A brief return to HE!

The kids have been at school now for four weeks alhamdulillah and I must say that life is really busy with them at school and I'm not quite sure that I like that.  We always seem to be rushing about too.  Rushing to school, back home, to madressa, home to eat and then out again in the evenings for their other activities.  I miss them such a lot, we don't seem to get much quality time together anymore and it's not quite the rest I was hoping that I would get either alhamdulillah.  BUT... it has been good to see them learning even if it's not in the way that I would like them to.

I am a little worried that their zest for learning might begin to fade under the weight of so many worksheets, homework and 'the curriculum' so I will be keeping my beady eye on them.  They have already expressed a wish to be home schooled again and I would just love to dash in on my white charger and rescue them from the 'system' however hubby wants them to stay where they are.

That's a turn up for the books.  He's usually a 'whatever you think is best' kind of man when it comes to their education so I have a suspicion that it may be more for the benefit face within his community than anything else [his friends son has just gone off to university to be a solicitor with a whole stack of A's grades behind him and hubby has been wondering if our children '...could be solicitors if they wanted...'] but Allah ta'ala knows best.  Not sure what to do now... more istikharra and patience I suppose.

Anyway, the kids have been off most of this week [yay!] with a virus [boo!] so we have been busy and have really enjoyed just being together, snotty or not!  Despite being ill we have still been...

using the maths balance for solving maths problems...

exploring weight using the scales..

r

... writing stories and poems in great abundance

They have also been colouring pictures... dogs, castles, warriors, knights, Warhammer knights, foxes, houses etc... the printer has been on overdrive lol.  The kids were also inspired to write using tips from a program that a friend introduced me to called Brave Writer.  It's developed by an author who believes that English classes do not teach us how to enjoy writing which leads to blank faces when children are asked to write about something [among other things].  I have only grasped a tiny bit of this program from what I read at my friends as I am waiting to purchase my own copy so can't expand on it any more at the moment.  I'm really excited about this and from the little bit I introduced this week and their response I think it would be especially beneficial for Sprite as he already 'hates' writing because of his issues... more on this program in later posts inshaAllah.

Sunshine after the rain!

So, my new tactic for getting the kids to knuckle down is the promise of something nice after a couple of hours graft doing the things that, as far as they are concerned, are just unnecessary in life! Things such as math and English.  Yeah, those really non essential skills that we never use on a day to day basis.  Fortunately for me this bit of sunshine can include: science, art, crafts, nature walks, baking etc; basically, anything except Math and English.

Bearing this in mind this morning kicked off with some word games that Sprite made a while back.  The 'clue cards' have descriptions of words that the children can either shout, spell or act out once they know what it is. The alphabet cards are used for spelling and the pink cards are from the Jolly Phonics books and are basically spelling/matching games.

We then moved on to making sentences using the DK Silly Sentences game; after making their sentences - which were very, very silly - they had to write them in their books and draw a picture to match.  Sprite didn't quite understand the list of several instructions that I gave [it's a dyslexic thing] so made some mistakes.  I really must remember to give him one or two instructions at a time. They then went on to do their maths on Maths Whizz.

Then after lunch came the sunshine stuff which began with blow painting.  Daisy also wanted to do blow painting in her art journal. And then everyone wanted to do their art journal.  Of course they would!

So here are the aforementioned art journals:

This is Crush's journal page that is based around the pictures they took for the
library's Homeschool Group

This is Daisy's journal page.  She is so creative and has firm ideas about what
she wants to do.  I just love the photo of the doorway.

This is Sprites journal about Spring; obviously!  He does his pages all by himself
with no input from me.  He has used several techniques on the background page
and the flowers are made from old jam tart trays.

We then painted some nice large stones that we found whilst digging up the
garden.

Lego has picked up his Word War 2 project again and completed another two parts to the project.

And last but not least; I found this science kit in the charity shop for £1.50 and thought that it might be nice for the little ones to have a go at.  The box was taped up so when I got home and opened it up I was surprised to see that the kit was completely intact with all the contents still sealed.  So, as it would be neglectful to let such a blessing go by unused, we will start working through the booklet of experiments at some point this week God willing.

Phew, it's now midnight and I am hoping that I can keep the up the pace...goodnight xXx

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!

Banquets and Businesses

This week has seen a business idea of Lego's come to fruition mashaAllah; he has been setting up his eBay account to sell his creations, opened a bank account (he needs to get paid of course) and has designed his 'company' logo, prepared a budget and a profit and loss statement, designed compliment slips and packaging. He needs to photograph his creations so has also designed a 'light box' for the purpose.  I was very impressed mashaAllah and he took the time to explain it all to me and 'prove', through examples, that his idea would work.  As a result I decided to invest a little into his idea to start his business off inshaAllah. A budding entrepreneur indeed, mashaAllah.

