Sunday 24 July 2011

One week to Ramadan!

Indeed we belong to Allah and to Him we return: a close friend of mine left to be with her Lord about 5 weeks ago; she was also making plans for Ramadan just before she died. She was only 37 and never thought that she wouldn't be here to fast this year subhanAllah. I pray that Allah forgives her soul, and the souls of all the believers, and protects them all from the punishment of the grave and builds for them a lofty abode in Paradise. Ameen. It has also made me realise that I am not spiritually ready to meet Him and pray that Allah keeps this ailing soul on the Earth until such a time that He is pleased with me, ameen. I need this Ramadan inshaAllah.

Well as a part of all the spiritual reflection that has been happening of the last few weeks as a result of the death of my dear sister we have been getting excited about Ramadan. Such a blessing to have reached another Ramadan inshaAllah [we're not quite there yet!] and the kids have lots of plans and it's funny to see how their goals change as they get older and they naturally want to get involved with more ibada mashaAllah. We have spent a lot of time this week preparing....deciding what we wanted to achieve etc. with lots still left to do for next week inshaAllah.

Lego has been continuing with his English lessons and I'm not sure if I mentioned it before but they are reading the award winning Holes by Louis Sachar [oooh I felt like a chat show host or something there!]. We chose it as it seemed to appear on most schools Year 8 Reading List and also seemed really popular with the kids and ours are no exception; they are really enjoying reading this book even though it's a bit below their level [we were worried they would get bored but it's quite a good story]. Another bonus was that it was something that they could finish before Ramadan and there was quite a lot of ready made and free teaching materials available for this book not least were some fab downloads from Teachit.co.uk, they have some great resources for teaching English.

Crush and Daisy are progressing well with the Peter & Jane books....they just were not 'getting' Jolly Phonics and Daisy especially was getting confused so we went back to the old point and read method and they are flying along. I think it's a lot less complicated for them, this is a word and it says x seems to be doing the trick though! They both had lessons with Aunty M too this week with their Math, English and Science and were even joined by my friends 4 year old son but I'm not sure if he turned out to be more of a distraction lol!

Sprites English lessons haven't happened for the last two weeks as his 'classmate' was on holiday so instead they have lots of homework to do and will restart again after Ramadan inshaAllah. The kids have also started using Spellodrome that they get as part of their Mathletics subsciption which [despite having for the last year - shame on me!] we haven't used until now! Well, they are loving it mashaAllah and it's taking the edge off of spelling tests which were getting a bit tedious for all of us I think!

We also spent a day at Watermead Country Park on our bikes....it's a beautiful park with lots to do and you can also have a BBQ there [wish I'd known that before we went we were starving, lol]. We found the park as Lego had a cooking and fire lighting challenge there with the scouts, it's only about 20 min drive away and I can't believe it's taken me 8 years to find it lol! I must find out if they can take their kayaks on the lake! I think we are going to have some fab times there when the schools go back inshaAllah.


Lego and Sprite have gone through a whole shop full of match sticks and glue sticks making some sort of D-Day landing model for their project which I'm not allowed to show you yet [spoil sports!] but it's quite impressive so I am praying that this time he will get it finished, painted and photographed before one of his siblings accidently sits, leans or kicks it over leaving it in a million pieces. Don't you just hate it when that happens? We have a lot of work that ends up getting spoilt.....but there just doesn't seem to be enough space to put the many, many creations produced by four productive young people!

They have had a holiday from madressa this week as they had exams last week and next weeks madressa promises to be lots of fun as they have a bring and share food day and a presentation day among others before they break for Ramadan on Friday.

Well that was our week, I hope we can achieve all we hope to achieve for next week and get our preparations done for Ramadan inshaAllah and I pray that you all have a good week too! x

2 comments:

Umm Tafari said...

As salaam alaikum,

Maashaa Allah, my son read Holes as well this past year and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Umm Adam said...

Wa alaikum assalaam,

There has been a lot of work coming out of it mashaAllah...actually I must put on the links for the study units etc. Their teacher also let them watch the film of book too, which they also enjoyed and said it ran quite true to the book [for a change]. Would love to hear of other books that your son has read that we could also do...we have had real difficulties in choosing books for them and I think they may have to do Shakespeare this year too!