10 things I know now about homeschool that I didn't know when I started

10 things I know now about homeschool that I didn't know when I started from a Muslim Home School
My first "official" day as a home schooler, I'm sure I remember standing over my then 4 year old as she sat because that's what *teachers* do.....cringe!

Next month we'll have completed six years of home education and starting our seventh inshallah! Those six years have flown by subhanAllah. My eldest is only 10, so I am still a novice when it comes to home-schooling. However, I have learnt a little over our journey thus far, and so I thought I'd share 10 things I've learnt that I didn't know (or didn't believe!) when we started out.

World famous lemon battery experiement

Lemon battery experiment for kids
Did you know you can use lemons to make a battery? Well, you can subhanAllah. Its not going to power the kettle in the kitchen.....but it will light up an LED diode inshallah!

Online Book Club!

Online Book Club by A Muslim Home School
Despite our best efforts, sometimes a toddler tantrum or forever nagging a teen to tidy their room, eventually gets to us. We break. We snap. We scream. We lay down demands.

We can't understand why our 8 year old is creating such a fuss when we told him we need to get on our coats and get into the car!
We don't see what our 10 year olds problem is to share her books with her younger sister!
We don't see why telling the kids its bedtime causes such an eruption of frustration!
What is the matter with these kids!

Happy learning

A happy home school lesson, is a lesson learnt!
As I sat with my youngest this morning whilst she worked on her Maths, she worked so well barakAllahu feeha, that after finishing one page, I braved suggesting lets take a 5 minute break and we'll do another.
She asked why, since for such a long time we have stuck to completing one page a day. I answered gently, explaining we really should try to be doing 2 pages (I will admit we probably are a bit behind in maths). She was okay with that, and we sat together playing with the number blocks, creating little sculptures if you will for 5 minutes, then set to work on page 2, which she worked through beautifully Alhamdulillah.

Don't home school if you want the kids to work alone!

Education quote from A Muslim Home School
Everyone you meet and everything you read in the home school world seems to promote this idea of independent learners. Children being able to independently learn and direct their studies all by themselves.... and that's what we all want right?

How do we see?

Ibn al Haytham a study of how we see
Throughout the history of early Science and Mathematics, many Muslims made great progress in these fields, forming a foundation which we continue to study even today.

One of these founding fathers of scientific learning, was a man named al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham, born in Iraq almost a thousand years ago. He is said in fact, to be one of the first scientists, famous for discovering how vision works.

To cut a long story short, he was sat in his dark room one day, when a small hole let through some light. He spotted projected onto his wall an upside down image of outside.
After making further observations through scientific experimentations, he concluded that light travels in straight lines, and this light coming through the hole and projecting onto the wall demonstrated how vision works.

We have begun a project with some other home schooled girls about sight, starting with a brief study of Ibn al-Haytham, since he was the first to make this amazing discovery to explain how we see.

One of the things Ibn al-Haytham did, was make a small box, which has become known as the camera obscura. One side of the box was a thin sheet of paper, with a small pin hole in the side directly opposite. He used this box to test his ideas, directing the pin hole towards three lit candles, allowing him to see projected onto the paper side, an upside down image of the light!

How we see - home made camera obscura You can find many instructions online to make your own camera obcsura; I used the one given in the 1001 inventons teachers pack.

You need to be careful when viewing the candle, as the pin hole really needs to face the candle light, and ideally the darker the room the better.
You are not going to see a crystal clear picture, however you will see an upside down image of the candle light shape.
I found that we had to either cup our hands around our camera obscura viewing and eye, so that no extra light would get into our vision, or wait until after margin and view with all the lights out. But it does work Alhamdulillah!

To prepare our learning, I used 1001 Inventions: Muslim Heritage in our world, which provides a look at contributions made in various areas including home, school and medicine. National Geographic also released earlier this summer a small book for children about Ibn al-Haytham. Although simple in writing, this was a great resource and certainly helped my children bring the story of Ibn al-Haytham to life.
There is also a short documentary I believe produced by Al-Jazeera over on youtube, which shows how Ibn al-Haytham's discovery of light works and shows you how a room in your house can be made into your very own camera obscura to view outside! (discussion about Ibn al-Haytham begins from about 6min 30 sec)

If you are interested in making your own study, to accompany the 1001 Inventions book, there is a free teacher guide PDF, which will help you plan a lesson and activities to go along with your learning, as well as a website dedicated to Ibn al Haytham.

Viewing onion cells with a kids microscope

viewing onion cells with a kids microscope
Last week we tried something, that if I am completely honest, I did not expect to work.....we've tried many things that we've seen online and often not quite got the same results.

Alhamdulillah, this was not one of those occasions, and indeed was a huge boost to home schooling morale.......we saw onion cells....at home......in our kitchen......with a microscope!

Ready for action...

muslim homeschool

I've been out of sync for a while.....a very long while ....to the point its probably quite dangerous!
Our home schooling ventures have taken a back seat certainly over the past few months, and with that, the pressure to be secondary level ready over the upcoming year inshaAllah is etching itself deep into my consciousness!

Alhamdulillah, I have had what feels like a tirade of difficult situations over the past few years. Like each one of you reading this, we all have various struggles behind our closed doors.
I have faced some real obstacles, and I've been knocked off my feet a number of times. But now its time to dust myself off, stand and roll up my sleeves, put everything aside and remind myself why I am home educating...because I think I forgot for a time too long.

Getting ready for back to school.... reorganisation!

getting ready for back to (home)-school ......reorganisation!

Is anybody still there???
Its been rather a while since I last hopped on! I hope everyone had a beneficial Ramadan and an enjoyable E'id.

Here we are now, heading into the middle of July and I am itching to get back to our studies inshallah...although my girls may not be...they have certainly enjoyed the time off!

