101th post

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.