The kids have also decided that they want to hold their Historical Banquet at our house in October mashaAllah.  As it all go out of hand before they have been told to keep numbers down and are being very sensible mashaAllah.  They are going to need some guidance as this is their first time organising a 'do' and they are getting a little side tracked and need to set a list of priorities. Their first priority is to get the invitations out asap as each guest will be given a character that they need to dress up as and present a very short precis about on the day.  I though this was a fantastic idea and have already purchased the tooth and face blacking for my character [can you guess who I'm going to be? LOL].

The mums also thought it would be a great idea to hand out the invitations in the style of Funeral Biscuits [just to maintain the historical theme!] which were used in Victorian times to bid people to attend funerals; specially prepared biscuits, wrapped in paper and sealed with wax, the banquet details on the front and a biscuit and information about the original form of the biscuit inside. They sound like great fun to make, we have found a recipe and are looking forward to helping with this one!  Here's a picture of original wrapper displayed at the Pitt River Museum at the University of Oxford.

Everyone is going to bring a dish but the boys want to cook a sample of different foods for varying era's for people to try and are researching and organising historical games inshaAllah.  I'm quite looking forward to it all but dreading the cleaning up!

This seemed to be a week or revisits so we ended up at Watermead Park [again], feeding the ducks and strolling mashaAllah.

And at the Abbey Park Pumping Station [again], here's a picture of part of the pumps:

And we had a day of building marble runs on Saturday at a friends house, here's one they manage to perfect after running various tests with different size marbles, inclines etc....meanwhile I had a nice chat and a cup of coffee with me mate!

Autumn has returned with a vengeance and has left us all with the sniffles but poor Crush had it worse with a very high temperature and hallucinations where all the cloth/material came to life in the house...he was so scared, poor thing, and I find it quite difficult as it reminds me of when my father was in intensive care, he was  complaining that the people in the beds opposite had been partying all night and were cutting off Jesus' legs LOL [yes, we can laugh about it now but at the time...!].  He was begging me to take him home and it was really difficult convincing him that he was in the best place!

Lego is learning all about racism in Amercia as part of his study of Holes, we were worried that they would find it difficult but they are doing very well mashaAllah.  I was a bit concerned about how the English lesson I teach on a Saturday is going and that Sprite wasn't taking it seriously but this week he did me proud.  We read our book and did looked at debating.  We did an off the cuff debate and the kids enjoyed it much more than I anticipated and they have been 'debating' everything every since!

Inconsistent until the end...

OK so that was a bit melodramatic but the week did start of exceptionally well and then went rapidly down hill.  We started well on Monday with a brand new schedule and everything went really well....everyone got their work done and it was fab...I should have known it would never last.  Tuesday I woke up and had a relapse with my back...bah humbug!  This was followed by another call from the hospital calling Lego back in and yet another to say that Sprite had to go in to start his physio this week...so another two days taken out of the week!

And with the English lessons starting back for Sprite tomorrow he decides that he wants to change the way he presents his 'nature diary' for his homework!  So the old one was dumped and he made this...

Isn't it lovely?  It was made out of a corrugated cardboard box cut to fit our stock of 6"x6" papers.  On the front the larger flowers he cut from a die I have and heat embossed using different color powders and he  stamped on top of them whilst they were hot [you should be aware that these are MY craft supplies and he had me cringing in the corner all the while he was using them, lol].

The first entry was the frog booklet that you may remember from his first attempt at the diary.  The second page was mostly researched information and photo's from the internet but the third entry he found an outline picture and he painted the image using watercolor pencils.  I like watercolors, you can get away with a multitude of sins [art wise] and always have a good result.  Apart from the art lesson these two entries also included a lesson on internet research and IT (cutting, pasting, changing fonts etc).

Lego hasn't done much this week and is milking the 'poor me' thang far too much....his WW2 model was also broken into tiny pieces when it was accidently knocked off a cupboard by dad [I was just grateful it wasn't me or one of the other children!].  He wasn't very happy.  Nooo, not happy at all; and he seemed to be uninterested in the fact that he was the one who had left it in the precarious position in the first place.  Any ho, it has been unceremoniously dumped in the bin and he proclaimed that he would never build a model again.  However, this pledge didn't last long and he is in the middle of building a WW2 scene out of Lego!

Crash and Daisy have left me all Peter and Jane'd out and I am currently in the process of making flash cards of all the keywords to assist in the word recognition process.  All maths has been done on Maths Whizz this week but I need to get them putting some stuff down on paper too to so that can apply all that they learn.

