What is tawbah?

I had this idea since learning about Prophet Adam (AS) in more detail, but I didn't get round to doing it due to being busy with the new baby etc. So now we've looked at Prophet Nuh (AS), I decided to link this lesson in with his story instead, then refer back to Adam (AS) as a kind of revision.

So we verbally recapped the story of Prophet Adam (AS), focusing on the part where Adam (AS) and Hawwa (RA) ate from the tree. They immediately felt ashamed and wanted to ask Allah to forgive them - so they made tawbah. Then we talked about Nuh (AS) calling to his people - what did he say to them? They were making a mistake by praying to idols; they needed to make tawbah and turn back to Allah. So what did "make tawbah" mean...? The girls said they thought it meant to say sorry for doing a bad thing.

The next day, I gave them a worksheet to turn into a simple spinning craft.

You can download our worksheet here.

We read through the simple explanation together, then they coloured in the 5 pictures which represented each step of how to make tawbah. They decided to use their glitter gel pens because they wanted to make it look special and "Islam is special". 😁

Then they cut out the pictures along with the circle template, stuck the pictures one per segment and wrote a few words with each to explain what the step was. Finally, we pushed a split pin through the centre to attach it to a piece of A4 card and they wrote the date and title on the card. ✌

Charlie & The Chocolate Factory/Great Glass Elevator

Linking together our Literacy unit on Plays with our Science unit on Space:

We watched both the 1971 version and the 2005 version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (since we still have our free Amazon Prime trial!) for the girls to compare and contrast similarities and differences between the two interpretations, and practise their new play-related vocabulary such as scene, actor/actress, costume, prop, etc.

They preferred the older version because they liked the songs better! But the chocolate looked tastier in the newer version. 😋

Now they knew the storyline of the first book, this meant I could skip straight to reading them Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator - which is partly set in space. 😁 And expose them to some rich new vocabulary and sentence structures they couldn't otherwise access independently, courtesy of Roald Dahl. 👌

When we start our unit on Poetry, insha'Allah, I'll probably revisit the book version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory then, since the Oompa Loompas have some nice rhymes which are worth looking at in more detail... We'll see!

All About Plays

We went to the theatre to watch Pinocchio as part of a Home Education group (school rate, i.e. discount tickets!) - this was the girls' first proper experience watching a play (I took them to a small performance at the MAC a couple of years ago which they don't remember!) so I decided to make plays the focus of our Literacy work for a few weeks. Before going to see the play, I showed the girls what a script looked like (I had bought the book Play Time by Julia Donaldson secondhand online with this theme in mind!) and we read through some together, dividing the parts between us. We talked about the layout differing from the stories they were used to reading, the focus on characters' dialogue and the use of stage directions to set the scene. Whilst reading through, I encouraged the girls to try and get into character by putting on an appropriate voice, too!

The Old Rep emailed us an educational pack when we booked the tickets, so after we had seen the play I chose the activities I thought relevant and printed them into an A4 booklet along with a couple of activities of my own. 😄 We then worked through the booklet together in the weeks following the performance.

1) We talked about the meaning of the words plot and synopsis and recapped the meanings of the words character and setting, linking the latter to the words location and scene. Then we read through the synopsis provided and underlined all the character names with one colour and the different locations (i.e. scene changes) with another.

It worked out that each paragraph in the synopsis equated to a new scene, so once we'd finished reading through (I read through at a steady pace while they concentrated on underlining!) we checked to see if any settings hadn't been mentioned where a scene change had taken place, then they wrote (e.g. "toy shop") next to the corresponding paragraph.

2) We completed this task verbally and had a discussion about the themes behind the play and what we liked/disliked about it.

3) They wrote the word actor/actress next to the pictures of the main cast members, and we discussed the differences between "cast", "character" and "actor/actress" in a play.

Because Pinocchio (a boy!) was played by an actress, the girls were confused over whether she was an actor or actress! Which sparked an interesting conversation into gender. 👌

They also learnt what an understudy was, since one was listed in the cast list.

