Not at school

So we spent the first Friday that the kids had off from school in the park.  We were supposed to take a picnic but after making packed lunches all week I couldn't face making another sandwich so we had lunch at the park cafe instead.  They played for hours and spent quite a bit of time in the sandpit... the little ones made a fort..

 and the big ones planned strategic manouvers based on specific scenarios that they took turns to make up...

 Daisy made dessert when we got home.  She planned what she was going to make, drew her shopping list and then went shopping with Crush to get all her ingredients and this is what we had... 

Strawberries in a melted ice cream sauce with ice cream, raspberry sauce and chocolate.  The melted ice cream certainly gave it a unique flavour that I'm not sure I want to try again lol.

 Then on Sunday we went to the centenary celebrations of the Leicester AERO (flying) club.  It was a blissfully warm day and very enjoyable although the kids were disappointed to have missed out on the free flights as they got booked up so quickly each time.

Replica of a WWII Doodlebug

Replica of a Lancaster or Spitfire [depending on which one of the kids you spoke to].

Lots of helicopters to look at.

Kids had an interesting chat to the glider pilot who explained how the glider flew and how to pilot it

A restored WWII Lancaster plane that did an amazing fly by right over the heads of the crowd.

Playing with the 'blues and twos' in the police vehicle.

We went to the fun day as Lego has expressed an interest in becoming a pilot for quite a while now and we did have a lovely day.  The best bit was that the boys got to chat to some really interesting characters including old pilots both private and from the RAF... it was really strange listening to Lego chat to a retired RAF pilot about the qualities of Hurricane planes [or it is jets] that the gentleman used to fly. 

The kids did lots of recapping at school last week and as it's not 'full time' I have had to supplement a lot of their learning with further explainations; especially for Sprite as he has trouble remembering what he has done during the day because of his dyslexia.  He is not enjoying his time at the academy as much as the younger two and has been feeling ill quite a bit... I think that this may be a masking technique because he is finding it difficult to deal with his dyslexia as at other times he is so enthusiastic about what he had been doing.  So we are having to give him quite a lot support at the moment but we are hoping he will settle in soon.

Daisy and Crush come home every afternoon amazed at everything they have learned... like we have never done it before! Hmmpf...

Now that it's getting a bit colder I am planning to start a project with them to do on their 'day off'.  I want to teach them about the human body; I have been planning this for a while and have lots of fun, hands on, learning activities for them to do so hopefully they won't see it as even more 'school work'.

Same old, same old!

Although it seems like such a long time ago we thoroughly enjoyed the snow; here are some of us sledging!

Crush and Daisy have been trying to learn their number names so out came our trusty laminated fish for our magnetic fishing games

More of my home made matching games to learn their number names...I never really bother teaching this as it seems ever such a waste of time as we rarely use number names in 'real life' and I guessed they could catch up on this later but their tutor is insisting on it!  These cards can be downloaded here, although it should be noted that these ones have roses on them; I have had a request from Crush to man it up a bit and do a set with spanners or something so watch out for these to come!

Daisy decided that she wanted to make her own little 1-20 number book!

We did some writing and spelling in sand!

We spent a long time re-organising our resource shelves, games and some of our books!

And although it's not quite clear in this pic but Daisy made a drum kit [sort of] by filling up several bottles and containers with different amounts of water and spent the rest of the day playing and singing to the Prophet's Hands CD by Dawud Wharnsby Ali.  I spent the rest of the day nursing a headache!

We played lots of games this week...funny that you can go months without playing any and then have to play them all in a few days!

We practiced pioneering with paintbrushes and pencils!

We've been playing with plasticine.

We have had a craft day at the museum which included looking at lots of different toys from various parts of the world including, among others, those pictured above.  We also made masks and laminated 'things'...sorry, still not sure what they are meant to be lol.

Daisy, for some reason, has been really - and I mean REALLY - hooked on numbers over the last couple of weeks and she also modelled the numbers 1-20 from pipecleaners lol!

We have been baking up a storm, these are our yummy blueberry, banana and oat breakfast muffins.

Lego has also discovered the soldering iron and has been making remote controls etc, from scratch this week!

Apart from all of this we have had a couple of days out visiting friends and have also been plodding along with our usual school work - nothing spectacular! Tutoring has been going fabulously for Lego who is doing really well on his GCSE courses and I need to start thinking about getting some exams sorted for him.  He really wants to do his Science GCSE but I am finding it difficult to find a center for him to sit the practical aspect of the exams.  I know nothing about getting exams sorted for private candidates so any ideas would be very welcome.  

Tutoring for the younger ones is also continuing but with my approach to home ed. I'm feeling uneasy about them having to follow the National Curriculum so strictly; they have been stuck on number names for longer than I would have liked for no other reason than it appears in the curriculum at this point.  I also feel that Sprite needs to be pushed a bit harder...he is flying through his work and is always sitting their with his coat and bag on when I arrive to collect them as he has long finished his work.  He also needs to learn to focus more...not sure how I can help him with that other than to give him shorter periods of work needing concentration.  Must do some research!  We also had an really good heart to heart chat about life and education during which I asked him which way he liked to learn most i.e. by watching, doing, reading etc and he said...'I don't know', very helpful lol!

Lego also has a swimming gala coming up so the boys have been swimming a few times a week for the last couple of weeks to get their speed up...Lego is determined for his team to win this year!