Well, that's it for this week! Have a great weekend everyone.

Apologies Sprite...

I forgot to add the beginnings of your nature journal...here are some pictures inshaAllah. He was given, as homework for English, the task of making a nature journal which will be added to as they move through the book they are reading and this is his effort for that God willing.

Every page is made from a 12x12" sheet of paper and is folded to give a maximum of 3 pockets for tags and has a flap that opens to give two big spaces for journeling or photos. He learned how to make this pocket book from a You Tube tutorial [of the many, many available] and it was soooo much fun [although he needed help with the inches thang]; we also played around with the gluing an sticking of the pages for a slightly different look to each page. Sprite, is in the process of decorating the pages and adding information - he has only started the green page so far. Eventually he will make a front and back cover from card and the pages will be punched and bound together with string, ribbon or 'D' rings so that it can be added to if he wants...we'll see what takes his fancy!

Here are the 3 pages we made so far with binding strip on the right and you can see the, as yet, undecorated tags in thier places.


Here is a page showing the flap open from the front side giving a photo/journeling space on the right and the pocket on the left.


Here is the same page with the flap open from the back side giving a 'double page spread' lol - sorry about the orientation of the picture!


Watch out for updates on his progress!

One week to Ramadan!

Indeed we belong to Allah and to Him we return: a close friend of mine left to be with her Lord about 5 weeks ago; she was also making plans for Ramadan just before she died. She was only 37 and never thought that she wouldn't be here to fast this year subhanAllah. I pray that Allah forgives her soul, and the souls of all the believers, and protects them all from the punishment of the grave and builds for them a lofty abode in Paradise. Ameen. It has also made me realise that I am not spiritually ready to meet Him and pray that Allah keeps this ailing soul on the Earth until such a time that He is pleased with me, ameen. I need this Ramadan inshaAllah.

Well as a part of all the spiritual reflection that has been happening of the last few weeks as a result of the death of my dear sister we have been getting excited about Ramadan. Such a blessing to have reached another Ramadan inshaAllah [we're not quite there yet!] and the kids have lots of plans and it's funny to see how their goals change as they get older and they naturally want to get involved with more ibada mashaAllah. We have spent a lot of time this week preparing....deciding what we wanted to achieve etc. with lots still left to do for next week inshaAllah.

Lego has been continuing with his English lessons and I'm not sure if I mentioned it before but they are reading the award winning Holes by Louis Sachar [oooh I felt like a chat show host or something there!]. We chose it as it seemed to appear on most schools Year 8 Reading List and also seemed really popular with the kids and ours are no exception; they are really enjoying reading this book even though it's a bit below their level [we were worried they would get bored but it's quite a good story]. Another bonus was that it was something that they could finish before Ramadan and there was quite a lot of ready made and free teaching materials available for this book not least were some fab downloads from Teachit.co.uk, they have some great resources for teaching English.

Crush and Daisy are progressing well with the Peter & Jane books....they just were not 'getting' Jolly Phonics and Daisy especially was getting confused so we went back to the old point and read method and they are flying along. I think it's a lot less complicated for them, this is a word and it says x seems to be doing the trick though! They both had lessons with Aunty M too this week with their Math, English and Science and were even joined by my friends 4 year old son but I'm not sure if he turned out to be more of a distraction lol!

Sprites English lessons haven't happened for the last two weeks as his 'classmate' was on holiday so instead they have lots of homework to do and will restart again after Ramadan inshaAllah. The kids have also started using Spellodrome that they get as part of their Mathletics subsciption which [despite having for the last year - shame on me!] we haven't used until now! Well, they are loving it mashaAllah and it's taking the edge off of spelling tests which were getting a bit tedious for all of us I think!

We also spent a day at Watermead Country Park on our bikes....it's a beautiful park with lots to do and you can also have a BBQ there [wish I'd known that before we went we were starving, lol]. We found the park as Lego had a cooking and fire lighting challenge there with the scouts, it's only about 20 min drive away and I can't believe it's taken me 8 years to find it lol! I must find out if they can take their kayaks on the lake! I think we are going to have some fab times there when the schools go back inshaAllah.

Lego and Sprite have gone through a whole shop full of match sticks and glue sticks making some sort of D-Day landing model for their project which I'm not allowed to show you yet [spoil sports!] but it's quite impressive so I am praying that this time he will get it finished, painted and photographed before one of his siblings accidently sits, leans or kicks it over leaving it in a million pieces. Don't you just hate it when that happens? We have a lot of work that ends up getting spoilt.....but there just doesn't seem to be enough space to put the many, many creations produced by four productive young people!

