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Showing posts with label update. Show all posts
Showing posts with label update. Show all posts

Friday, November 25, 2011

Was a good but short week

Well it was a good but short week. My Little Man was picked up to go to his dad's house Wednesday night.
Anyway we do 4 things for school now, math, reading, writing and Arabic. Of course reading will really cover a multitude of subjects but for simplicity's sake we are calling it reading.
My Little Man's favorite thing to do for fun is read so why not base his education around that? He can read about history, geography, science, even math. Books have been written on virtually everything, and usually you can find a free ebook on the web on a given subject.
So the way I am setting it up is inspired by Robinson Curriculum or Self Teaching. The goal is for My Little Man to teach himself. So the day would eventually go like this, 2 hours math, then 2 hours reading, then an hour writing and working on an essay then an hour of Arabic.
The Robinson Curriculum is easily secularized but is Christian based. For math you have your child memorize addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts, then once in rote memory they go to Saxon Math 4/5. I don't know that we will use that particular math book but I have decided to follow that basic plan.
You can find RC book lists on the web, and most of the books can be found for free on the web at places like Archive.org. Therefore (what a fun word) we are using some of those books.
I assigned some books, made sure he knew my expectations regarding them and let him dig in for 2 hours. Currently he has been assigned McGuffey's Eclectic Primer,  How We Use Numbers, The Life of George Washington in Words of One Syllable , A Book of Nursery Rhymes, Usooluth Thalaathah, Al-FAWAID.
The only requirements I have are that he spend a little time on the first two i listed each day, do any activities suggested and that he spend 2 hours reading from the books assigned.  He can pick which books he wants to read and for how long.
For the writing I just have him fill one page. The ruler is that it needs to be mostly writing. He can draw pictures to go with what ever he writes. Eventually I will require more than just filling up the page, but for now it is enough. I do not correct spelling, or punctuation or even grammar. The point is just to write. And blessedly we have had no problems so far. Of the three day's we have done school like this he has written a letter to me each time.
For Arabic I had not planned to change curriculum but ran into the perfect thing for us, for free, on the web. Arabic is Easy the guy teaching it makes it, well, easy. He has videos here. He has made very nice PDF books for each lesson here is the first book.
My son finds them less dull than the Madina books. So far the vocabulary is almost exactly the same. And really we are stuck until he learns the vocabulary.  He just hasn't figured out how to learn second language vocabulary yet. I really need to learn the vocabulary so i can throw it in to our every day speech. I use kursi, kitab, shajara and this is occasionally but he needs to here them more, and other words. 
I am also helping him keep a record of his work. I am pretty sure that this will be very beneficial so I am making it a priority.
I would like him to work on Quran daily as well but at this point I think just establishing those basics is more of a priority and the point is to keep it simple. If i could get him an Quran tutor then I think that would be easy to accommodate with out detracting from the other subjects. I just feel like since he doesn't speak Arabic and doesn't even really understand the translations it can wait until he does understand one or the other.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Three Weeks in

Well we are 3 weeks in and have a routine.
We do our American calendar, then our Hijri calendar
Next the weather and our prediction
Next we do our daily Islamic Studies lesson
Depending on the length of the IS lesson we will either take a break or do our Arabic, then take a break
Next is math
Followed by Science
And then depending on the day, art, PE, or social studies.
Then he does his work boxes.
The length of time it takes varies.
Today we slept in a bit and then went to a park to meet up with other HSers. It was awesome! Anyway we didn't start school until 2 oclock today. My little man had a snack and is now on to work boxes.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

DAY 2

So today we started on time! At 9:02! Today I have learned that letting him play on the computer for break is not conducive to getting more school work done. He had a COW despite advance warning, when I told him it was time to get beck to school work.
Right now he is having PE with the Big Man. They are learning about food groups and then will do some physically active stuff.
We did our IS for the day and Arabic. That covered handwriting as well. After he takes a break when finished with PE he will then, inshallah have English then  preforming arts.
For PA we will just briefly identify good public speakers and discuss what makes them good speakers. I figure 5-10 min at most. After that work boxes.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

I finished the school room!

I finished setting up the school room. I am trying to keep it simple. We are going to try workboxes and I took the computer out. I have it in the downstairs living room at the moment but will probably move it to the laundry room because that is even closer, just the other side of the door.
Meanwhile, my little man is at the age of praying so were are adjusting to him having a new schedule. I still need to print a lot of stuff and gather supplies. I want to double check that my list of science supplies is complete. Anyway I may not be posting much this week.