Monday happy Monday

Monday started late but finished up just on time alhamdulillah. We was very late for our joint teaching session, even after DH pitched in and cooked my contribution towards lunch mashaAllah, which didn't start until the boys got back from the mosque at dhur - oh well, it couldn't be helped.

After a late start, a lovely lunch and some Neurofen for my headache we cracked on with geography. MashaAllah, saved at the last moment by my dear sister who prepared a map and questions for this session mashaAllah. I never thought it would be so hard to find a decent map to work from, be warned! Anyway, they kids loved the session. They had a map of our local town center and had a range of questions relating to the map, some questions asked for straight forward grid references, some asked the children to look up a grid reference and find a landmark or building in the grid. Other questions asked for directions from a certain building. The kids really enjoyed it mashaAllah and even the older ones found it challenging and whilst the older ones were busy the little ones were making map puzzles.

Next up was science. Whilst we enjoyed studying cells it was good to move on and this week we looked at vascular and non vascular plants. We first talked about the differences between the different plants and how scientist use this as a means of classifying plants. Then we made little fold up (see pics) booklets; one on each type of plant. The older kids had to write the information in their booklets and the younger ones had ready prepared information that they had to read and choose where and in which booklet to glue it. Finally we completed a small quiz just to drive the concept home. Not a very interesting topic but I think that the kids liked making the little books!

I really enjoyed the art this week mashaAllah. We brought together our positive and negative images lesson and our patterns lesson this week. We cut a large positive image out of white paper and divided it up into sections; each section had to be filled using different patterns. All the children from the 3 to the 13 year old can all take part in this lesson and it is always enjoyed by all. The art lessons are so simple but very effective mashaAllah. The bottom picture shows a bit of additional work we did following a previous lesson on straight and wavy lines mashaAllah.

Finished the day off with swimming and back to our friends for some more food and play alhamdulillah. I love Mondays, its such a full day and I always end up feeling really tired but happy!