What We've Been Up To

Right now My Little Man is using a calculator to create addition problems and then make up a math story involving the equation.
He worked on a Boating Safety booklet, reviewed Arabic letters and focused on dthal, thought up and started a science experiment to see if he could get too hot by drinking hot water with a straw so he could go outside with out a coat and not get cold. Next, inshallah he is going to read and test himself on comprehension. When he read a work he didn't know he wrote it down and studied it so he would recognize it in the future.

Oh when he was working on his dthal page he started experimenting with mixing colors. So lets see thats Arabic, art, science, math, vocabulary in English, and is getting a book now for reading.  4 hours of school work and no problems other than the occasional "Enough sound effects i can't concentrate!" coming from my end. not bad

No Fighting! Yeah!

Well today was a pretty good day. My Little Man definitely got bored working on his math facts, but there was no yelling and arguing and what not. I let him do his reading before his math and after he had reviewed the facts for an hour he asked to do his How We Use Number's book. I said "Sure." And he was very happy, and when he finally figured out he could do as many pages as he wanted from the book he was even happier. I just reminded him that if it asks him to do an activity he does it.
He didn't really want to do his writing but he didn't give me too hard of a time about it. In the end he wrote about his new kitchen timer. I gave him the timer so he could time himself doing math facts.

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.

What We've Been Up To

Well for about a month we had been really butting heads. I didn't want every post to be negative to I didn't post. Well we took last week off, every single day! Today was our first day back to school work. With the exception of Eid's and a couple other days we had been going for 3 and 1/2 months strait.
We'll with only 1 minor blip we had a good day. We started after lunch and are wrapping up now.
My son spent 2 hours on math, much of the time day dreaming but eventually he got down and did the work. Either way he did a page of addition problems equaling 15 or less, and learned his +0 facts to 13. He has know how to add for quite some time. He was just hadn't realised that +0 is always the other adden. Anyway I am pretty condifant that he knows his +0's now by rote.
He read nursery rhymes, and lessons 1-5 in McGuffey's Eclectic Primer, even doing the cursive copy work.  He did 2 pages from How We Use Numbers.
He did lesson 1 from Arabic is Easy with the video and we read the lesson in the book together. He still isn't solid in his vocab despite all but 1 of those words he has be "learning" since he was 4! Oh well
Right now he is writing me a letter. His task is to fill his page up. The page is ruled at about 1 inch so it's not an over the top request and he hasn't complained, even though I have sent him back 3 times saying. "This is very good. Now finish filling up the page." I told him he could draw picture but that I mostly wanted words.

Addition facts

By the way we are currently working on addition facts, and again thrift store finds save the day! I  picked up Addition (ISBN 0-7696-4451-1) It has a CD with useful, but obnoxious songs to help the student.  The cover, really covers all the contents.
I also have the subtraction one. I paid a dollar a piece for them. It seems to be paying off, I ask him before he begins if he want to listen to the CD. He has +0 down and just about has +1, has a hard time remembering the name of 12.  I think in another week he will probably be more than ready for +3.  He has just been giving the answers orally.