Reward / Chore tokens!!!!

 We've used sticker charts to encourage good behaviour, however I felt we'd try out something a bit different.
A little while ago I wrote about reward tokens I'd found on another blog, and I thought it would be an idea I'd save and try when they kids were older, but I was getting a little bored of the stickers and I started thinking these tokens may be a good opportunity to encourage a little responsibility from the kids inshallah.

Basically, how it works, the girls have a jar each (which we've been using for 3 weeks but I just got round to labelling and decorating today!) and in the same way in which sticker charts are used, a token is given for various acts of good behaviour including chores.

I have 3 different token values, 1, 2 and 5. I'll give a token according to what I deem appropriate to the action. Mostly it is 1's......I keep the 2's or 5's for something extra special.

So what is the purpose in the tokens and how do they promote responsibility?  Well, these tokens can be saved and traded for a treat! .....

• For 10 tokens they can choose a colouring page from the Internet to print off (google images)
• For 25 tokens they can have 15 minutes on the computer to play a game. (we don't encourage screen time so this is a treat)
• For 50 tokens they can stay up an extra 30 minutes at bedtime on a Saturday.
• For 100 tokens they can choose a pre-bought gift. (I went to pound-land and chose 3 different gifts they can choose from)

There's a poster up on the wall so the girls can see what they can trade their tokens in for.
They are in control then of how they wish to use their tokens and gain treats.
They can either spend on the smaller value rewards or save up their tokens for something more special....or as I encourage, a bit of both - spend tokens on the lower value trades whilst still saving some tokens for the higher priced incentives!

The only rule I really have, is I won't give a token if they do something and then ask for a token.



So far they seem to be working alhamdulillah.

I tried to use rewards which were low cost or zero terms of monitory value such as the colouring pages and staying up past bed-time.

The big treat for the 100 tokens is an incentive gift to try to promote the idea to save for something and encourage patience.....100 tokens isn't something they will collect pretty soon.

The thing to remember is to be consistent with the tokens.....its all too easy to allow our children's good behaviour to get overlooked and ignored, whereas negative behaviour is always always always picked up by us immediately!

Its nice for the kids to have their good behaviour noticed and appreciated by us.....if they were naughty there would be no way we'd allow them to escape without attention being given to it.



The tokens are available to download inshallah:
Value 1 HERE!!!!
Value 2 and 5 HERE!!!

Number Fact "Partners"

I've been working with my 6 year old for a couple of months trying to enable her to recall without thinking number facts to 10 inshallah.....without telling her that is what we are doing! (if she realises we are "doing maths" you can count on a full scale melt-down!!!)

The past couple of days I have found something which alhamdulillah, seems to be working and she is catching on quick!

Using the Montessori addition and subtraction board we started playing a game, in which I ask her to find the partner of a given number which would make the total 10.

So here, you can see I presented the blue number strip "5" and asked "What is the partner of 5?", to which she responded "5" and placed the corresponding partner in red besides to show the total of 10.

To make it appear more like a game, we took in turns to ask one another to find the partner of a given number. Here K presented "8" to me........

........and I responded with "2".

We end up with all the number facts to 10 (excluding 10+0 / 0+10)



I found this to be quite successful alhamdulillah, as it does appear like a game, but in playing this game a few times, the number facts are indirectly learnt and memorised without any effort inshallah, alhamdulillah!

And of course, you can change the total to different numbers to learn various other important number facts such as 5, 20 etc etc etc (although if using number facts beond 10, you'd have to make your own resouces)

It is not at all necessary to have the number board as I have pictured, I just linked it up at the top just for those who are interested.

It is easy to use any other similar material to demonstrate this to the child....unifix cubes would be good.

Alternatively, to use the Montessori equipment but without the price tag, Wikisori have listed free printables to replicate the same materials at home!

Addition / Subtraction strip board can be printed HERE!!!!

The red number strips can be printed HERE!!!!