4) One of the given activities was to make up nonsense words by rolling a dice. (This was a good introduction to possibility and chance - a topic we've not yet covered in Numeracy!) So the task was to make up a definition to a two-syllable nonsense word. When they were done creating 3 words, I asked them to then write a sentence or two using their made up words in context.

5) We talked about how costumes and props are used to help tell the story and make the audience feel like they're really there without needing to use their imagination. Then they had a go at designing their own costumes for two of the characters.

6) I modified our book review sheet to a review specifically for plays for the girls to fill in. I summarised the play again for them by skim reading through the synopsis and we went through each box in turn together so we could discuss the keywords and check they understood their meanings.

You can download a copy of the worksheet here.

7) Using the activity sheet as a scaffold, the girls made up their own outline to a story based in the world of Pinocchio. Once all the components were in place, they took it in turns to dictate their story to me as I wrote it down (I was more interested in their creative writing abilities than handwriting/spelling/etc. for this task) and prompted them with vocabulary choices when they became stuck.

8) Using their stories above, I helped each twin in turn to turn what they had created into a script for a play. So they read through their individual story and I prompted them with what the characters would say at each point and how the audience could know what the character was thinking... I did the typing and formatting for them because, again, this wasn't the focus of the task.

Once they were both done, we read through another play by Julia Donaldson from her book, Play Time. When we had finished, I asked the girls if there was anything missing from their scripts compared to the one we had just read - and they both correctly identified the answer to be stage directions! So, again in turns, I helped them both add the extra detail needed to complete their plays.

9) We watched the film The Wizard of Oz (we happened to have the free Amazon Prime trial at the time and this film was included on Prime Video) and talked about the similarities to the Pinocchio play we watched: cast members, costumes, props, backdrops, scene changes, singing and dancing, etc. So some films are similar to theatre productions (not all have songs!) except they're filmed to watch later, rather than live (i.e. happening at the time), so they can add special effects and they can retake a scene and try again if they make a mistake or to make it the best they can.

10) So now we had two play scripts, it made sense to put on a performance of our own! First, we read through the plays and made a list of props/costumes we'd need to make or find (a top hat & stick, masks for the animals, a magic wand, a boat prop & paintbrush, blue fairy's cloak). Then they divided up the parts between them (and their younger sister for the Blue Fairy!) and practised reading through their lines for each play in turn. We decided to do both plays because they were only short and it wouldn't be fair otherwise. 😂 After a few rehearsals and a dress rehearsal (we talked about learning lines, how difficult it was and the extra pressure of theatre performances since they were live!), we recorded their performance for them to watch back (like a film!) and so they could self-critique what they did well and how they could improve. Finally, they put on their two mini plays for my parents (since they were visiting) and then Papa (who came home later) to watch live. 😁😁

And that brought us to the end of the topic! 👏👏👏

If I can find and familiarise myself with a suitable program (maybe Movie Maker?) then we might use their play recordings to add background music and special effects as a way of incorporating ICT to the topic... We'll see, insha'Allah!

Maths update: Money

* The girls are now familiar with the different denominations of coin and can recognise them by size, shape and colour even if they can't see the number. They also know the common denominations of note (i.e. £5, £10, £20).

* They can find a variety of ways of making the same total by using different combinations of coins.

* They know that the number of coins and the worth of the coins can be two different things, i.e. three 5p coins are worth less than one 20p coin.

* They can solve simple addition and subtraction problems involving money as both numerical sums and word problems.

* They understand how to find the total price for items on a shopping list by referring to a price list.

* They can calculate the money leftover in their purse after buying something and the change they would be given depending on what they spend.

* They know the meanings of the words: cheap, expensive, good/poor value for money, quality.

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We learnt the above through a combination of conversations (especially while out shopping), playing with real coins, playing with toy money, role play as customers/shop keepers (we built a shop out of Duplo and wrote out a price list for the things inside), completing worksheets.

