Scholastic has an article called Creating Your Own Classroom Library: Set-up. The article is based on Your Classroom Library: New Ways to Give it More Teaching Power, by D. Ray Reutzel and Parker C. Fawson
It even gives tips for effective library set ups and classroom organization.
We are almost finished with our science book, AlhamudLILLAH. We have three chapters left and then we can focus on finishing our social studies, math and phonics, InshaALLAH. My goal is to complete this school year by the end of October, InshaALLAH. That way, we can focus on our new schedule and prepare for the baby, InshaALLAH.
Today we discussed ponds and learned some new vocabulary, (habitat, nonliving things, definition of a pond). We made a new page for our science journal to show the different inhabitants of a pond.
Now, I have to convince my husband to let us have an aquarium in the classroom and we’ll really have some fun!
I got in touch with the person from Craigslist who is giving away textbooks for donations to their library. It’s a church school so I don’t know if they are secular or Christian books….
Farhana was asking me what we do with our calendar. My daughter has learned the days of the week and knows how to say the date properly. She reads them and recites them every day and then we do a weather chart in our book. I think it would help if all of this were visible on a constant basis, so I am thinking of setting up a bulletin board with everything in our classroom hallway. Ours is pretty large and I may scale it down a bit or buy a pocket chart of some sort just to conserve space. Here are some ideas for you at teachingheart.net.
I would like to set up some sort of Ramadan countdown to Eid chart, like this Ramadan Advent Calendar.
There’s also the Islamic Calendar at Yemen Links.
InshaALLAH this helps!
If you are near Etobicoke, there is an ad on Craigslist for books…they just ask for a donation to their library. The link is here.
I was wondering if anyone knows if these groups are still around:
The Home Educated Muslims
Toronto Muslim Homeschoolers
and Al-Manar Homeschoolers Foundation
I’ve emailed them and if I get a response, I will keep you posted, InshaALLAH.
Four chairs from here in the blue-green; a table from Staples – one that folds and can get out of the way if we need the floor,and bookshelves from…I don’t know! I just want this one but I don’t want to spend so much on it.
Today was an interesting home school adventure. I had all three children in the classroom while my mother-in-law went to the library. We don’t normally keep my youngest in the classroom because she likes to explore all of the areas that I haven’t toddler-proofed. For instance, as soon as we got settled in the room, she grabbed paint and put it in her mouth, (we were painting while she napped and she came into the room before I could put it away). She’s pretty quick but it’s nontoxic paint, alhamduLILLAH. She really likes clay, so I let them make various things with it and they wanted to show it off.
We explored the concept of heavy versus light and used the balance. I put various foods into plastic sandwich bags and we compared them to one another. They liked this a lot and learned that bigger is not always heavier. We also discussed solids, liquids, and gases and whether or not we could measure their mass.
I finally laminated some numbers so that we could use them on the divider and make a large room calendar. Of course, I forgot to make one for the year and I didn’t realize that the days of the week are on winter hats. Oh well. I also need to do an Arabic set for the Islamic calendar. The numbers are also a good way to help my son recognize them and to count them.
We are slowly changing the classroom around a bit to accommodate the addition of my son into our space and to give them ample room for books,projects, and whatever else we do. Teacher’s manuals are pretty big sometimes, so I am bringing my desk downstairs, (okay, my husband will be doing that)so that I don’t get in their way. Right now, everything is cramped because we have my husband’s bookshelves on the wrong wall and we need shelves for the kid’s library. We visited Value Village and got so many good books. If you buy four books, you get one free, so we really loaded up.
There were lots of games, especially the memory game and we bought them all. My daughter loves playing the memory game and I figured we better get whatever they had in case the cards start to go missing.
We also found this nice little plastic crayon bank for about twenty-five cents. We will use it for spare change and money that we find outside for zakat, InshaALLAH. My daughter is very concerned about the poor getting enough to eat, subhanALLAH.
One book that I really like is The Human Body book. It is a pop up book and it’s so interesting to see all of the different parts. My daughter is particularly fascinated with it and spends lots of time looking at it. My mother-in-law was not too thrilled about it, she says it’s a little scary, lol.
Mastermind Educational Children’s Toys has an assortment of science kits and labs available. If you are in Canada, shipping is free for orders $75 and over. In the U.S., there is flat rate shipping of $5 for orders over $75.
This site has just about anything you need for homeschool science kits – even forensics!
Here is the Canadian site and the International link.
If Razanne needs a place to stay, make her one of these!
