What A Busy Week

We've been working hard this week and accomplished most of what I planned.

I've really been using Starfall a lot this week, as well as Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone is really helping, MashaALLAH, we're using more Arabic all the time and my daughter has naturally picked up sentence structure and verb conjugation through the program, AlhamduLILLAH.



It seems to be easier to rotate the older two to the computer for language lessons so that I can give them individual attention without interruption.

I might set up other stations as well if I can stop procrastinating, InshaALLAH. An Arabic station would be nice. I keep coming across such helpful things like this Arabic letter position flip book at Talibiddeen Jr.





I printed it on green cardstock and then laminated it and punched two holes in the top (ouch, my hand - the three hole punch wouldn't line up correctly, so I used the hand-held one). I used 1"loose leaf rings (100 for $7.99 on EBay) and I didn't cut between the individual letters (to keep it simple).

I also printed out the Arabic Numbers Practice Book from YemenLinks.


This page is from Talibiddeen Jr.





Instead of letting my daughter color the pages and forget all about them, I borrowed the idea from Chasing Cheerios to print the pages and put them in protective sheets. We added them to her binder and now she can write on them with the dry erase markers.

Reusable workbooks, MashaALLAH. It saves paper, she can do them again as needed, and when she's done, her brother can use them, InshaALLAH.

We've been going strong in our Islamic Studies, starting with the family tree of the Prophet Muhammad salallahu,alayhi wa salaam.I read a bit from our new books and added some of the more vibrant details from the Sealed Nectar as well as Stories of the World by Safia Iqbal.

We finally put a few names on the tree and in our notebooks.




Instead of doing traditional coloring pages, we colored the most vital elements and added them to our notebooks.





My daughter is doing well with her vocabulary and spelling, but we really need to work on spacing! The words run together quite a bit but I think daily copywork will fix this problem, InshaALLAH.

I find notebooking fun and less stressful than lapbooking. MashaALLAH, there are some beautiful lapbooks out there but I think I need a tutorial, lol. Not about how a lapbook is put together, I know how they look, but who does most of the work and how many days does it take?

Here is are some pages from our notebook. We were learning about the dangers of idol worship and also about the Prophet Adam (AS), Habeel and Qabeel, and how the community grew.








The opportunities to study geography are abundant, so we started with Makkah and Medina and Jeddah.



I've been wanting to do this for a while and I would like to continue with some key elements of geography (continents, bodies of water and land forms, ie peninsula, island, etc) as well. I have all the necessary items for this but I would love to get a large world map, InshaALLAH. Read More...

Week in Review

Last week was busy, mashaALLAH. In fact, it will probably feel very busy around here for the next month since Ramadan is on the way, InshaALLAH.

We've been doing a lot more work in a shorter period of time and so far, so good, AlhamduLILLAH. My daughter likes the shorter sessions but she sometimes wants more to do, lol. This weekend, she did extra work so now she's a bit ahead.


Last week, we finished our plant growing section. We learned about growing food and what it takes to make the cereal that we eat.




We also finished our plant growing experiments. We discovered that our plants will not grow if they are missing one of the key components (air, light or moisture). We filled a jar with water and beans and then waited a couple of days to note the changes, if any.





I knew they were going to stink, lol but for the sake of learning, I asked her how they smelled. You can see from her expression that they did not have a pleasant smell.




We also kept track of the other beans that we laid on a moist paper towel inside a plastic bag.



MashaALLAH, those beans are doing well and we have added soil to a small jar to nourish them.



She is very proud of them and is treating them like her new pets (we released the snails a few days ago).





We also began notebooking for our Islamic Studies.





We are using the notebooking binder pages from Talibiddeen Jr. along with our Stories of the World books by Safia Iqbal.

Our second lesson was on the early men and clues of them left behind by archaeologists. Of course, we also learned that the biggest clues about how people lived is found in the Qur'an.

We also attempted to make tools by using twine, sticks and rocks.







We're also learning about implementing Islam outside the home and the importance of being a good Muslim no matter where you are.



When it was all over, my daughter put together an Arabic alphabet puzzle that we bought her last year for Eid. We were so busy after having the baby that she never got a chance to open it!

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