that the family would go hungry as there was no money to buy food.
Out of desperation, John agreed to his wife's pleas that they abandon his children in the forest. Their stepmother loathed them and saw this as a chance to get rid of the children. So, one day, John took his children Hansel and Gretel to the woods on the pretext of having a picnic. They walked very deep into the forest that the children kept asking, " Are we there yet?"

After about twenty times asking, their stepmother laid out the mat and put down their picnic basket where they had their lunch of hard bread and butter with raspberry juice. Halfway through the meal, their wicked stepmother told the children that she and John are going deeper into the woods to cut some expensive wood to sell in the marketplace and that the children were to stay quietly at their picnic spot for them to return.

Of course, John and his wife never came back. That night and many nights after that, John could not sleep as he was always thinking of Hansel and Gretel. As a result he was always tired and did not have the strength to cut up much wood and thus did not make much money.

His wife was angry with him. One day, she decided to leave John and as she dashed out of the house a horse carriage was going down the road at breakneck speed and she died from her injuries.

John now had no wife nor children. He decided that instead of grieving he should work hard and try to find his children. Everyday, John would wake up very early to get the best wood and search for his children in the evening after returning from the marketplace.

On one such day, as John was searching for his children in the woods he heard a little girl cry for help. He thought it was Gretel, but when he peered into the house where the cries were coming from he saw a little girl in a red hood and her grandmother shivering in fear as a wolf was coming at them.

Quickly, John drew out his gun and shot the wolf and the little girl and her grandmother was safe. The old woman was so grateful to John that she gave him a job as a gardener at her huge cottage and the farm around it.

John was so happy because now he has found himself a job. He was grateful to Allah for His blessings and prayed that he will soon find his children. As John was getting ready to sleep, he heard knockings on the door. When he opened it, Hansel and Gretel hugged him tightly. They all stood there hugging each other for some time before John made both the children a cup of hot chocolate and that night they sat by the fire, drinking their hot chocolates and biting into marshmellows and told their father their adventures in the cottage of the wicked witch.

Whew! that's a long story to write compared to telling. After that, we did some symmetry exercises on the blackboard that formed the base of the picture for the letter "J". The children then worked with their materials and later did their copywork of the drawing.

For closing, we made a multiplication woodblock for woodwork. You can see how it is done under 'lessons' at www.waldorftv.com.

When the Sky looks Like Lace

2008-08-14T21:28:00.000-07:00

We have been having two hour schooldays the past week as I prepare for the new term in September. Today we read ' When the Sky Looks like Lace' by Elinor Lander Horwitz which is part of the reading list for the 'Weather' unit from waldorfcurriculum.com.

Then, we started on our weather chart; we are only doing it for a fortnight so I took a drawing block and folded it into 16 squares. I cut out yellow cordate leaves for sunny days, white triangular leaves for cloudy days and grey lancealote leaves for rainy days.

Thereafter, I did a 3 part lesson on the names of leaves; triangular, obcordate and hastate which the children chose from our leaf cabinet. While the children had their worktime I prepared for our baking session.

This is the recipe for " Chocolate Surprises"from Storybox magazine issue 109:

- 100 gm dark cooking chocolate
- 50 gm soft butter
- 80 gm sugar
- 1 tablespoon flour
- 3 eggs
- 12 squares of white chocolate
- 4 remakins ( small bowls)

Steps:

1. break up the dark chocolate and ask an adult to melt it over low heat with the butter.
2. break the eggs into the bowl and add the flour and sugar. Mix well.
3. Add the melted chocolate and butter to the mixture.
4. Butter 4 ramekins and pour a little of the mixture into each one.
5. Put 3 squares of white chocolate into each ramekin. Pour the rest of the chocolate mixture
on top. Cook in the over for 10 minutes at 250 degree celsius.

The children then continued with their work and had their fill of the chocolate surprises 10 minutes later.And before you know it, the schoolday's done....: )

The Story of 'R'

2008-08-14T02:42:00.000-07:00

Once, there was a boy named Robyn who liked to play by the river beside his house. On one such day, he saw a tree full of ripe, red, raspberries across the river. He decided to get on his row boat and fill up his basket with them. Hopefully, tonight he can have raspberry cake for dessert. So off Robyn went and as he rowed he sang. ( Sing 'Row,row, your boat)

The raspberries were really ripe and red as he thought and he was soon busy filling up his basket. However, the sky started to turn grey and Robyn quickly put on his raincoat and dashed to his row boat with his basketful of raspberries.

In the middle of his journey across the river, the rain started pouring. Sing:
" Row, row, row dear boat;
Get me 'cross the river,
I shall have my raspberry cake,
before the moon comes over"

He soon reached the other side of the river and knocked on his door. His mother opened
and was delighted to see the basket of raspberries. That night, Robyn relished his dessert
or raspberry cake.