Make du’a for your brothers and sisters, InshaALLAH.
It has been a while since we’ve talked about healthy eating habits around here and since everyone is older, now is the time. I’ve noticed that they eat all the time. I mean, all the time. There is not a moment that goes by that I don’t have a child asking me for something to eat. The older ones have learned how to use the toaster to make sandwiches and the younger ones couldn’t be happier. Now if only I could get them to clean their rooms.
I loathe getting the bi-weekly fliers in the mail, (if you didn’t get enough sale papers on Wednesday, you can read the same papers again on Friday). I never look at them. They usually end up in a pile on the table by the front door until someone takes them out to the recycling bin but this time I had an idea (I do get them from time to time, AlhamduLILLAH). Keep in mind, I looked up several food pyramids and I chose the one that I agreed with the most.
The younger kids did a little copywork from Enchanted Learning to complement the lesson. My four year old is not reading or writing yet but my five year old is.
My eldest is still working her way through Egypt. We’re using the next section of our History Pockets and she finished reading Mystery of the Whispering Mummy in the Three Investigators Series. She really likes detective series.
We’ve finally gotten back into our groove, sort of.
My daughter did notice that the flags were pretty similar and I had to give a mini-political talk about how the Khilafah was carved into pieces and the flags were all created by Mark Sykes after the so-called Paris 1919 “peace” conference. I think that if there were true peace after this treaty, all of this swift justice wouldn’t be passing through Africa and the Arab nations right now.
Sometimes it gets deep in the homeschool. 😉
We’ve been working diligently over the last week or so but we haven’t had any heat! SubhanALLAH we had a carbon monoxide leak and they shut down the furnace last week. We have some space heaters, AlhamduLILLAH,but it really killed my motivation to blog or do any special projects. We’re having our regular school sessions while we huddle together in one room upstairs, AlhamduLILLAH. Still, it’s good training and helps us to remember our brothers and sisters who always live with less. So, anyway, the furnace is supposed to be replaced tomorrow, InshaALLAH and I hope that we will be back to normal.
SubhanALLAH it has been nothing but busy times around here lately. My husband was on vacation the past few weeks so this is our first real week without him here during the day. Twice a week I have the Women Scholars course and I need to devote time for it daily. Also, I’ve stepped up my own memorization – something that I’ve been neglecting, and I’m trying to fit in a tajweed course as well.
On a personal note, I mentioned some time ago that I have been tracing my family tree. AlhamduLILLAH a cousin that I didn’t know before has been tracing our tree for about ten years or so! He has so much information that I don’t have time to enter all the information into the database. I’ve been obsessing over it for about a week (and so has my mom and a couple of uncles, lol).
We had a power outage for most of the day and it got so cold! SubhanALLAH, it’s 20F here (-7C). My daughter managed to learn Surah Takathur on her own this evening after the power returned (using Qur’an Explorer), so I think that we will be adding Q.E. to our morning routine from now on, InshaALLAH.
Since we grew grass a few weeks ago, my daughter has the gardening bug. This is her bulb of garlic, see the sprout? I hope that we can really keep it alive. We have a history of getting them going and then they die! Any advice?
AlhamduLILLAH we have finally finished our work on Mesopotamia. It was really dragging out. I purchased the Ancient Civilizations History Pocket to supplement our lessons and my daughter seemed to like it. This was the first time that I used something like this but I think it was worthwhile. It gave her some nice visuals to work with instead of just hearing me talk or reading from the book and trying to picture everything. The history pocket comes with several activities including definitions, mini-projects and a little pop-up activity. All of this is being added to her binder.
Meanwhile, little brother is making his own progress, mashaALLAH. He is working steadily and is about three pages shy of completing his second Explode the Code workbook this year. He only started learning to read last August (right before he turned 5) and for a while, it was a struggle to get him to understand how to sound out words and his handwriting was abysmal, lol. AlhamduLILLAH he was diligent and pushed forward. These are the types of sentences that he is reading now:
I plan to push forward, InshaALLAH and once he finishes the next workbook and gets about halfway through his Saxon Phonics 1, we will begin using the grade 2 Pathway Reader set that I used with his sister. I can’t seem to make it all the way through a Saxon book, but I’ve also found that we haven’t needed to.
He is about halfway done with his Saxon Math 1.
After he completes the math, InshaALLAH I will switch him to Singapore Math 2. I always start with Saxon because it was the first book that I purchased for math, but I have Singapore Math starting with grade 2 up to grade 4 and plan to stick with it, InshaALLAH. I find it to be less tedious and the lessons are brief.
Also, ukhti number 2 is turning 4 in a couple of weeks, InshaALLAH and she most desperately wants to start school with the older kids. So it looks like I will be fitting her into the schedule (officially) very soon, InshaALLAH.
I’ve been slow with the 99 Names of ALLAH. We’re only on number 35 but we do review them frequently. Also, we finally finished Surah Fajr! AlhamduLILLAH. It was taking so long, SubhanALLAH.
InshaALLAH our family will become more productive and we’ll start to see the fruits of our labor, AMEEN.
We made these for our notebooks. They stamped the numbers (mostly) by themselves.