We don't typically do a great deal of home schooling over Ramadan. To be honest, its been a good couple of months since we have actually home schooled (ssshhh don't tell anyone!)

A new beginning is approaching...

The decision to continue to home educate or enter school
Never in my wildest dreams did I ever want to home educate! Never!
When my eldest was born we knew that State School would not be an option .....but to home school ....no way!
However, when we moved cities, and met the home educating community here, my eyes were opened and it seemed like the obvious thing to do Alhamdulillah!
I remember it took around a year before we made the official decision to take full responsibility for the education of our family. And when we did, it was nerve-racking!

I sit here now, more than 5 years on, with only 1 year left of my eldest's primary school education and I have 2 thoughts......

Multiplication facts.....sorted!

Multiplication fact cards review
Anyone who has read my blog from the beginning knows, my eldest is not the biggest maths fan that ever lived! If she had it her way, she would never look at another number again!
Unfortunately, we can not survive without maths in the big wide world, therefore I have to embrace the maths phobia battle with my little darling, because quite frankly, it just has to be done!

The difference between knowing your times tables and not knowing them, is like eating fish with or without bones! .....I am sure this puzzles you...

Bi-lingual Arabic-English tracing board book review

arabic - english letter tracing board book
If you are tired of printing off tracing worksheets, and having mounds of paper thrown into the bin, then please allow me to introduce to you this wipe able board book from Fun Tree Books, who kindly offered to send me a copy to review.

I've seen many of these type of letter tracing workbooks, and initially thought it wouldn't be much different to what I've already come across and used in the past. However (and here is where the famous "but" comes in!).....I was genuinely surprised when I opened the package shipped all the way from the US!

Arabic detached pronouns worksheet printable

If you follow us on Facebook, then you will have seen the download link for this Arabic detached pronouns printable, exclusively on our page a couple of weeks ago!
If you are not already following us on facebook....you might want to like our page where we share links to other online resources and articles that don't appear here on site, as well as any blog updates.

Back to the reason for this post! A simple colour in vocabulary folder to help learn the Arabic detached pronouns.

Printable Moon and Sun letter worksheet folder for kids!

 
You might remember a couple of weeks ago we posted a free printable Arabic Moon and Sun letter poster? From that, we have put together a quick worksheet style folder to help kids practice their learning of these letters and their different rules inshallah.

Loop Scheduling for home school....getting things done calmly!

loop scheduling for home school

Who likes treasure??? ...A little piece of informational treasure I came across recently is loop scheduling. ....a way to still get everything you want to get done "done" inshallah, but with a lot of the pressure and stress gone! ....its simple!

{FREE} printable weekly planner...its time to get organised!

A simple weekly planner without any fuss! This uncomplicated design can be used to set out your agenda for the up-coming week inshallah, with space to map out your mornings and afternoons as well as dinner time menu plan.

Salaah worksheet folder printable; The conditions, pillars and requirements of prayer

Salaah worksheet folder for the conditions, pillars and requirements of prayer
We are back again with more review material for the Conditions, pillars and requirements of prayer as explained in the Book authored by Shiekh Muhammad bin Abdil-Wahhaab, explained by Sheikh Muhammad Amaan al-Jaamee and Shiekh Abdul-Muhson al-Abbaad!
 
This worksheet style folder can be used as a simple introduction to the topic study, or used at the end of learning either as a review aid or to allow the student to demonstrate what they have learnt.
printable Salaah worksheet folder for the conditions, pillars and requirements of prayer

Each of the conditions, pillars and requirements are named and set out in a chart, with a blank space to give a short, brief explanation as to what each mean. By no means is this an extensive piece of work for the child to complete; its purpose is to allow just a short answer to show a basic comprehension.
You may like to allow your student(s) to copy a simple answer you write out first, however if they are older or show greater understanding, you may encourage them to complete the answers independently....use it in whichever way works for your family or individual child!
Salaah worksheet folder for the conditions, pillars and requirements of prayer

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you'll know by now that the folder is designed around fitting onto an A3 sheet of folded card (or 2 A4 cards taped together), with the cover on the front, and worksheet pages affixed to each of the remaining sides.

I like to use coloured card and trim the sheet edges to give a coloured boarder frame around each sheet, but by all means, you don't need to do that.

We have 2 options to choose from; girls or boys. The content is exactly the same in each, the only difference is the pictures.
Select from the high-lighted text below to download inshallah.

I want to home school but where do I start?

I want to home school but where do I start?
When our broods are still in nappies so many of us ooze enthusiasm...we have so much of it we are like a child who has eaten too much sugar and now has a surge of energy she can quite literally bounce off the walls with and will happily try to!
We are eager to start putting our role of motherhood into action and can't wait to bring the mountains of precious knowledge to our little darlings.
We want our children to be successful; in both this Dunya as well as the Akhira. We are desperate to do something....anything to get the education journey started....because everyone else is and we don't want our child to end up being left behind!

Arabic moon and sun letters (free) poster print!

Hot off the press! Check out our new Arabic moon and sun letters poster print....the only cost to you is your ink and a sheet of gloss photo paper!

Printable nouns folder....a spin on the traditional worksheet!

Free printable worksheet folder, common, proper, abstract, concrete, collective nouns
Worksheets can become pretty tedious right!? So here is a simple spin; transforming something which could be quite ordinary, into something with a little more oomph....!

Building family culture

building family culture, helping family memories grow
As Muslim families, we strive to build a home with a solid foundation of the Qur'an and Sunnah. We work to raise our children to know why we were created and what our purpose is bi'ithnillah. We work to nurture them to love their Creator and to love to fulfil His commands with both sincerity to please Him Alone, and in truth upon the legislated ways the Prophet taught us.
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