Addition Practise

This isn't a very inspirational post - more a personal reference for myself to see what we were doing at this point in the year!

Some independent addition practise using multilink blocks as counters, keeping within number bonds to 10. Using the totalling up method for the first half and introducing the idea of counting on for the second.

I let them choose which color paper they wanted their questions on, then Papa marked their work. 😂

Prophet Ibraheem (AS) - 02 - Who is Allah (SWT)?

We read pages 26-27 about Prophet Ibraheem (AS) in the Migo & Ali book, discussing it together as we went along.

When we finished, I helped them summarise what the story was about: Prophet Ibraheem (AS) looked at the things in the sky (first the stars, then moon, then sun - each thing was bigger and brighter than the one before it!) and he wondered if they were Allah... but he decided they couldn't be because they kept disappearing. He understood they were only made by Allah and that Allah never disappears.

On a piece of card I asked them for ideas to represent each part of the story and drew outlines in black felt tip. Then we got the paints out and they coloured the pictures in.

Once the pictures were dry (we actually did this the next day), they wrote the title on a piece of plain A4 paper and glued the first picture at the top. I wrote some simple sentences next to their picture, saying out loud what I was writing, and leaving blanks for key words.

He saw a _____ and said, "This must be ______!" But then it went away so he said it was _______.

Then they stuck down the next picture (they had to remember what this was rather than me tell them) and we continued in the same pattern, with me writing sentences with gaps for them to fill in. Because the story follows a pattern I challenged them a little by leaving more blanks for each picture.

Then he saw the ____ which was ______ and ______ and said, "This ____ __ ______!" But then it ____ _____ so he said it was not.

Then he saw the ____ which was even _____ and ______ and ____, "____ ____ __ ______!" But then __ ____ ____ so he said __ ___ ___.

We discussed the meaning of the story before they stuck the final picture down and I wrote the last couple of sentences based on their summaries.

Prophet _______ thought and then said all these things were ____ __ ______. We can't ____ Allah and Allah _______ goes away.

Song: أَيْنَ أَنْتَ؟ (Where Are You?)

Practising some vocabulary by singing to the tune of "Finger Family"...

Each verse, one person leads and chooses the animal to sing about - they need to think carefully whether to use أَنْتَ (anta) or أَنْتِ (anti) depending on whether the animal is masculine/feminine! Then everyone else joins in with the last 2 lines...

A simple game which can be easily played anywhere. Sometimes we mix it up by singing the animal's reply in the appropriate sounding voice. 😁

أَرْنَب، أَرْنَب (Arnab, arnab/Rabbit, rabbit)

أَيْنَ أَنْتَ؟ (Ayna anta?/Where are you [m.]?)
أَنَا هُنَا، أَنَا هُنَا (Ana huna, ana huna,/I'm here, I'm here)
كَيْفَ حَالُكُمْ؟ (Kayfa haalukum?/How are you [all]?)

بَقَرَة، بَقَرَة (Baqarah, baqarah/Cow, cow)
أَيْنَ أَنْتِ؟ (Ayna anti?/Where are you [f.]?)

أَنَا هُنَا، أَنَا هُنَا (Ana huna, ana huna,/I'm here, I'm here)
كَيْفَ حَالُكُمْ؟ (Kayfa haalukum?/How are you [all]?)

etc. etc. !

Arabic colours: masculine/feminine

We've been familiar with the masculine versions of the colours for a while now, through songs on YouTube and using them in context in everyday conversations, but only just learnt the feminine equivalents.

To recap this vocabulary, I created a simple table for the girls to match the masculine and feminine versions of the colours to each other. There's the opportunity to practise scissor skills to cut out the words themselves or you can prepare this in advance for them. There's also opportunity to practise reading/familiarisation with the letters and vowel sounds, or you can simply read out the words to them a few at a time to find the matching pair.

Once the girls had stuck the words in the correct places (left column for feminine, right column for masculine!), we practised making statements to describe nouns as a colour using the words around the page to help, e.g. اَلْبَيْتُ الْأحْمَر ("the red house"). All the pictures on the left are feminine nouns in Arabic and the ones on the right are masculine nouns in Arabic. Of course, feel free to edit the file to nouns your own children are familiar with instead!

You can download the resources here.

Parts of a Story: Beginning, Middle, Ending

Following on from the previous post wherein they learnt what an ending was, this time we combined learning about "beginning" and "middle" together.

