Busy doing nothing....

Literally, DH was back on Monday so all week we have done absolutely nothing...

Madressah, swimming and sports as usual and other than that the kids have been enjoying their father whilst I have taken the opportunity to file my tax returns (oh what joy!!!).

But the kids seem to have been really busy and we have had very few disagreements alhamdulillah. Things we have done include: trimming down all of the tree weeds etc in the garden and the boys have been stripping the branches and making bows and arrows and having battles in the garden. Alhamdulillah place value has finally sunk in for DD2, after weeks of teaching, he just sat there are reeled off the whole concept one morning alhamdulillah. DD1 has been asking for lots of spellings to do.

New Lego kits arrived, thanks lil sis, so they have been busy building new creations and DS3 has been enjoying his mini-figures (he is the only one of my boys who is really into imaginative play mashaAllah, where he does all the voices etc, it's so cool to watch him mashaAllah).

DD has been ill miskeen, so has done nothing much else than sleep and sneeze alot alhamdulillah. She has really been asking to 'do her work' and is constantly asking for work the whole day; 'can you teach me to say my letters', 'can we do some reading', 'can I do some writing', 'can you teach me my numbers' mashaAllah it's never ending subhanAllah - girls are so different from boys! My boys NEVER ask for work, in fact sometimes I have to bully them into doing thier work so I am really looking forward to working with DD when she gets better inshaAllah.

In an attempt to up the anti with DD1's education I have enlisted the help of Tailor Made Educational Guides to write a 6 month curriculum based around his interests inshaAllah. I, and DD1, are really excited about this and we can't wait for the guide to arrive inshaAllah - make dua for us, I am finding it increasingly difficult to teach this boy - he seems to be getting stropier by the day - subhanAllah but I am determined not to give up inshaAllah.

I love these long hot summer days but not the nights too much.... we have all had very sleepless nights because of the heat and the lack of sleep is beginning to show in all of us; we are getting decidedly grumpy! So a large part of today has been sorting out disputes between the kids (arggg). I also had appointments this morning so left them with a list of questions on the whiteboard that they had to research and have answered by the time I got back - babysitter doesn't always = no work!

We have also been doing lots of revision of the kids madressah work as they have an exam at the beginning of August - I was a bit worried about how they were going to react having never been tested before but they are being quite nonchalant about it so far...let's hope it continues I am not very good around stressed people 'cos I am sooooo laid back I don't always 'get' why they are panicing.

Anyway, after some more experimentation on the properties of water in the pool we actually built some stuff using our hydro-pneumatics kit and this is what our first build looked like....

We also played (for the longest time) a DK game called Silly Sentences we had lots of fun and I thought of lots of ways to extend the game and get them writing **grin**, will let you know how that goes inshaAllah. It's a great little game mashaAllah with all the different parts of the sentences in different colours i.e. nouns = orange, conjunctions = yellow etc

I am definitely on 'unschooling' kick at the moment and I really do feel that it works better for us I am definitely a better learning facilitator than I am a teacher. I was getting the 'I have nothing on paper' feeling again - however, there were some great tips on the IHSAN Forum that put me back on track mashaAllah.

We also did some planting in the garden, learned all about DS1's new pet (a Venus Fly Trap plant: sorry but I have enough to do without looking after real pets! lol).