A couple of people have asked how we are learning Suratul Ikhlas so I thought I would share. We don’t do anything fancy, nor do we take a huge amount of time to do it. At the start of each day, we sit together and we recite the surah together three times. Then, we go over each line three times together. After that, I listen to my daughter recited and I give her cues if she gets stuck. Right now, she knows almost the whole surah with no help. She gets stuck on the last half of ayat 3 (…walam yuulad) and the first part of ayat 4 (walam yakun(l) lahuu). She knows walam is there but she needs a little help here.
This was how she sounded after a little practice today:
Masha’ALLAH, not too bad. She had to shout because the mp3 player didn’t have a mic.
In spite of the freezing cold, this was a very productive week. We accomplished everything on our schedule, AlhamduLILLAH.
My daughter had her first assessment and completed it with no errors, masha’ALLAH. The phonics program is great so far and we have become more comfortable with it and follow it along seamlessly.
Next week, InshaALLAH, I plan to introduce a new Arabic text into the curriculum. It is the Arabic Language for Beginners by Dr. Hosni Kandil. The book starts off with familiar vocabulary like the members of the family and moves on from there. I believe this also corresponds with our social studies lessons, but I need to check and make sure, InshaALLAH.
Also, our board with the calendar needs numbers in both Arabic and English, so I will need to print out some flash cards for both.
For Qur’an, we will once again cover Suratul Ikhlas to make sure my daughter knows it comfortably, InshaALLAH. She seems to be doing well with her recitation but I don’t want to rush her. We also need to start adding more du’a memorization. She knows the basics for eating and for the washroom and for sneezing but we will need to do more, InshaALLAH. I haven’t had a problem finding resources for learning, AlhamduLILLAH. If anything, I find that my printer and laminator can’t keep up with the demand!
We have another lapbook to add to our resources, AlhamduLILLAH.
This one is specifically for the Five Pillars of Islam. The front cover is courtesy of Talibiddeen Jr. It’s nice to have something visual for the children other than coloring pages and worksheets all the time so that learning is not always mundane or predictable.
The lapbooks are valuable because they can pull them out when they are bored or if they have questions about previous lessons. As they get older, InshaALLAH, they can become more elaborate and contain more complex information – especially since they will predominantly do them by themselves!
This lapbook has a simple game at the top to help with Arabic terminology.
These terms are used interchangeably (like zakat and charity)so I wanted my daughter to be familiar with both. Each pillar has a velcro square so that the correct words can be matched.
I also found a nice little flowchart for Hajj.
It shows all of the places one needs to go and what worships must be performed. I left the link at the top of the page and laminated it. I then cut it into three panels so that it would fold easily when the lapbook is closed.
The five daily salat ovals can be found on a printable from Talibideen Jr. I just cut it up, punched a hole and added a brass tack. The other photos that I used were found in Google Images under keyword searches like Five Pillars, Hajj, zakat, etc.
Today, we continued with Suratul Ikhlas. Her memorization is going well, masha’ALLAH.
Saxon Phonics 1 is coming along well also. Each day a new letter is introduced and she has to use the letter tiles to spell words.
This part is really review for us because she can already read but the rules that are implemented are new concepts for her. She’s getting a solid reading foundation to back up what she already knows, so I am happy. Her handwriting has improved quite a bit. She writes the letters on a mini white board that I purchased from Walmart for about three or four dollars and then she writes them on her spelling sheet.
She does get confused about the direction of a couple of letters like “j” and “d” and “b” but this should improve with time, InshaALLAH. My husband told her to picture the word “bed”. “b” comes before “d” in “bed”. This is helping.
We’re almost done with the parts of the tree but I think we will do a lapbook for trees since the last one was so easy.
In social studies, we are continuing with the concepts of school and school workers and the special unit practices on maps and map legends:
After school, we have a late lunch and my daughter reads a book of her choosing. I read to her during school, so she has to spend at least 10-15 minutes reading on her own. Recently, my husband stopped by one of the local libraries and brought home a bunch of library discards for us!
