THAT'S HANDY HENRY...

I often sit and worry about how little work gets done around here now that we have two little monkeys darlings in our household but the last two days have given me a reminder of why we decided to home school in the first place. I often forget that lessons do not have to be the children sat at the table pen in hand and a workbook in front of them. Many times the children may ask a simple question and we then go on to discuss this at length which seems to be more absorbed than any other kind of learning style.  

Recently my children asked me what religion their Nan (my own mother) is and I explained that she does not really follow any religion but she will always say church of England. My husband asked what exactly church of England means and we went on to discuss it a little further. A and L became excited at this point as they are huge fans of horrible histories and recalled the episode of Henry VIII and his ties to the church of England due to him wanting a divorce from Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. 

We discussed this for a while and then went on to speak about how people would change religious rulings to suit there own desires. This led nicely to a discussion on Muslims of today and how we also follow our own desires to suit ourselves at times. We then went on to read through some verses of Qur'aan where Allaah mentions people who follow their own desires and also some authentic ahadith which speak of the consequences of such things. 

Its so beautiful that a simple question about one thing can be turned into a full on Islamic lesson maashaaAllaah. This really is the main reason we home school and I must keep this in mind when i start to panic over the lack of working on times tables or handwriting practice.

Tomorrow inshaaAllaah I think I will use these verses and hadith for the children to practice their Arabic writing (pictures to follow inshaaAllaah). I often find the verses/hadith stick in their heads more if we have been discussing them anyway and also when written out. Who would have thought Henry the VIII could be so handy ;) 

RELAXED JUMU'AH...

So today is the blessed day of Jumu'ah which means that we have no set timetable in this house. A went masjid with my husband and L spent an hour working on the subject of money on conquer maths. Then when A returned he also done a little conquer maths. They both then worked in their Letts English workbooks.

The one thing I really like about conquer maths is how I am able to let them get on with it without having to be too involved. I can check their answers after and see any mistakes they made and discuss this with them to help them get a better understanding of where they went wrong. Today alhamdulillaah I was able to cook two dishes which means we can do something fun tomorrow inshaaAllaah without me having to stop and cook.

They both spent a good few hours sitting reading Roald Dahl books and then L spent about half an hour reading the oxford dictionary (yes I said a dictionary lol).

As I type this up the children and my husband are sat watching Planet Earth TV series. We have the DVD but it is available to watch on youtube. The benefit to watching documentaries such as these produced by mostly non muslims is that it gives us a chance to discuss the difference in beliefs on how things were created. When we hear the on the documentry about how things came about by chance, or evolved etc it opens up an opportunity to ask the children if they think this is correct and get into a detailed discussion. Alhamdulillaah its a tawheed lesson without even trying.

The two elder children are off to madrasah in the morning inshaaAllaah where they will stay for 3 hours so this will give me a chance to spend time with I and Z. I think tomorrow we will get messy with paints inshaaAllaah, that always seems to go down well with them....down the walls mainly but their laughter is worth all the mess! :)

CONQUERING MATHS...

As mentioned in my previous post I will be adding a regular entry inshaaAllaah to share what we have done no matter how much or how little (with the craziness around here it may be little)

The one thing I really worry about is how behind A and L are with maths. Well I say behind and really I should not as I do not like to compare them to other children their age BUT I know if they were in school they would be working on much higher levels than they currently are. Maths is not my strong point and I tend to not really push it so much with them. We used to use conquer maths but I was unable to renew the subscription when it expired in March and so we have just been doing our own thing. Alhamdulillaah I was able to renew it last week and so today they spent an hour each on there and then backed up the same subject (fractions) using their galore park workbooks. This seemed to work pretty well as it was almost 2 hours spent on maths but the time on the laptop seemed to pass pretty quickly and they enjoyed it much more than simply using workbooks.

We then went on to literacy and they spent another hour working on nouns, pronouns and verbs (active and passive). I had a few errands to do today so they then spent the afternoon rearranging their bedrooms and sorting out all their books. Alhamdulillaah I never have to touch their rooms now (apart from cleaning the windows) as they do such a great job themselves of keeping them clean and tidy.

