George Washington Carver

Posted on October 4, 2011 by


I like to add literature into our curriculum as much as possible, and my daughter, book-lover that she is, has no objection. Biographies can be a strong supplement to any subject, including math and science. Since we are studying botany this term, we read about George Washington Carver’s struggles to obtain an education in a time when most African Americans were still working on their former slave master’s land. After explaining that this George Washington is a different one, lol, we discovered his many contributions  to the field of science and agriculture and thus discovered just how relevant the field of  botany is. My daughter has a new found appreciation for the study of plants, InshaALLAH.

We used a lapbook purchased from Currclick for this project. We left out the pages that had bible verses and so on….I finally took the time to learn how to alter lapbook templates to add Quran instead of bible verses and I may do that in the near future, InshaALLAH.


This was a fun project – we even found a comic book about peanuts and used a page from it for our lapbook.

This was only the second comic that she’s ever read and she fell in love with the format. Of course, this caused me to use all my spare time to find other educational comics for her. I finally stumbled upon the Chester Comix web site and purchased the Freedom’s Fury: Harriet Tubman comic this one is in the app store for iTunes, and the Ancient Africa comic. I purchased the Ancient Africa comic from Amazon but there are some free pages from it which are available to download on the site.

Edit*** forgot to add this:

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Overheard Today

Posted on September 29, 2011 by

“Shine the light into my eyes so that my pimples get smaller. ”

 

Posted in Miscellaneous | 2 Comments

What Do You think? Which Version Works for You?

Posted on September 26, 2011 by

So far, the old method works better for us because I already know it and can explain it to my daughter better.

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On Yaum al-Ahad, He Ate One Apple

Posted on September 20, 2011 by

Last week, my four-year-old and I studied the letter Cc. We read through Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar and watched the movie.

Afterwards, we made a lapbook (a very simple one) to show the days of the week and what foods he ate (everything was added from right to left).

 

Instead of putting the days from the Gregorian calendar, we added the Hijri days. They can be found onUmm An-Numan’s page, AlhamduLILLAH. The caterpillar lapbook printables come from DLTK.

 

 

This is our letter Cc page. She wanted to make sure that you saw her hand pointing at it 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

Under her hand, we added confetti.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

***The movie does have music***

 

Posted in Lapbooks | 2 Comments

Shaking My Head at This. May ALLAH Shield Us From Hatred, Ameen

Posted on September 15, 2011 by

“I found out the child I am sponsoring is Muslim. I Don’t know what to do.?

I decided to sponsor a needy child thru Children Int’l. I wanted to since I was 18 & finally decided to hop on the internet & sponsor a child. I wanted an indian child. When you search you can see the child’s first name. I skipped over the children with muslim first names (Mohammad, etc) Not only because I don’t support muslims, but also because I wanted a hindu child, whose culture & religion facinates me.

Anyway, I picked a child with a first name that I thought was hindu. They sent me his information & I found out he’s muslim. (last name is Ahmed). Ouch.

So now I feel like a heel if I disconnect from the sponsorship. I want to help a child. But I wanted him to be hindu, but def not muslim.

They don’t offer religion–just country,gender, age & pictures. I try to remember that not all muslims are bad, but they are part of a religion I want no part of.

Can anyone help me with this decision? Am I a terrible person? Would you feel the same way? Constructive answers only.”

Posted in Your Thoughts | Comments Off on Shaking My Head at This. May ALLAH Shield Us From Hatred, Ameen

Disconnected – My Plight as a Cultural Salafi

Posted on September 14, 2011 by

Disconnected – My Plight as a Cultural Salafi.

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Homeschool Moments

Posted on September 14, 2011 by

This week, we are: Studying Quran, learning our address, practicing our handwriting, learning about aqueducts and pouting on paper. What are you doing?

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Posted in Weekly Update | Comments Off on Homeschool Moments

Calendars and Pocket Charts

Posted on September 13, 2011 by


AlhamduLILLAH, now that my four-year-old is participating in our daily school activities, I’ve had to take a step back and remember to go back to basics. We used to have a daily calendar on the wall and then it was moved to the hallway to accommodate a new bookshelf. Well, that didn’t work for us, so I moved one of the room dividers that I used to have in the classroom to the back of the room. We have the Hijri calendar on the left side of the board, the season (in Arabic) with a photo is in the middle, and the Gregorian calendar is next to that.

The Hijri calendar came from Umm An-Nu’man‘s page, MashaALLAH.

A few years ago, I printed numbers from Enchanted Learning, laminated them and added Velcro to the back. I pulled those out to help my son and younger daughter, he needs reminders for spelling the numbers and she needs to recognize the numbers.

She is also learning to spell her name, so she takes a set of index cards with Velcro on the back and matches them to the ones at the top of the board.There is also a set of laminated continent cards that I printed long ago from www.montessorimaterials.org. The divider is also nice for our felt sets. When my daughter finishes her work, she is free to play with them and they stick right onto the board.

Last year, we learned 45 of the 99 Names and Attributes of ALLAH and this year, we are reviewing and continuing, InshaALLAH. I bought a plain pocket chart and hung it up on our classroom door. There used to be a curtain there, so I simply hung the pocket chart onto the curtain rod.

Posted in Classroom | 1 Comment

Check Out These Free Resources

Posted on September 13, 2011 by


Check out this site for various resources: homeschool for free

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Niagara Falls

Posted on September 12, 2011 by


AlhamduLILLAH, this weekend was the first official family trip we’ve ever taken. Seriously. I haven’t been anywhere but Toronto for a long time. We had a beautiful time with the children and my mother-in-law in Niagara Falls and at Marineland.This was my first trip to Niagara Falls and we had a really good time. AlhamduLILLAH it was a straightforward drive. The nice thing about the trip is that we saw plenty of other Muslims there throughout the day and night.


We first visited the falls and rode on the Maid of the Mist. The boat took us right up to the falls and we got sprayed a little bit. They gave us rain ponchos which were essentially garbage bags with hoods and my youngest had a fit when I put it on her (it was hot in the sunshine). We felt immediately cool on the boat so she slept the whole time.

I brought my handheld (waterproof) camera, but wouldn’t you know it, the one time that I needed it, I couldn’t remember how to change the settings back to film (the children put it in camera mode), so I filmed on my phone with one hand and took pictures with the other! My husband had taken the rest of the family (except me and the baby) to the top deck of the ferry and I forgot to give him the camera.

After that, we drove over to Marineland (about 5 minutes away) and caught a show. We saw seals, dolphins and a 1500 pound sea lion, AlhamduLILLAH. When the show was over, the children ran around the family section of the park choosing rides and having a great time. I was especially happy because my youngest rode some of the rides as well.

After leaving Marineland, we visited the falls one last time (after Maghrib) and then headed home. My mom saw the pictures and said that the falls “Look creepy at night”, lol. What do you think?

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