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. 

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.

WOW We are on a roll!

So we are back to our old routine and its not quite 2 and we are on the last assignment for the day. A little cursive practice!
He gave me a bit of attitude this morning, which is not unusual. I was penitent as long as I could then he got it. Since then we have been fine. I just have to stay on top of him. What do you know I come in here to write this and he is already playing around instead I doing his letter As. Geese!

Last steps to getting ready

Well it looks like I am finally ready to just print off things and purchase science lab items. Most of the items for science I already have and only 1 will cost more than $5. By far the most expensive item to purchase will be ink. I'd like to get a self inking system, and those run over  $100. Still, I think it would be well worth it.b

My Hubby Will Teach PE/Health

So, inshallah, my hubby will be in charge of gym essentially. I asked to get involved in my little man's schooling and we talked about different ways he could be more involved. He decided he would like to take charge of PE/Health.
I gave him some tips regarding how to set goals and break them into lessons. I told I think of what my long term overall goal is then keep that in mid as I break it down into smaller goals. I then think, "What goal could we meet this year that would bring us closer to that over all goal?" I break that down into smaller and smaller pieces until they are so small we can make them into individual lessons.
I made some suggestions like looking up a pacing guide and standards. Trying The Presidents Fitness Challenge, and offered to put together some information for him.

Goals

The next step for planning the next years worth of schooling is pacing. I need to give my self a basic plot out of when we will cover each goal.
Which brings us to what are our goals? Well my number one long term goal, aka mission statement is to prepare my son for adulthood by teaching him how to teach himself. In other words give him the basics so that when he needs to learn something new, weather for work or life in general he is able to figure out what he needs to learn and then learn the skill or concept. I want him to go to college and get a degree so that he has more opportunities, I want him to be able to teach his children Tawheed. I want him to be confidant and well rounded. I want him to be healthy and have goals for himself.

So what does all this have to do with next school year?
Keeping the end goal in mind, coloring all that I do, I can keep perspective in planning. Is it essential? Does it conflict with the overall goal?

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

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. 

Handwriting

So the options seem to be, first of all, do we want to continue manuscript or move to cursive?
I gave an impromptu lesson in cursive today. He though it was cool. I wonder if it would be easier because connecting letters is already familiar to him via Arabic.

 I think it would be cool to learn how to write in the older style, Spencerian.  It also seems to lend itself to learning calligraphy more readily. It might force both of use to slow down and really pay attention to letter formation. (My hand is aching just thinking about handwriting.)

This is Engrossers Script

Just for fun

Of course there are more moder scripts like D'Nealian

So if we learn cursive, what is the end goal? Simplicity or beauty? I think it just depends. If he is capable, beauty because this could be one more way to express himself, on the other hand if it is just not with in his abilities then simplicity would be the obvious choice.  Simplicity would allow him to read cursive and take notes faster.
I still think making beautiful handwriting the goal could be a wonderful choice because it could become an art form, as I mentioned before.
MMM I think I am going to poll people on facebook. 

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!