At the end of this week, InshaALLAH, there is a unit on manners and following rules. This corresponds with our Five Pillars of Islam unit because manners are extremely important during Hajj. I will try to tie the two lessons together and maybe we can pull out those manner cards. This would make a good lapbook too (5 Pillars) and since I can’t seem to find any on the web, this will be one of my own undertaking. Make du’a, InshaALLAH that I can pull it off!
We’ve been opening our class with Suratul Fatiha for a long time and now, InshaALLAH, we will be switching to Ikhlas. My daughter was three when we started homeschooling and it was also the first time I sat down with her to help her learn the Qur’an. I stayed with Fatiha for a long time and now it’s time to move on.
My husband is working with her in the evenings and I work with her in the mornings. The key for her is repetition and consistency. For the first few days, we say it together and then she recites on her own. My son is two years old and he’s starting to pick it up as well, alhamduLILLAH.
We are doing well with the Saxon Phonics and I am trying to have sabr because part of the math program isn’t here yet. InshaALLAH I should have it no later than next week. Canadian mail is awfully slow sometimes.
We are still doing our unit on trees, so I tried to be a little creative today. While my daughter finished her social studies work, I quickly drew a tree and made labels to correspond with the parts of the tree that we are studying. Then she glued them to the proper spots. I’m no artist, but my drawing served its purpose, lol.
So last night I (mostly) finished our first lapbook. It was very quick and easy and I think it will help us to count our change, InshaALLAH. I finished the rest this morning before we started school.
The templates for the lapbook were provided by lapbooks by carisa and by making learning fun.
There were a couple things that I altered, like the Bible verse section. I took out the verse and provided an appropriate hadeeth. This also comes in handy when discussing zakat.
I also colored the faces of the coins:
My favorite parts were the mini-book, which gives plenty of practice with addition and learning the values of coins,
the vocabulary section, that has a hands-on spelling game,
and the pet shop game. This game asks how much each pet costs. There are various coin-sized circles at the bottom that add up to the amount on the coin. This aids in coin recognition.
It was a very cute lapbook. From start to finish it took about an hour.
Whenever I find something like this on the net, I take what I can use, leave what is not according to the Qur’an and Sunnah and add what benefits us, InshaALLAH.
Overall, it was fun to make and my daughter really likes it so we may do this again very soon!
We also had our first social studies lesson, about school (what it looks like, the importance of following rules, etc).
This is a drawing of our house. The yellow part is our classroom in the basement. The other stuff is the playground in the back. She spelled and wrote the sentence by herself.
Science was a lot of fun too. We are studying trees. It has warmed up a bit so the kids are able to get out and see trees up close for themselves. This first unit familiarizes them with the parts of a tree and their function. We did lessons one and two today.
Today we plowed ahead though the Saxon Phonics program with ease. Everything was pretty basic because she has been able to read since October. The challenge for her is learning the rules for coding vowels and remembering them.
There are nice activities for which you prepare the night before – it takes all of five minutes of sit down time. There were mini spelling tests which gave her no problem. Next week, InshaALLAH, there will be more involved tests.
We try to do something fun and artistic each week as well. This week was mostly clay modeling and we did some abstract painting. This is my daughter’s painting which she insisted had to be done on a cardboard canvas:
I made a smaller felt board so that the children would have access to the felt story pieces all the time since they enjoyed them so much. My son cries when I have them put the pieces away but I have to keep them from my youngest daughter because she is one and some of the pieces are tiny.
This board is just a smaller white board that we already had that was difficult to write on. I took the green piece of felt and covered it. The seller flannelfunforall has lots of flannel sets and even gives a discount if you buy a few sets at a time (five, ten, or twenty);the five sets sell for about $18CDN. That’s cheaper than a set that I saw at the local bookstore, even with shipping.
To supplement her handwriting, we continued with the “Who is your Lord?” series from www.TalibiddeenJr.com
This is going well because she likes to tell everyone in the house who her Lord is and who their Lord is, etc. She uses English and Arabic interchangeably when she can.
MashaALLAH, please go to the site and take a look at the content there, she has done a great job.
