Introducing School to the Younger Kids

This is the first time that I have had my son in the classroom for an extended period of time. Since my mother in law is not here anymore, I have all of the children in the class! What a challenge, subhanALLAH. Since the classroom is downstairs, we're all downstairs, lol.


So far, things have been productive and are running smoothly. There have been a few temper flare-ups between my son and his two year old sister but they are seventeen months apart, so it is to be expected. The key is to keep her occupied and try to find activities that are relevant to his lesson that his little sister can try.



Monday was his first lesson in the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It starts with the sounds of letters "m", "s" and "a". Since we purchased an extra Scrabble game I took the letters out and put them in two wooden bowls. I forgot that the letters are capitals and that he was learning lowercase, so I did a quick mini-lesson on recognizing the capitals.



Then, I wrote the letters on the whiteboard and asked them to fish through the bowls and find them. MashaALLAH, even my two year old found them!



I found some nice name tags for the kids at a website called Teachers Pay Teachers. They cost $1.00. I'm sure there are plenty of free ones out there but I like the shapes and colors on these. You can see one of them next to the bowl. I laminated them so that they can practice tracing their names with a dry-erase marker.



Tuesday, we continued with the same letters but once I see a little progress I can't help myself so I added the letter "T". He remembered the sound, MashaALLAH so I got him to sound out "m-a-s-t" and he did it! I get so excited when they start to read, lol.

I bought some rubber stamps from Ebay so that they could have a different hands-on activity. I only allowed them to use the letters that we are learning at the moment. They had fun with the stamping and were sad when it was time to put them away.







My oldest was taking a break and decided to join in the fun.



She insisted on putting hers next to the Ka'ba, mashaALLAH.


Next up was math. The first unit in his Singapore Math K book is about same-different relationships. I have a set of math manipulatives that we purchased some time ago and I've been waiting to open the set of dominoes. I asked them to put the dominoes together with all of the sides matching while I went to pray. MashaALLAH, when I returned, I saw that he was busy making a robot and trying to match the sides, lol.



When it was time for our textbook work, I needed an activity to keep my little one busy, so I decided to do something Montessori-like.

I filled a bowl with some simple wooden balls (Ebay again) and she transferred them to a measuring cup with a plastic spoon. She did this for a long time, alhamduLILLAH so we made it through the lesson without incident.

And of course, baby was there too, wondering why she couldn't nibble on a crayon or two.