This time, I asked the girls to choose two books each - again, ones they were familiar with. Funnily enough, the one pictured above chose the same books as last time. 😂 Rather than read through the books again, I asked them to summarise what each story was about (another skill in itself!) which we did together verbally.

Then I got some Post-It notes, 3 for each book, and wrote a summary of the beginning, middle and ending for each book on the bottom of the Post-Its (based on our discussion) while the girls wrote the headings on their A4 paper - copying from the whiteboard.

Because they chose different books, they needed to do the work individually. Simply, they needed to put the Post-Its in the correct order and then place them underneath the correct heading. I checked with them when they thought they were done and then they glued them down. When they were finished, they could then draw a picture to represent each part.

We clarified that the beginning goes at the start, the ending finishes the story off and the middle is all the rest that happens in between! To be honest, the concept wasn't difficult since we use this as everyday vocabulary anyway. 👍

When they're older we can then expand this into the standard "story mountain" model, splitting up the main components further. This level of detail is fine for now, though, with "middle" being the main chunk of the story. 😀

Prophet Ibraheem (AS) - 01 - What are idols?

The girls were already aware of the Prophet Ibraheem (AS) from some of their story books and our discussions and activities about Hajj (he's mentioned in the 5 Pillars song I wrote earlier!) but I wanted to go through his story in a little more depth as part of their Reception targets. I decided to start with Prophet Ibraheem (AS) rather than Prophet Adam (AS) for the very reason they were already a little familiar with him.

We read the beginning of the chapter about Prophet Ibraheem (AS) in the Migo & Ali book (pages 23-25). This part of the story introduces who he is as a prophet and explains the people at the time used to pray to idols.

As the concept of idols was new to the girls, I decided to use this as an opportunity to make and play with play dough: after incorporating numeracy skills (measuring, counting, etc.) into making the dough they could then play with it (making shapes and rolling it out etc. NOT with the intention of making idols!!) and after a while we could discuss the idea of praying to something we've made with our own hands - of course, the idea of it doesn't make sense to us. Allah made us and made everything... We can't even imagine what He looks like! So making and worshiping idols as gods is surely wrong. After a little discussion the girls continued playing, probably for nearly an hour in total! So the point was subtly mentioned while they were having fun rather than laboured over.

I used the playdough recipe from The Imagination Tree. We found we needed to add a touch more flour than stated, but otherwise the dough is perfect and keeps really well.

Mini Science Display: Prediction & Results

Some more posters for our front room. 😂

I decided to start planting the seeds for scientific investigations by getting the girls used to the words "prediction" and "results". One piece of coloured card/laminated paper per word:

PREDICTION: What do you think will happen? Why? What knowledge do you already have?

RESULTS: What happened? What does it mean? How does it compare to your prediction?

Underneath, I cut the sides off two plastic wallets and stuck them to the mini-posters. The idea being the headings and questions will stay displayed while the content of our current investigation/experiment can slot into the appropriate wallet.

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So to fit in with our topic on plants/trees, I took them to Birmingham Botanical Gardens (where we have a membership pass - we definitely make the most of it throughout the year, especially in the warmer months!) where we wandered around a bit looking at the different kinds of trees, discussing whether they were deciduous or evergreen and why. This was in September, but ideally you'd want to do this earlier before the colours of the leaves begin to change. The criteria we were focusing on were the leaf shape (flat, needles, spiky, etc.) and colour (light green, turning yellow/orange, dark green, shiny, etc.) When we got to the playground I directed them to look at two particular groups of trees: one group behind the roundabout /see-saw and the other behind the swings. We took some photos and looked at the leaves more closely so they could decide what kind of trees they thought they were, more independently since we'd already had plenty of discussion walking around the gardens.

When we got home, I printed out the photos onto A4 so we could recap what we did the next day. I explained to them what a prediction was and guided them in writing one by using the questions on the poster as prompts.

A few months later, in November when it was clear the season had changed and the trees would definitely be different were they deciduous, we went back to the Botanical Gardens and looked at the same trees in the playground. This was at the end of our trees topic so they were able to do this pretty independently, saying which group was deciduous and which was evergreen and why. We took some more pictures together and spent the rest of the time playing.

Again, when we got home I printed out the photos onto another sheet and went through the questions on the Results poster with them so we could write up our results together. These mini-posters will then stay on display until the next time we do an experiment, so serve as a nice reminder.

It wasn't really a proper experiment per se, as there was no real method, but I thought the activity served as a good introduction into the scientific process.