The toy money we had was on sale a while ago and I bought it without thinking... Upon opening it, it turned out all the coins were the same grey colour. 😒 Although all the correct denominations were there along with notes... So after looking at some real money from my purse, I asked the girls what was wrong with the toy money we had? Some of the coins were the wrong colour! To which F then said, "We can just paint them brown and gold." 😍

So we did. 👍

And the toddler did a painting of her own while the elder two were busy painting coins. 😀😀

Another time, when we were completing a worksheet using the coins to help visualise the answers, the toddler wanted to join in... So I just gave her the task of matching up all the coins which were the same.

It kept her busy (until she became bored and went to play with Lego instead!) whilst at the same time not getting in her sisters' way since it was actually helping them to find the coins they needed quicker... And she managed to do it too, MashaAllah, even if she didn't know what each coin's worth was. It was still famliarising herself with the different coins. 👍

Space Art

Mixed Media: Wax resist paintings

To begin our topic on Space, we created a space picture to summarise what we wanted to learn about. First, we brainstormed on the whiteboard all the different aspects of Space they were interested in:
     - planets
     - moons
     - the sun
     - stars
     - asteroids, meteors, comets
     - astronauts
     - rockets
     - satellites
     - aliens!

Then I gave the girls and myself (to model!) a piece of plain white card each and some wax crayons so they could draw some of the things we had come up with.

We had recently been to the library so had taken out a variety of both fiction and non-fiction books on the topic, which we had been reading through for a few days prior, so the girls had the idea to browse through some for inspiration by looking at the illustrations and front covers. I also put this YouTube video on the TV for background noise/images to set the mood. 😊

So we drew colourful patterned planets and moons with wax crayons, a bright sun... One wanted to draw a rocket, so I showed her how by drawing one on my paper... We used a white crayon to draw dots as stars all over...

When we were done, I diluted some black, red, green and blue paints into a pallette for them to mix as they liked then paint over the top of their drawings. I think you're supposed to use watercolours, but we didn't have any at the time so diluted poster paint had to do! The wax crayons worked to resist the paint a little, but not enough to make the paint just run off... So once the pictures had dried a little, we used kitchen towel to gently rub over the paper: the paint on top of their wax drawings came clean off whilst the paint on the paper itself wasn't affected.

Once the pictures had dried completely, we used glitter gel pens to add extra details. Then I hung them up (including the toddler's painting!) in the corner of the room using string and mini wooden pegs.

Paper Mache Planets

We decided to make some 3D models of planets to hang in the other corner of the room (what shape should they be? spheres!) - so I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce the girls to paper mache. 😁

We didn't have newspaper to hand and, according to the internet, it was possible to do paper mache with toilet paper... Not something I'd tried before, so why not try now together with the girls??

So I blew up 3 balloons, tore a load of toilet paper into separate sheets, mixed some PVA glue with water and gave the girls a paintbrush and balloon each. I showed them how to do the first sheet, i.e. lay it flat onto the balloon and paint over the top with the glue mixture, and explained they needed to cover the whole balloon in the same way. It was a little tricky keeping the balloon from rolling everywhere, but the twins soon got the hang of it! I needed to help the toddler a lot more with hers.

When they were done, I hung the balloons from the knotted end with a safety pin onto a piece of strung in the corner of the ceiling.

They were dry after 24 hours, so we took them down to decorate... It was this point where the instructions online (and my memory!) were a little unclear - were we supposed to pop the balloon or not? After some discussion, we decided to pop the balloons and the girls were pleased to see their paper structures didn't collapse too.

