Art Journalling

I have been teaching the children some different techniques to make backgrounds for their art journals as they always seem to get stuck on this.  These ones we made by spraying different coloured inks onto a page and then spraying over them with water to help them blend.  We then used stencils to make the 'watermark' kind of patters; you just lay down the stencil and then spray over with water.  You then 'dab' off the water with kitchen role and there you have it.  This just amazed the kids and they loved the effects they came up with.  The kids use cheap scrapbooks from the £1 shop for their journalling so we have to gesso the page first so that the the ink [or whatever medium you use] isn't absorbed into the paper.  Actually, whatever paper we use we gesso it first.

We used ready made inks for our backgrounds but you can make your own using the little bit of ink that is always left in your printer cartridges when you change them [how annoying is that?].  Just mix a little bit with water and put it in a pump spray; you can add mica [the shiney stuff] from make up or the craft shop if you want it to have glimmer.  You can mix different amounts of all the colours to make any colour at all... we learned all this from a fantastic crafting lady on You Tube and you can check out her video here.  It will be worth it as these sprays cost a fortune.  I think though if you want the 'glimmer' to stick to the page you need to add a tiny amount of glue but I think that this lady said it may 'go off' after a while.

Sorry these pics are not great because of the reflections bouncing off the glimmer in the ink sprays but I think you will get the idea of the effect inshaAllah.

Crush put a compass and fleur de lis in this background as he wants to use it for his cub scout stuff.

Daisy also chose the fleur de lis but wanted to make her page about the family - obviously a work in progress!

This is Sprites 2nd page - this time he spread gesso through the stencil to give a raised, textured effect.  He wants this page to be about time inshaAllah.

This is Sprites finished page.  He's not too happy with it but I think it looks great.

This is another page in Daisy's journal.  I think I have showed this before but she insisted it go on again and I do hate to disappoint her lol!

Royal Duxford

As a part of the boys ongoing fascination with war planes and tanks etc we spent a really lovely day at   Royal Duxford in Cambridgeshire.  Set in an old WW1/II airfield it houses hundreds of aircraft, tanks, military vehicles and boats.  And as they had an air show on the weekend after we visited we were also lucky enough to see the old planes flying and doing tricks in the air, it was fantastic - even for me and I'm not into war planes lol.  Anyway at a cost of £17 per adult and children under 16 going free it was a cheap day too and I would highly recommend it.  There is lots of walking between all the hangers and the two younger ones found it a bit hard going so we sat on some picnic benches towards the end and let the older two finish the hangers by themselves but everyone loved it and we plan to return one day soon inshaAllah [God willing].

And as usual, here are some photos...

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!

We are waving goodbye...

to our snuffles thank God; It's been almost three weeks of illness as each one of us came down with a virus one after another....and of course, as I have no family around me, if one of us is too ill to go out we all have to stay at home.  However, it did enable me to catch up with the washing and dusting, OK I was lying about the dusting - and we spent lots of time just talking, reading and cuddling which was really nice!

Spending so much time at home did fill me with inspiration to improve our learning/dining/crafting space so in between mopping brows, dishing out medicine, mopping up yukky stuff and sleepless nights I managed to change around the whole downstairs space [although I'm still putting stuff away!] and my bedroom and I must say they are working out fabulously.  I love my new room...it's turning in to a real calm space that I can retreat to to sooth my tattered soul whenever necessary ;)

Some learning has still been going on though with English, Math Whizz, madressah, reading, talking etc however, I did want to give a special mention with regard to the 'Great Debate' we had at Sprites English session.  The debate went really well and the children did wonderfully; pushing themselves to present when they found it really difficult and, at times, emotional. We analysed general perfomances afterwards and the children have been asked to write a reflective document on their perfomance as homework, which will identify areas for improvement and offer solutions, which we will follow up with more debate(s) inshaAllah.  If you get the chance I would encourage you to organise a debating group/society as it's a wonderful training ground for dawah work, interviews etc and really gives the children a confidence boost. 

Well apart from all that we have been making robots [or hacking, as my sons tell me] from bits of old toys, correx and staggering amounts of hot glue; Lego managed to cut himself twice on the spinning disk he put on his model LOL.  Sprite's robot didn't make it to the photo stage as it was 'injured' in battle.  Sprite also made a fab pastry for a meat pie - yum. We have also been painting still life as well as the walls and making lots of containers for our new classroom from tin cans. Daisy has been sewing using a kit my sister gave her a while back and as the holes were pre-drilled she found it really easy to sew [once she got the hang of a running stitch] and it did wonders for her confidence mashaAllah. 

Paddling pools and Autumn leaves

Can you believe the weather this past week?  Well, we thought that with such a special gift from Allah ta'Ala we should be grateful and get out to enjoy it...and enjoy it we did LOL.  So the first thing we did was to get distracted by a friend and 'dragged' out to the country park with a hastily made picnic lunch.  It was a beautiful day and the kids had a blast; apart from paddling in the lake we also took a barbecue and the 'big boys' cooked us up some sausages to accompany our lunch.

The strangest sight for me this week was getting out the paddling pool for the kids whilst sweeping up Autumn leaves from the patio - how weird! 

Soooo we spent the next few days up until yesterday enjoying the sun and the garden [the kids] and getting loads of washing done [me] and we even had friends to stay over for the weekend.  The children also spent some time making a bug and insect hotel thang out of a wheelbarrow....it had a 'play' space for every common garden bug you could think of LOL...pictures to come inshaAllah.

We have also spent a great deal of time on cars in the last week....one broke down and is now 'resting' on the  driveway until hubby can get round to reviving it but alhamdulillah we had just bought another car [as hubby quite skillfully had an idea that the old one was going to die LOL] but the suspension arm broke on that yesterday so we had that to sort out too!  I'm wishing we didn't have to rely on the car so much :0(

It's been great but we had to crack on with the education today, so it's been Maths and English as usual and we did a teleclass with Supercharged Science on Sound and Sonic Vibrations and each of the children made one of these harmonicas that use wind speed and resonance to make a buzzing sound.  They quite enjoyed the activity and all decorated their harmonica appropriately...the first picture is of the harmnoica and the video shows the harmonica in action.....

Oh and, alhamdulillah, Lego had his plaster off yesterday and it looks like it's healing wonderfully and we are hoping that he will be discharged by the plastic surgeon on Friday...yay!

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).

Imagination is a wonderful thing.....

MashaAllah, you can give children a box of 'stuff' and they will inevitably come up with something amazing mashaAllah and today was no different. I gave DS2, who was bored, a box of stuff that included polystyrene, parcel tape, glue, paper, round lolly-sticks, propellers, motors, crocodile clips, batteries etc and he used these items to build this wonderful power boat mashaAllah and below is a little film of him testing it in the bath....

The maiden voyage identified a couple of design issues which he quickly identified and came up with solutions, he also worked out how to make it go forward and reverse....clever thing mashaAllah.

We also had a refresher lesson on nouns (common, collective & proper), verbs, pronouns, plurals and adjectives - we all made up a part of a crazy paragraph on the whiteboard and the kids had to identify and underline the noun, verb etc etc. We also mad an adjective snake using the Jolly Phonics grammar Book 1 - even me and a friend had a hand in decorating a section of the 'snake' pics to follow inshaAllah.

We also did a refresher on time and practiced reciting the times tables, the boys then went on to play some multiplication games online.