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Showing posts with label arabic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arabic. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Here we go again

Well I have had a month off and am read to prepare for next school year inshallah. This time I want to try to coorinate all the curriculum. So in Islamic Studies he might be learning about Al Qadr and in Arabic he might learn related words. In math the problem of the day might be Zain said Alhumdulillah 3 times for each finger on his right hand, then he did it again. How could you figure out how many times he said it? In science he might learn about the life cycle and his spelling words might be whatever, befalls, yourself, something, therefore, indicates, preordained, knowledge, somewhere, anyhow, certainty, preceded. He might have writing asignments like Write a paragraph telling about Al Qadr. Write advise to someone who has to move far from their friends. Finish the story Ahmed won a swim pass. He loved swimming so he told all of his friends over and over about it. All his friends were getting jealous and angry except Bilal. Ahmed's friend Bilal won a bike. Bilal.....
For PE that week maybe My Little Man would do things like jumping jacks while reciting an ayah pertaining to the Qadr of Allah.
Anyway thats what I would like to do, inshallah. 

Thursday, December 15, 2011

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

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.

Monday, November 21, 2011

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.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

My Little Man at 2 houses

My Little Man is at dad's for the week but is home first thing in the morning for a couple of hours to some of his school work. We cover Arabic and IS and what ever else we have time for. At the moment he is working on his Arabic. We are using Madina Arabic Reader for Children. He is on the second half of lesson 3.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Back to School After Eid

Well we are back to school work today. Last week was a bit hectic so while we did some schooling we didn't get too much done academically. Although I do think our Arabic skill benefited quite a bit.
Tuesday was Eid and yesterday we also took the day off from school work for recuperation purposes.
So far to day we are in a pretty relaxed mode. We started an hour ago and began with our official math book. It has manipulatives that you punch out of the back of the book which is always fun. The lesson was basically just review of Kindergarten level math.
Currently he is making his invention from his English lesson. It goes with the book Tools by Ann Morris. It talks about tools giving examples from around the world. My Little Man drew a picture of a tool of his own invention and is now creating it using legos.
I would still like to cover Islamic studies, Arabic and science. As well as practice spelling and writing, both handwriting and composition. Like I said we are going about it very relaxed so if we don't get to them today I wont fret.

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.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

The Next Step/I have decided what we will use in each subject!

So here is the big list:
  • English
    • reading: Scott Foresman Reading, Harcourt Collections
    • writing: 6 Traits of Writing 1st Grade, Scott Foresman Reading, Harcourt Collections
    • grammer: Scott Foresman Reading, Harcourt Collections
    • spelling/phonics: Scott Foresman Reading, Harcourt Collections
  • Penmanship
    • English: Spencerian Penmanship
    • Arabic: Iqrah Reader, and various printables
  • Science: Scott Foresman Science 2nd grade
  •  Social Studies
    • History: Our Prophet, and Our Country
    • Civics: Our Country
    • Geography: Our Country and Al Ummah
    • Culture: See IS and Geography
    • Economics: Our Country
  • Mathematics: How We Use Number, and Mathematics in Action
  • Islamic Studies
    • Salat: My Salat Companion (TJ)
    • Quran: Juz 30
    • Aqeedah: Most resources from TJ (Talibideen JR)
  • Arabic:
    • Reading: Madina Arabic Reader book 1
    • Writing: Madina Arabic Reader book 1, Iqrah Reader 1st grade
    • Oral: Madina Arabic Reader book 1, Iqrah Reader 1st grade
  • Health:
    • cooking/nutrition: weekly meal prep,
    • other: Harcourt Health, and various other individual resources for each topic

Saturday, June 25, 2011

So Where are We? Choice curriculum/Getting back into the routine.

Well it looks like we have the Arabic picked out, Math, Science, and English picked out. This leaves handwriting, Islamic Studies, Social Studies, Arts and Health.
I have all but decided that we will learn Spencerian Penmanship because it will be an art as well as a tool for communication. I think I really need to spice things up for penmanship otherwise we'll be miserable.
Also I figure for arts just making sure we have various art projects going on regularly. I will just let it be mostly child directed inshallah.  Say we love reading Three Little Bikers, maybe we can make a puppet show of it, or are leaning about the food groups, painting a poster about it, or we write and learn a little nasheed about what good writers do. Things like that.
Also I am thinking that SS and Health do not need to be done every day. Ideas i have for them are teaching one subject, a few times a week and then when we have mastered the concepts and skills do the other.
We could have one week with one subject and one week with the other or One day with one subject and the other a day or 2 later.
As far as IS goes I think we will do Quraan everyday, and other subjects on certain days. Maybe Aqeeda on mondays, that kind of thing.

This brings me to Mondays. Mondays are the hardest day of our week because he is often tired coming home from a fun weekend at Dad's. It seems also to very important that with in the first few mins that he walks in the door that he gets started on school work. If he does not he has a hard time with the transition back to Mom's house all day. I tend to want to chat with his step mom about what he did on the week end and what not. I guess I will just have to give her a call later in the day. 

Monday, June 6, 2011

Links for Free Curriculum or Text Books For 1st Grade

So here is a list of links that could be useful for other young families.  BTW North Carolina is supposed to have the best schools in the country so I use their standards and pacing for guides.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

So I think I will follow a posting schedule. inshallah.
Monday: Cool Links!
Tuesday: Miscellaneous Lessons
Wednesday: Islamic Studies
Thursday: Arabic Studies
Friday: English Studies
Saturday: Mathematics
Sunday: Science

Subjects We're Studying


Hi world! Aslamulakum muslimeen!
So first thing is first we are studying Arabic, Aqeedah, Salat, Penmanship, Writing, English, Math, Science and what ever comes along ;). We informally study nutrition and health, along with other things.
Our current goals are as follows:
Arabic, increase vocabulary, an strengthen letter formation.
Aqeedah, Who is Your Lord?
Salat, perfecting physical positioning and meaning of the words
Penmanship, pencil grip, correct formation, leaving space between words
Writing, letter writing
English, spelling, thinking about what we have read
Math, review and assess
Science, Space and technology!
Other, Ireland!