The blue number strips can be printed HERE!!!!

If you have not checked out http://www.wikisori.org  before, its a brilliant site with free Montessori albums, printable worksheets and equipment replicars.....very useful alhamdulillah.

Raising children upon tawheed...

A mother recently had a conversation with her 6 year old. She can't remember what her daughter was doing at the time, whether she was eating a meal or reading a book; but they were sat at the kitchen table.
The girl randomly without prompting, told her mother that she is so happy that she was not born into a "family of shirk" because if she was, then they would teach her to do shirk and other things which displease Allah!

Alhamdulillah, indeed all praise is for Allah, this girl's mother felt so humbled by her daughter's thoughts.

 A child so young understanding the difference between being upon Tawheed or being upon Shirk, and being thankful for not being born into a family calling to the later.

Stories of the Prophets Notebooking pages!

I'd like to try notebooking, so experimenting with pages! I thought might be nice as part of literacy to write up the stories of the Prophets, so have come up with a few different styles for this topic.....

***Note*** - the space provided for an image, is not intended to draw any of the Prophet's, but rather to draw a picture which represents the main essence of the story, for example, a fruit tree could represent the Story of Prophet Adam, a ship to represent Prophet Nuh and so on.

I've slightly indented the boarder on the left side to allow for a hole-punch.

An extension page is also available for older children and those who can write longer assignments inshallah (just print off as many extension sheets as needed)

Style 1:

Available for download inshallah HERE!

Extension page download HERE!

Style 2:

Available to download inshallah  HERE!

Extension Page HERE!

Style 3:

Available to download inshallah HERE!

Extension Page download HERE!

Diary of a Muslim HomeSchool has gone "FaceBook"!

Extending on from this blog, Diary of a Muslim HomeSchool now has a FaceBook Page to continue to share homeschooling resources across the Muslim Home Educating community inshallah!

Check it out and hit the "like" button! :) http://www.facebook.com/DiaryOfAMuslimHomeSchool

Cute personalised note book!

This is a cute little writing book, made to try to inspire a desire to do more independent writing inshallah!

I'd bought this A4 hard-back note book for I think 99p a few weeks ago from one of those cheapy bits and bobs shops (anyone in Leicester.....BM Stores next to Sainsburys!)
 I had some 3D fabric paint laying around (as you do! lol) and thought would be nice to personalise the book.....what child doesn't like their name plastered on something!

I don't know if you can see in the picture below, but the paint is slightly raised....










I used Pebeo paint.....I think if I remember right it was about £1.50-ish!

Written numbers in word form....Montessori style!

This is quite a nice lesson to help give an understanding of numbers in words, as well as understanding decimal place.

Some time ago I printed from Montessori Print Shop place value cards for the Golden Beads. These are cards which come in sets of 3, depicting a value in its number form, written word form and an image showing the beads representing that amount.

For anyone who doesn't use the Montessori beads, these could easily be substituted for something similar such as base ten blocks, and you can find websites to print the large number cards I'm sure for free.

Anyway, here is what we did.....

1.) I gave K the value card in words.

2.) K then brought the corresponding bead material.

3.) I gave K the picture card to check she was correct.

4.) I then asked K to bring the correct value number cards...........

...........which she had to put together to show the correct number

5.) Finally, I gave K the number card so she could check she was correct.

My home school planning.....

I have been burying my head in the sand for some months, trying to hide away from thinking about what I am going to do for our next school year (which is little over a week away as I am writing this!).
It got to the point where I told myself, if I don't face up to it, sit down and think, the next year will be as wishy-washy as our previous year and we will accomplish little!

So far we haven't been taking any set breaks, rather just went with the flow, taking days (or weeks....or months!) as we needed it....and we have wasted alot of time! This year, I want to be organised inshallah. I have toyed with the idea of unschooling so much, telling myself we will just go with the flow and take each day as it comes, but when I pinch myself and take a reality check, I know I need structure. So the only way to get a bit of structure, would be to plan!

