Keep it Balanced

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.