I am currently studying tajweed at Tayyibun Institute and have to learn Surah Nabaa by Monday inshaaAllaah so this afternoon as I practiced I asked them to read along the transliteration as I read the Arabic and correct any mistakes I made. I really enjoy doing this with them and its a great way for the whole family to sit and benefit together maashaaAllaah.

This evening they sat making jewellery out of beads from an old light shade I took down. They used glass paints to colour them and it was nice to see them finding different ways to make use of them. L made some pretty earrings out of the long beads and paper clips and she asked if she can buy a small box to give them as a gift.

Tonight we all just sat in fits of laughter as I read a new book called The Dinosaur That Pooped A Planet. Not the usual kind of books they read as they are more into long chapter books but we all laughed at this silly story about poop! :)

TIME FOR CHANGE...

When I first started this blog, when it was just A, L and myself I was able to blog often but now we have I and Z on our team things have changed....a lot!

I have decided to make a few changes to how High Achievers works. From now on we will be using this as a regular homeschool diary. So whether we complete a full day of studies or simply read a book or two over a few days we will share with you.

Things are very slow around here lately and with 2 year old I and 1 year old Z its more chaos than studies but Alhamdulillaah we are still going and I make lots of duaa that we continue to do so even if it is at a snails pace.

Right! Now I have to wash up, prepare tomorrows lessons, read my Surah (I shall explain this tomorrow inshaaAllaah), drink coffee, fold clothes, drink coffee, mop floors, sort bookshelf, drink coffee, all at 11.30pm....I know I will grab a coffee :)

WHY DO THEY DO IT?...

I often find that in every situation in life there is a real opportunity to reflect and find an even bigger opportunity. Today was one of those days.

Alhamdulillaah A and L have so far managed to fast all of the days, they are really determined to complete the whole month inshaaAllaah. So I was really upset with myself today when I overslept and missed suhoor. I said to my husband that I was not going to let them fast today as the days are so long and the heat makes it much more difficult for them, so without suhoor it would be even harder. When they woke up the first thing they said to me is ''Mummy we missed suhoor'', so i explained that I had overslept and that it was okay as they could have a break today. Well the looks on their faces made me feel even worse than I already did. They looked deeply saddened by what I was suggesting. They told me they did not care about missing suhoor and that they really wanted to fast (it was a real 'pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease mummy' moment). I could tell that I was not going to win so I agreed and they ran off to pray Fajr (out of its time of course) with huge smiles on their faces.

This was my moment to reflect! What made an 8 and 10 year old so determined to fast? Why were they so keen? Did they want to please me? Was it the prize I had offered for them fasting as many days as they could? I needed to know!

I made up a quick questionnaire with the following questions on it:

1) What are your reasons for fasting in ramadhaan?
2) Why did you chose to fast even when I said perhaps you should have a break today?
3) How do you feel when you fast?
4) How do you feel at the time of opening your fast?
5) What do you hope to gain from fasting the month of ramadhaan?

I was about to find out just why they were so adamant to fast this whole month.

Here are their answers:

A

L -  (I can tell by her not so neat writing she is tired - but oh so determined maashaaAllaah)

Their answers made me so happy maashaaAllaah. None if this was for me. They know they fast for Allaah. They know the reward comes from Him. A said he sometimes feels bored, but yet he still keeps going maashaaAllaah.

I am so proud of them I can not explain it. May Allaah subhanahu wa ta'aala continue to bless and protect them, keeping them safe from all evil and harm and may He continue to help me raise them in a way in which they love to seek His pleasure, aameen ya Rabbil alameen!!!!

THE HUMAN BODY...

Part of the science work we are covering at the moment in our galore park book is the human body so today we headed off to the London Natural History Museum to visit the human biology section. We visited the museum a few weeks ago but purposely missed this section as we wanted to cover it separately.

Alhamdulillaah we are blessed to have some amazing fellow homeschooling sisters around us who are doing some fantastic work maashaaAllaah. One of those sisters over at Iman's homeschool has recently shared some really useful note book worksheets and they fitted perfectly with what we are currently covering.

So with our note book sheets in hand off we went to the museum. The plan was to do the work there but because my mum also joined us and the kids were so excited we ended up covering almost the whole museum again which left little time for writing so we will be doing a follow up lesson on Monday inshaaAllaah where the children fill out their work sheets.