We’ve slowly been doing the Five Pillars of Islam as well. We have one more to go and our wall will be complete, InshaALLAH.
I think I might take some of these worksheets and use them in lapbooks soon, InshaALLAH.
I have a few things that need some attention, like my make-shift bulletin board that I set up last September :
On the opposite wall, we have posters to help with Arabic:
and we have a flag of the Khalifah also which can be seen here in this older classroom photo:
. I’ve since taken down from there and have relocated it to the back wall.
After we finished the lessons on stranger danger, I immediately began to teach my daughter her phone number and AlhamduLILLAH, she had no trouble with this. Now, we will work on our address, InshaALLAH.
With all of this, we still missed a day of school due to scheduled doctor’s appointments, not to mention we are waiting on our math book to arrive (InshaALLAH this week, ameen), so we will have a little bit of school on Saturday and then I will spend some time fitting in our science and social studies lessons since the books are here.
It’s nice when you can find something for the children that adds to the quality of time that you spend with them. I found a book called Muslim Nursery Rhymes, by Mustafa Yusuf McDermont and I think it is excellent.
I can remember my mother reading or reciting nursery rhymes to me as a child and now I can do the same for my little ones. They like to hear them and often sing or say them on their own throughout the day.
Today, we continued with Saxon and did a little bit of hands on activities about frogs as part of the Islamic Studies series, Who is your Lord? They learned that ALLAH created everything, even the animals, in this case, frogs.
They colored the eyes black to take out the faces!
We also did a little mosque construction today and my daughter asked me why it came with four pillars instead of five, lol. She’s slowly learning about the five pillars of Islam and I thought this was cute.
I got this from the Online Islamic Store website and I think it’s a real blessing. As much as I like and support some Melissa and Doug products, I like to see things that identify with our way of life.
I am almost finished rearranging our tiny classroom and I am pleased with our space. I had to reorganize to maximize the available space, so I put various little things in rolling carts that have drawers:
These are handy for dinosaurs, puzzles, Play-doh and art supplies. One drawer stores our worksheets for the week and another has pencils and extra writing utensils. It seems that no matter how many pencils I purchase, they are hard to find when we need them.
This is one of the places that we use with our felt stories/calendar felts. I need to add Velcro to the backs of the flashcards that you see with the Islamic months on them. We found these at a used classroom furniture sale last summer, along with our white board. The seller was literally down the street from us on the side of the road. We almost did not see him. He delivered everything and gave us a really nice price. The other board has some felt pieces on it. I need to cut them a bit and shape the bottom piece like grass. Felt is nice because it is really inexpensive; I found these at Walmart.
So far, my daughter is responding well to the phonics program – I am still waiting for a piece of the math curriculum. We also did a session about stranger danger – which included advice about speaking to people who are Muslim that you do not know. I explained that returning salaams to others is fine but never go home with/accept gifts/food/rides from someone you don’t know, even if that person appears to be Muslim. Always refuse. I went here for a lesson plan that I loosely used as a guide. Now, we will focus on reciting and writing our address and telephone number, InshaALLAH.
One thing I am pleased with is the teacher’s manual that I recently received for our science lessons
This book is nice because it has the lesson plan drawn up for you!
This saves me a lot of time. I found out about this text through Follett Educational Services. They sell used text books and they deliver to Canada and abroad. I didn’t actually purchase from them because the books were not available at the time but their site is invaluable because it lists the accompanying texts for whatever book you need. It also gives the ISBN so I used that information to get the science texts for $5 U.S. from another seller.
I set up a felt board in the classroom – really, we have a couple of those dividers that are used to make office cubicles. I put some felt on one of them to spruce it up.
These are from www.childcareland.com a resource for printables and homeschool/preschool ideas and activities. I colored and laminated these and put velcro on the back. I also have some flashcards for the Islamic months that we use.
Ideally, the children will be responsible for updating the calendar, InshaALLAH. Initially, they will need help of course but after a while, they should get the hang of it. I was going to purchase a pocket chart but if I can make do with what I have using a little imagination and taking a few extra minutes to make the materials, why not?