Thinking about planning a whole year seems hugely daunting....I don't know at what rate the kids will progress at, what they will be interested in, or what our situation will be in another 6 months! I don't want to spend so much time planning now, only to discover my planning was not relevant, or the kids had not reached that level, or indeed had far overtaken a level!

So how can I plan a whole year, without really planning a whoooole year? ....well, this is what I have decided to do, and I thought I would share how I have done things...

1. Work out school-time dates

After skimming through a few blogs to get an idea of how others do their planning, the first thing I did was to decide when our school year will start and end, before dividing into into 6 weeks blocks, with 1 week break between.

I like the idea of having a school year from Ramadan to Ramadan....so that our big break will be at the end of the year throughout Ramadan. So we will start just after E'id and end a few days before Ramadan next year inshallah.

I printed off a school calendar from Donna Young and got out my highlighter pens, marking off school time and break time.



Yellow marks school time, and the green break time!

I have to tell you,  just doing this exercise seemed to make planning the school year so much easier, as I can clearly see defined blocks! I have 6 six week blocks and 1 with just 5 weeks.
Straight away, this made the idea of planning so much easier alhamdulillah, as the year is broken down into smaller sections.

 I also think taking scheduled breaks will be great for me and the kids inshallah....knowing at the end of 6 weeks, we will be taking time out to re-energise inshallah!










2. A rough plan 6 weeks ahead

I worked out what subjects I want to go through with the kids, and marked them out, showing how many times a week we would do them inshallah.
I've tried to be a bit more realistic this year, and not plan to over-do-it with too much every day! I'll try this schedule and tweak it if necessary as we go along. This is K's subject plan....

3. Organise Subjects

So after working out what subjects I want to go through, I then put together a subject lesson guide, going through what each lesson will cover inshallah and detail any resources which need preparing...which I then prepared ready!

4. Prepare resources

So once I had a general lesson guide, I prepared the resources, worksheets, lapbook segments etc and placed inside a file folder, with each file section containing 1 subject.
So all I have to do (in theory) when we start school next week inshallah, is pull out from the front of each subject section the work for the day put them in the workboxes.

So there you go, thats how I have planned this year round! I have 6 weeks of lessons planned ahead alhamdulillah....although still have a couple of things I still need to finish off inshallah. But I hope that it will mean I won't have to be searching the computer, making or printing resources as we go along, and instead spend more time with the children inshallah! We'll see how it goes.....!

Madina Arabic Reader lapbook lesson 1!

Some time back last year we started going through Madina Arabic Reader, however didn't get very far! I've decided to start again from lesson 1, and have made a lapbook corrisponding to the Madina Arabic reader lesson 1. We haven't finished it yet, but here are a few pics of what K has done so far...

Vocab mini book

Picture - word match game

Question vocab flaps

Sentence building cards K enjoyed using these cards as a game with me ...we would take it in turns to select a picture and ask the question "is this....", she would find it amusing if I picked a picture and asked if it was the wrong thing!

K still needs to complete the lapbook inshallah as still a few more mini-books / cards to add. Its helped K to remember alot of the vocab alhamdulillah because I have repeated alot through different activities.....May Allah facilitate her to remember it all long term (and me too!)

Its available for download inshallah HERE!

This years Ramadan Good Deed Tree!

A few days latter than planned, but we got there alhamdulillah! Finally got round to making this years Good Deed chart for Ramadan!
The past couple of years I have made a tree picture for the girls to add leaves for each good deed they do. I like to write on the leaf what it was the girls did or said.
Its nice because it makes me focus and recognise their good behaviour....which often gets overlooked! So from the smallest kind word to doing big actions to please Allah, it will be recorded and stuck up on the tree inshaAllah!

This year, I've made a big tree to stick up on the wall, about 1m tall from opening up a box. The kids added some glitter, and I punched heart shapes for the leaves! (thought would be cute!)