They have had a holiday from madressa this week as they had exams last week and next weeks madressa promises to be lots of fun as they have a bring and share food day and a presentation day among others before they break for Ramadan on Friday.

Well that was our week, I hope we can achieve all we hope to achieve for next week and get our preparations done for Ramadan inshaAllah and I pray that you all have a good week too! x

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.....

at least that's what I'm hoping will happen...the relationship between me and this blog definitely needs a nudge in the right direction.

Any ho, I will try - in this post - to summarise the main events of the last 8 months [it was a bit of a shocker to see that it's been that long since my last post lol, but it's been made; we've been soooo busy] so among other things.....

The boys have had a few camps with Sprite winning the 'Cub of the Camp' award..he was dead chuffed. They have also done several hikes, archery, abseiling, climbing, kayaking, shooting with air rifles, orienteering, map reading and a whole bunch of other stuff far too exciting for this aging bint! Ooo and Lego was also chosen twice to represent the Muslim Scouts at the Scout Associations Jamboree training camps to talk about Islam and being a Muslim in their Diversity and something Group [I'm sure I've got some of those titles wrong but you can get the gist]!

Lego [and the now drawn in Sprite] have been continuing with their WWI & II projects and have been building numerous war planes out of Airfix [or was that just a ploy to get me to buy the models hmmm]... here is just one of their creations there's far to many to keep track of and just in case your reading boys this pic wasn't picked with any sort of preference it was just the first one I came to:

Lego has also read the autobiography of Manfred Von Richthofen [The Red Baron] - among the numerous other books on the two Great Wars - which he thoroughly enjoyed. However, apart from a short essay on the Red Baron and a short precis on life in the trenches [which was excellent I have to admit] I have yet to see a finished 'project'...think I may need to put my foot down on this and get a line drawn underneath this project [or should I say obsession!].

We have been on lots of nature walks, found some exciting badger sets, some strange trees and had fun in the sun with friends.

We had a couple of trips to the National Space Centre; they do a great deal where you can upgrade your admission ticket to an annual pass free of charge, well worth it if you live in or around Leicester.

We have been to Abbey Pumping station too many times to mention [it's a very small museum but the kids love it there!].

We had the Scout Parade:

and Twycross Zoo:

We built boats to float on the brook:

We attended a 'build a solar car' workshop at Loughborough University, the first is the car built by the two 10 year olds and the second is the one built by the 8 year olds.

We have been for a couple of stays with my family in Essex and had some lovely walks etc. But unfortunately missed out on a trip to Royal Duxford as the car wouldn't start [with, unfortunately, all the kids (including my nephew) sat inside with packed lunches and cameras at the ready]. So, thanks to the efficiency and general all round wonderfulness of the AA in fixing my car we were able to plan to go the next day instead. But, alas, had to cancel again as there is a lot of outside stuff at Duxford and it was absolutely pouring down. So, to placate the angry mob, we had a trip into Harlow and bought some more Airfix models instead, lol!

Lego has been going history mad and has been looking into lots of different eras in history but needs to be tied down as I feel he is getting overwhelmed. So, we will all be starting a unit on Ancient Rome real soon inshaAllah [God willing] using the Evan Moore book on Ancient Rome as the basis of our studies. A friend, who happens to be at Uni studying to be a History teacher [what luck eh!] is also going to set him some work and will be sending us a good text book for him to work through - she has also agreed to mark his work too mashaAllah.

Maths is progressing well with Maths Whizz [thanks to Grandma who finances their memberships bless her] with the odd detour into taught sessions when needed; by the way if you are a member of Education Otherwise I think they were talking about getting cut price membership to this programme, it's well worth checking out inshaAllah.

Lego is still progressing well with his English tutor and I have just started teaching Sprite and a friends child English once a week based on a chosen book...we have started them off on 'Cherry Tree Farm' as it was recommended by an older friend. Not too exciting so far but a nice easy start to the lessons.

Crush and Daisy are still attending lessons with friend once a week to do Maths and English mashaAllah and are doing well and apart from the list above they also enjoyed a trip to Drayton Manor with the Beavers.

We had a break from Supercharged Science as I was doing lots with the little ones about changes in materials and simple electrical circuits etc but have started it up again following the boys interest in robot building... This was Lego's first effort at robotics:

Last but not least we have a new member of the family...his name is Sky, a beautiful budgie to replace Lego's two canaries who sadly died. Lego was beside himself when they died so we got Sky to cheer him up and he loves him so much mashaAllah.

Well I think that's the highlights all done, forgive me if I've mentioned any of this stuff before but hopefully we can get back to normality now inshaAllah...