I was really shocked to discover just how much or should I say how little blood the human body has (and Allaah knows best). I don't know why but i expected it to be MUCH more. 

It was pretty hard to take lots of photos as I also had baby I and Z to look after but here are a few I managed to take along the way:

This was my lesson for the day! 

The children are already planning our next trip to return inshaaAllaah, i think it may be the gift shop they are after though lol 

WE ARE STILL HERE...

I have very little time to blog nowadays so this is a bit of a catch up for me. Baby I is almost 18 months and is into everything (mainly my 'classroom' drawers) and baby Z is nearing 5 months inshaaAllaah so its all go here.

We had our home education visit on Friday and alhamdulillaah it seemed to have gone really well. They said they had not expected much work from us this time round as I had just had baby I last time they came and was in early stages of pregnancy with baby Z. They were more than happy with what the children presented to them and as usual the poor ladies sat there while A and L shoved everything under their noses in one go.

We have started a new project, the Titanic! We are working through that slowly and the children love to sit and watch the documentaries from an 8 DVD box set that i managed to pick up on ebay very cheaply maashaaAllaah. I like to use a spider graph theme when we do any project and branch off from it to cover the main subjects such as maths, science and english. The children were learning about different types of putting things in order and had to put a series of events from the making of the Titanic to the actual disaster itself into chronological order. They also used their maths skills to make bar graphs showing the different types of passengers; such as class, age, gender etc. We also done some reading comprehension. I would read a chapter at a time from an usborne book we picked up at amazon and then the children had to draw pictures to represent what I had read and also write a few words to explain the picture.

We have also slowly been working through galore park science book 1. I originally bought this level for L and level 2 for A but we decided to work through them one at a time together. This is the benefit of A and L being pretty much at a similar level. We can work together and i can just give A a little more challenging stuff.  I hope the same happens when I and Z are a little older inshaaAllaah. There is just 13 months between them so i am hoping the ease will continue when it comes to teaching them. We have been working on healthy diet and just recently went on to teeth. InshaaAllaah we will be going to the natural history museum next week where we will spend the whole day in the human body section to go with what we are covering in our lessons at home. We went there a few weeks ago but that was just a general day out, this time it will be more of an educational trip.

The children have been doing bits and pieces in other workbooks. I am not a fan of workbooks but having the two small babies means i sometimes have to give in and allow the children to use them rather than do nothing while my hands are tied elsewhere.

From Monday inshaaAllaah we will be following a new 4 week schedule. We currently cover english, maths, science, history, geography, islamic studies, arabic, other languages and projects. I was struggling to cover it all and often our lessons would spill over in to the weekends which wasn't much fun. So now i have made a new schedule where our lessons change from one week to the next. It gives me the chance over the period of a month to cover all the lessons we need to whilst only doing three days a week. We do Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Then Thursday is what we call a free day. The children can choose to do things such as painting, crafts, clay, crochet, baking, trips to library etc. I am hoping this way of doing things will make it more enjoyable again as home schooling should never feel like a burden. I must admit i am looking forward to knowing that when we finish our last lesson on a Wednesday, i then have a few days to catch up on other chores at home until we pick up again on a Monday. I made myself a planner (yes i know i am a nerd) and without it my whole world collapses lol. I really am one of those people who can only function when everything is planned out and i follow the rules. I was looking at planners online but they can be very expensive and not always suitable for what we need so i decided to have a go at making my own. I can not begin to tell you how much it has made things easy for me maashaaAllaah! Here are just a few of the pages:

I have not had chance to take many photos along the way since i last blogged but here are a few bits from what the children have been working on and some from our day out at the Natural History Museum:

Our Titanic information display

A and L drawings of the Titanic maashaaAllaah

I got this display aaaaaages ago and forgot we had it.
Alhamdulillaah it went nicely with our studying the human body. 

I am going to start taking lots more pics along the way again inshaaAllaah as it is really nice to look back through them and see how much the children have actually covered (especially when i have my ''I cant do this anymoooooooore" days lol)

That's it for now as i have a sink full of washing up that refuses to do itself!!!