What an exciting week we have had with the children starting with their tutors and mashaAllah, I must say that they had a great time and the tutors have wonderful intentions to help the community. Each of the children were assessed and they all have homework to do, which they did, without being told, as soon as they got home!  The sister also said that if I couldn't afford for them to go more than once a week [I am hoping to send them at least twice a week inshaAllah] that she would give them extra homework.  Alhamdulillah, this has been such a blessing for me; I didn't realise that I was so stressed about it all!

The children also decorated these candles after being inspired by a video we watched on YouTube

They were great fun to make and I think I may be additcted!  Lego also made this papier mache mountain diarama for his Airfix models.

Sprite made himself this Airfix tank!

Daisy made this art journal page.  She used a piece of sponge to dab colour all over the page and then used stick on paper letters and sticky back foam letters to make the words.  She then went on to paint her next to pages all in black....can't wait to see what she's going to do with those lol!

This is Sprites African inspired giraff mask and Daisy's Zebra mask, both of which were inspired by our session at the library's home school group meeting last week.  We also started making some African masks out of paper mache but they made soooo much mess I could hardly bare to look at it let alone immoratlise it in a photograph!

We also made some ghee and learned about it's health benefits and related ahadith.

The kids also made chocolate cake and orange custard, orange in colour not in flavour.  I don't know why they wanted orange custard but it was nice anyway!

Daisy has been doing some more sewing...

I have also spent some time going over the lessons that the children did at the tutoring group to make sure they understand the concepts and am doing more hands on activities to ram the concepts home.  Lego has been doing forces with related formula and long division, the others are brushing up on their times tables and handwriting before they go back to 'school' on Monday inshaAllah.

Well, we are off for a few days off with my family in London. Yay!

Gotta love the library!

This is just some of the things we have been up to since my last post and I apologise in advance for the length of the post. Sorry!


Jam tarts...yummy!

This is Daisy's impression of what Jannah will look like...

More baking, this time green sultana fairy cakes!  I don't know why Daisy wanted green ones but they were good any how.

I know some of you will probably be gasping in horror at this but we made crackers for my families xmas celebrations....I know....but they are not religious and we miss them terribly so in a moment of emotional gooeyness with my sister I said I would make some so that they could remember us at dinner.  So there you have it...a token of love to my family at a time when we miss each other the most.  Nothing more.

We have been practicing letter formations:

We also have lilly's blooming in December....can you believe it!

We made meatballs and spaghetti...it's amazing how quickly children tire of rolling meatballs lol.

We also attended our first session at the Libaries home education group.  Wow, what fun.  This week there was a brother from the museum that came to show us some African artifacts as it is (was) Black History month.  We looked a bowls made from the fruit of the Calabash tree...the fruit comes in different shapes and sizes and are hollowed out, left to dry and then used as water containers, bowls, cups etc.  The first picture is the Calabash tree which is followed by two pictures of some items made from the fruit.  All these pictures are not of the items we handled but of items that a very similar...a very efficient library employee managed to pack everything away before I got to photograph it!

We looked at African hand painted fabrics:

And a 'pillow' to help support huge hairstyles whilst sleeping, it was aparently also used by the Egyptians for the same purpose..it didn't look very comfortable though.:

We also saw a selection of African masks some of which were quite scarey lol!

Last but not least we looked at some weaved baskets made from raffia. We talked alot about how we are loosing these skills as cultures become more 'modern'...personally I think we would all be much better off if we stuck to a more traditional way of life!

I also found out that home educators can have a special library card that will allow the family to take out as many books as they like, for as long as they like and will never incur charges...bonus!

The museum will also be arranging a special tour of the museum for the group which will ncorporate a look behind the scenes and give the kids the opportunity to choose some items to be included in a display.  They will also be working on a project with the children about the local area. They will do some research using the archives etc,  talk to the people, do some digital photography etc and this will all culminate in a presentation for display in the library.  History and photography all wrapped up together...Lego's 2 favourite subjects, he was thrilled!  They have also said that they are aiming to meet individual families needs and will be willing to provide any activities that we want free of charge.

Anyway, as a result of this session we came home and they kids wanted to make their own African masks and we are also in the process of learning a little about Africa....any work they do as a follow up to the sessions they can take back to show the librarian, she takes a real interest in their work and will display anything she can.  She is such a lovely lady I pray that Allah ta'ala gives her guidance inshaAllah.

Lego has also been supporting his friend who was in hospital for a relatively routine operation and it has surprised me how thoughtful he can be...makes me want to pinch his cheeks mashaAllah.  The visits to the hospital led to lots of discussions about the other children there that had more serious and long term health issues.  Lego and Sprite both noticed that a lot of the patients spent a lot of the time without visitors and said they wanted to volunteer to visit the childrens wards at the hospital as soon as they were old enough to keep them entertained inshaAllah.  Aww how sweet mashaAllah.

For English Lego has been writing a play of a court hearing based on the book 'Holes'.  He has been doing lots of research and it has really grabbed his attention, he has even interviewed a friend that has studied law and really put a lot of thought into it.  It has taken up a lot of time and effort which was nice to see.  He seems to like writing plays and enjoying learning about the law.  I have also sat with him on this one and 'taught' him as we were going along as he was complaining that I wasn't teaching him any more and just letting him get on with stuff by himself. Complaint noted, guilt filed away, and more effort from me to ensue!
 
Everything else is as usual alhamdulillah...see you soon!