I am no good at thinking up catchy titles, so I'm not going to today

Lots of stuff going on in our ever evolving schedule of work as usual but the thing that has been occupying lots of time over the last couple of months is the bullying issue that DS1 is victim of... I am encouraging him to continue going to the activities that this boy also attends and to defend himself where necessary and try to ignore the non physical stuff .....a very frustrating situation as apart from the parents there seems to be no other port of call for help! These particular parents have been of little help so far, but this could change with our duas inshaAllah. I know this issue is a minuscule one in the great scheme of things and it has been making me think even more about how the people in other countries survive 'state bullying', please make dua for them also. Any advice on how to deal with this would be appreciated.

Anyway, on with the home education....I have readdressed our English curriculum as Mindsprinting goes very slowly and is somewhat limiting. However, DS1 likes it (because he finds it easy I expect) but, as I am in charge *winks* we have moved back to using the Nelson Thornes books. I am trying to add some extra interest by expanding on the units inshaAllah, e.g. DS1's first unit is about vikings so we are going to build a viking longboat, find out a little about vikings etc, there are also opportunities to design leaflets etc on the computer and I am hoping this will make it more interesting and break up the writing aspect inshaAllah (God willing).

DS1, along with a friend, has also started tutoring sessions with a teacher friend alhamdulillah; they are reading 'Goodbye Mr Tom' together and doing spelling, grammar etc in relation to the book. MashaAllah, she is doing a brilliant job and they are really enjoying it mashaAllah. And to be honest, I am enjoying not having to worry about this aspect of his education alhamdulillah.

Whilst DS1 + friend are away, I get together with said friends family and I take the 8/9 year olds to do a reading study of 'Charlottes Web' using a unit we got from Currclick (which is now unavailable) and the 'friends' mum does a phonics session with the little ones, so it all works out really well alhamdulillah.

This also ties in nicely with their project on WWI & WWII, they are concentrating mostly on the 'home front' and aircraft which is fine by me. This seems to be going on for ages as I am letting them just 'get on' with this themselves and even though there is nothing tangible coming out of this at the moment they are learning a vast amount. They have interviewed their nan about being an evacuee, angling for some Airfix aircraft models (I have yet to agree, lol), read lots of books from the library, telling me loads about the disgusting things the soldiers did in WWI in order to survive (boys eh!) and also learning lots about how the people coped at 'home'. I also purchased this really cool book from 'The Works' which has photocopies of actual 'war' documents, letters from evacuees, ration books etc that they can pull out and look at.


COOL! said the boys, don't they just love things that open out etc. I've also purchased some very reasonably priced replica ration books, info sheets etc for them to look at and handle... can't wait. It's exciting to see how they run with this...and they are even talking about writing stuff down to make a nice presentation. Alhamdulillah (praise be to Allah).

The scouts in the family are currently working towards their 'Environmentalists' badge and the cubs are half way through getting their 'First Aid' badge, I am really pleased with the Muslim Scouts and at how much they are learning and really enjoying going (apart from the bullying of course!) and would recommend that you find a club near you.. I sound like an advert now! The other week they had a challenge and had to build a marble run, and of course the home educated boys built one that had loop the loops etc and won the challenge mashaAllah, they then wanted to rebuild it at home which wasn't so much fun; not for the friends mum as she had the tidying up to do.