Second week of School

Long time no write.

Ok, so we are into our second week of official Homeschool which started on May 10th. Madam is no 4 (and very happy to be) and just LOVES to learn!

The first week wasn't great, she did learn to tell the time to the half hour on an analogue clock which is awesome, but Mama wasn't very organized and so most of the week was sort of impromptu (like, doing some addition and subtraction while playing with blocks, which is a perfectly good way to do Math, but wasn't planned)

We are doing a schedule that looks kinda like this:

Monday: Math and Art
Tuesday: English and Science
Wednesday: Social Studies and Geography
Thursday: Baba's day off, so no school this day but during summer there are regular "field trips" to the Zoo and park which we will use as learning experiences as well
Friday: Islamic Studies
Saturday: No school day, we call this Play day and have done since before school started
Sunday: Arabic language

This week:

• Math we did the impromptu block counting and a little time revision.
• Art was just some impromptu color theory with play dough (mixing blue and yellow to make green, she already knows red and blue make purple from mixing paint, next up, orange!)
• English, madam will be reading a book (she reads books now!) about transportation from readinga-z.com
  
• Science we will be reading and discussing a book about Animals from sciencea-z.com
• Geography we will talk about and color the continents on a world map and look up info about them on Wikipedia.
• Social Studies we will find out 2 languages that are spoken on each continent.
• Thursday we'll go to the Zoo and have pure fun! First Zoo trip of the year!
  
• Islamic studies we will be revising surat al Fatihah using Quran.nu and sheikh AbdulBasit as our instructor inshaAllah ;)
• Arabic we will be working on letter recognition using Arabic alphabet YouTube videos.

Below is my YouTube playlist with videos that are useful to teach the Arabic alphabet and basic arabic vocabulary for kids and learners:

Madam talking to an old smoke alarm...

Madam "You want me to be a smoke alarm when i'm 4?"
Smoke Alarm (Madam) "Ohh... well, alright"
Madam "Ok, i will curl up in a circle like you when i'm 4"

Ant Invasion

I disagree with violence towards all living things - reluctantly and hypocritically including insects.

But i figure since the Ants have ignored my diplomatic advances, defied my sanctions and become violent (possibly even carrying out suicide missions O.o) it's us or them.

I don't know why they chose my apartment, i can only guess that since we live in a half basement, they think it's some sort of giant man made ant hill.

If anyone knows a non violent alternative to Raid Booby Traps and Ant Killing spray please let me know.

Sorry about the lack of posts...

I've been really busy with work and homeschooling preparation. Our first "official" year at "Aroha Islamic Homeschool" begins May 10th.

But i had to post this conversation i had with DS (meaning Darling Son) (22 months) tonight.

DS: What are you doing mama? (although more like "enya doon mama")
Me: I'm cooking. What are you doing?
DS: I'm cookies.

Getting my blog groove back

Hopefully for good.

There are reasons i've been MIA and not all of them are good reasons.

We were looking into having Madam evaluated for Aspergers and/or Sensory Processing Disorder (the latter almost certain and the former less so) but have decided -for now- not to pursue it. I have decided not to go into great detail about that on this blog, but i'm sure it will come up and i have no problem talking about it, i will definitely write a post about the issues we've faced with her and how we've dealt with it.

I've decided loosly how we are going to do our school year and we'll be starting "kindergarten" (American) on Madam's 4th birhday May of this year. I decided to do it this way and make up our on system rather than base it on the public school system.

Little Sir is learning more all the time but is still getting the hang of the whole talking thing. He recognizes and loves to point out letters, but doesn't know them yet. I need to work more with him and teach him basic things like body parts for example. He has just learned to draw circles! He loves Cars and Trucks and to pretend to screw and unscrew things with daddys tools, what can i say, he's all boy!

Posts about our School plans and madam's Sensory Processing Issues to come in the next few days - while i wait for my computer to be fixed and am stuck with my laptop, it's good to get a break from work and procrastination and get some blogging done, i must say.

Our Week Calendar Project

Today we had a no-computer play day! It's the first one and we plan to make it a weekly thing.

My husband also has odd hours and someone suggested making a calendar like this so the kids know when to expect him to be home.

Tools:
Large sheet of canvas (primed but not stretched) this could be substituted with anything really, i find the canvas is easy to add and remove stickers and tape.

Different coloured card.

Tape, Scissors, Pens, Markers, Stickers, Glitter etc.

What we did:
Used a sharpie (black permanent marker) to draw 7 squares and wrote the name of each day of the week in each square (our week began on monday) to make the sequence easier for madam to understand, i numbered each day as well.

