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!

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

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.

Place value numbers 10-19....colouring fun!

Please raise your hand if you have a child who sees the number 14, but reads it as 41, or a 13 which comes out as 31, or a 19 which she will tell you is 91!
In my latest attempt to win this battle, I've put together a simple colouring activity, which (hopefully) demonstrates the place values for the tens and units, by inserting the manipulatives inside each digit

Multiplication fact folders...making memorising more colourful!

We're ready to start memorising the multiplication facts for 1 to 10 inshallah. To make the task a little more interesting, we produced a folder for each times table group...

Arabic detached pronouns poster book

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A simple poster booklet showing the Arabic detached pronouns.
I have avoided using the words "plural" and "dual" in the posters, instead choosing simpler language which will be clearer to younger children inshallah.

View it on your mobile or tablet device via Scribd to read as a digital book, or download and print at home to produce your own booklet, posters or flashcards.

Self belief: What voice does your child hear?

Do you ever listen to your inner voice? Do you even notice its there? You are not sure? Tell me, do you have a self perception of capability and confidence, or a self perception of haphazardness and not good enough? Do you know you can rise to a challenge, or do you know you will fail so what's the point in even trying?
That's the silent whisper I am talking about. The silent self belief of who we are and what we can do, whether that be positive or negative.

Here is something a little deeper to think about. What is your child's inner voice? What is their self perception? What silent whisper do they have which is developing their awareness and belief of their own capabilities?
 Here is the frightening answer...

Its not working doesn't mean you are failing

In about 2 months time, I will have been "officially" home schooling for 5 years Alhamdulillah! I can still remember the very first day I sat with my eldest to "do school", absolutely clueless of what to do or where to start!
We sat at the kitchen table, deciding to make a giant poster to show the numbers up to 20....so that we would have something to show we had "done" something that day! ....we had to show we had done something, whether or not she could actually count right!?

Oh those days of naivety....I almost miss them! Like a tiny dry seed buried under the soil, not knowing when the rain will come, not knowing when it will start to grow.

Discovering right brain learning part 3: I'm starting over

Okay, so over the past couple of posts I've been looking at how my understanding of how my children learn is evolving. I mentioned that although I always thought I was pretty intuitive to my children's learning styles, I'm coming to realise that I am not quite so open minded as I had myself believe!
I begun a research journey that took me through the possibility of dyslexia, through to the differences in how we use our brain having an effect on how we learn, and on from that, I have come to accept that I forgot what it means to be a home educator.
 And this is what I will share in todays post; how I am using what I have learnt and rediscovered about home education through this new understanding of learning differences inshaAllah.