Discovering the world through the art of letter writing - with a free Penpal guide to get your first letter started

Having a penpal gives you much more than just friendship. It's an opportunity to learn about different places, different people, different cultures, and a fun natural way for our children to develop their writing skills. 

If you have ever thought of finding a penpal for your children, read on and download a free Penpal guide for kids, to help write their first letter. 

The end of our Surah Ikhlas study - free printable included!

Helping our children learn and understand the Qur'an so they can act upon it inshaAllah, is important to every Muslim parent. We've been learning about Surah Ikhlas and to conclude our study, I created a small quiz printable as our finale, and you can download it too.

I don't typically test the children, however they are getting older and believe it or not, are asking for tests and grades.

Although I designed our Surah-Ikhlas printable worksheet to be used as a blind test, I aloud the girls to use their books to help them when they got stuck (you can see more of how we're studying the Qur'an as part of our Morning Basket time here).

Dear homeschool Mama, we're all just like you

The purpose of this blog, like my Instagram and Facebook pages, is to help my sisters with ideas, support and advice.

Not because I have all the answers...
Because I don't.

I'm like you.
With the same struggles.
The same problems.
The same worries.
The same doubts.
The same questions.
The same dirty dishes, piled up laundry and burnt food.

Using copywork to develop penmanship, grammar & punctuation...and having fun whilst doing it!

I was introduced to the practice of copywork maybe three or four years ago when I stumbled upon the World of Bravewriter, and I've been hooked ever since. 

It really is such a simple activity which packs a powerful learning punch, yet is often so undervalued or misunderstood.

Copywork is so much more than just the art of copying text....it offers a multitude of important writing skills, helping budding writers work on not only their penmanship, but also gives opportunity to analyse some one else's writing, work on spelling, punctuation and go through the inner-mechanics of grammar.

The 5 Pillars of Islam activity with guided instructions for kids

We've started chapter 2 of the book "The Correct Creed for Children" which covers the 5 Pillars of Islam, the 6 Pillars of Iman and Ihsan.

The first part of the new chapter lists the 5 Pillars of Islam, and so last week we came up with this craft activity to show what they are before copying the text into our Islamic Studies books (see video below)

Creating a Morning Basket routine in a Muslim homeschool

We've added a new practice to our homeschool this week: a Morning Time Basket ...our interpretation of one anyway.

I wanted to find something that would bring new energy to our new homeschool year, which typically begins after Ramadan.
However this season has been a little slow to get started. More than slow actually, Ramadan ended more than 2 months ago.

Perhaps we needed that time to help us make things different.

I've seen our homeschool efforts have been a little stale for some time, and I knew we needed to make quite a few changes to bring back a sense of excitement and zeal we've lost.

One of our changes, is the introduction of a "Morning Time Basket".

As I contemplated starting this, I wasn't sure if my children would be a little old. When I've seen other home-schooling families online who implement something like this, they seem to be younger, so I thought perhaps I'd missed the boat on this little home-school practice.

However, I decided to give it a try with my version of one, and I'm so glad that I did alhamdulillah.