I used fluorescent pens (i was using markers but they ran out, markers would work better than pens) to decorate and add little things (i added "With the name of God most gracious most merciful" in arabic at the top right)

We had some stickers so we used them to decorate, i also used them to label special days (play day and friday prayers) we also wrote both kids names (edited out in the image) on card and stuck them on.

We then cut the words "Our Week" out of card and used tape to put them on the canvas (our glue wouldn't stick so tape was our only option)

We cut suns for the days when daddy would be home in the morning and moons for the days when he would be home in the evening. The easily removed and re-stuck tape on canvas coupling is great for us because his hours sometimes change.

The final touch was to make a flower our of card and attach it (we used tape, crazy/super glue would be better) to a pin (we used a green one so it looks like a stem) this way we can move the flower each day so the kids know which day it is.




There are so many possibilities! Feel free to post your own similar projects in the comments section.

Broken monotony

So we've been a bit slack in the learning department lately (although
there are of course learning opportunities everywhere, we learned
about the ER recently) i've been busy with work, we've had an
overnight hospital stay with madam and we're all generally busy and
lazy.

Today i decided to break the monotony and asked madam to choose an
animal and we would lay on the bed with the laptop researching (well,
the 3 year old equivalent)

She chose puffer fish and then decided she wanted to learn about ALL
fish (i vetoed that and we chose 2 kinds)

We googled about and watched videos of puffer fish and learned they
have 4 teeth (and not to eat them) then we learned about clown fish
and that nemo is not only orange but he is a percula clown fish. Ok,
he's actually a false percula, but she gets the points just for
pronouncing and remembering the word percula (and telling daddy when
he got home)

Success! A quick, easy and fun learning opportunity. We learned
biology, geography (or oceanography) computers/internet, math,
culinary arts and how to say percula.

Let's start with Art!

I feel i need to express some things about Islam and Art before we get started.

One of the first things you'll notice here is the little cartoon girl at the top left, isn't she cute? That's a cartoon version of me when i was a child that i thought fit this blog well.

Most muslims are of the view that drawing animate objects is haram (not allowed) i too am of that general view but take a slightly different approach.

I used to sketch realistic people and no longer do that, when i became muslim i learned that doing this was not ok, so i stopped completely. I spent the next 5+ years reading and re-reading the spectrum of opinions on drawing humans (faces to be specific)

There are opinions that it is never ok, opinions that it is ok as long as it's for children and opinions that it is ok as long as it meets a certain criteria.

I'm no scholar, so i can't make any ruling on the matter, the fact is, i don't know what the correct view is and simply have to take the view i feel most comfortable with. Which is that purposely unrealistic 2D images that are not put in a place of respect (i.e. up on the wall) may be ok. And this is the method i use when i do the human resembling art i do.

If you are a muslim artist please don't take my opinion as a correct opinion, do your own research, and go with whatever conclusion you come to after looking at a variety of opinions on the matter.

You'll probably see more and more of my cartoon art as time goes on, i hope to publish a book or 2 aimed at pre-teens starting to wear Hijab (head scarf and such) and i welcome your feedback on it whether it's positive or negative.

If you are against the drawing of faces realize that your looking at them is not a sin, and it is between the artist and Allah, i hope it will not prevent you from visiting.

About us and About this blog

My name is Emma and i'm also known to many as Umm Hend (common form of nickname in the arab world) i'm a kiwi married to a yemeni and a mother of 2.

I'm excited to get this blog going, i can't promise it will be updated daily, but i intend to use it for sharing Homeschooling ideas among many other things.

I'm an artist and web designer with passionate opinions and an interest in psychology and humanitarian and environmental issues. I run a Muslim Awareness project called Emagine which can be found at www.muslimawareness.org and work from home as a web designer www.yellowpixeldesigns.com.

I have (self diagnosed) Asperger Syndrome and a text-book gifted 3 year old (both are blessings and curses) not to leave out my son who is still too young to care about anything but destroying and/or eating everything.

We've decided to homeschool for several reasons not least of which is my daughters unique way of thinking and learning, having been public schooled all the way through with my difficulties (which presented themselves in various advantages and disadvantages) i understand what damage cookie cutter schooling can do to such a mind. I'm not anti school or passionately pro homeschooling, but i do feel there are many situations where homeschooling is the ideal and that there are fundamental issues with the current public school system.
We also came to this decision because of religious reasons (we are muslim) this can be a controversial reason for many and so it is one i won't dwell on, our children will recieve a balanced curriculum.

So, this blog will be a happy mess of thoughts on art, psychology religion, parenting and homeschool related issues. It will also have it's share of typo's.

I also plan to upload the homeschool worksheets i create for others to use, at the moment they are just alphabet things for learning to read and write, but of course as we grow the worksheets will as well.

If you read this far, thank you, and welcome!