The next part was to paint their planets, but of course paint is wet... And when the toilet paper structures became wet, they went soft again! In hindsight, I really should have known better! (Gonna blame baby brain here 😅) But it was too late now. So I was really proud of the girls for not getting upset, but instead asking if we could try again but this time not pop the balloons before painting. 😍 We'd been working on growth mindsets (not giving up in the face of difficulties or upon making mistakes) for the past week or so, and this really seemed to have paid off. 💪

So we started again from scratch, but with smaller balloons this time because it took longer than they wanted last time, and after they were dried we got to painting them with the balloons still intact inside.

I poured the primary colours as well as black and white into a paint pallette each for each girl and let them paint their planet however they wished. It was a little difficult keeping the balloons still, so we balanced the balloons inside a plastic cup as they painted.

When they were finished, I hung their planets up again using the safety pins and string.

The next week, we were invited to a birthday party and were given some wooden stars to decorate inside the party bags to take home - so we hung these stars in between their planets. M said she liked the room with their planets and stars on one side and their space paintings on the other because it felt like they were actually in space - maybe on a space station, because that was like a house in space for astronauts to live on and we were in our house in space. 😂👍

How did the Prophet Nuh (AS) show sabr?

We reread the story of Prophet Nuh (AS) using the book Safar Islamic Studies -Textbook 2 and talked about the meaning of the word sabr as being patient: waiting for something to happen without getting cross/upset and putting trust in Allah when something bad/we don't like happens.

I asked the girls if they could think of any examples of when Nuh (AS) was patient and showed sabr... They came up with how he told the people about Allah for 950 years, even though they were rude to him, and how he must have felt when his son drowned.

I gave the girls the pictures from the worksheet and asked them which part of the story they thought each represented (reminding them how and why we can't draw pictures of the prophets themselves or their companions out of respect!) as points where Nuh (AS) was patient. The two pictures they didn't think of themselves were the building of the ark, with people laughing at Nuh (AS), and waiting for 40 days and nights on the ark for the rain to stop.

Then they cut the 4 pictures out and arranged them in chronological order to stick down on the second part of the worksheet.

Finally, they wrote a small caption under each picture, to explain what it showed, and coloured the sheet in.

You can download the worksheet here.

Who was the Prophet Nuh (AS)?

We read through several different versions of the story of Prophet Nuh (AS) from the different books we have at home, and discussed it along the way:

When we were done, I asked the girls how do we know this story? How do we know this happened to Nuh (AS)? After some prompting and discussion, the girls came upon the answer that Allah talks about Nuh (AS) in the Quran. I took out the English translation to find an example of where Allah speaks about the Prophet Nuh (AS) - after looking through the contents of all the surahs, Surah Nuh seemed like a good one to read through! The English was a little difficult for them to understand all the words, but they understood enough to see it was part of the story we'd just read. I explained that the rest of Prophet Nuh (AS)'s story is in different surahs in the Quran, not all in one place like in the books we'd just looked at.

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We were gifted some small toy animals from my parents when the twins were younger, and because they used to fight a lot over the same toy at that age it meant we have pairs of animals to play with. 😂😂 So we used these to practise our 2x table in the context of counting the animals walking onto the ark, and sang the song, "The Animals Went In Two By Two" (Hurrah! Hurrah!) as we played with them. 😁😁

We also had a conversation about why two animals were chosen, why not more (because there would be no space!) and why not less (because you need two to make more!). And about how a male and female animal (including humans as well as other living things such as plants) are needed to make a baby. We didn't go into the details of reproduction! Just that you need a male and a female pair. M noted that it wouldn't make sense to have two male animals or two female animals going on the ark, they must have been one of each. Then I gave them a quick explanation of how by starting with just two animals, they were able to keep multiplying to get lots and lots more after some time - so even though Nuh (AS) couldn't take e.g. all the elephants with him, by taking just two elephants it made sure that all the elephants didn't disappear completely (or become extinct) after the flood.

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After a couple of days, we revisited the story and I asked the girls to summarise it for me - which they were able to do, MashaAllah. Then I told them they were going to have a go at making their own boat. What did Prophet Nuh (AS) use to build the ark? Wood! So we were going to use wooden lolly sticks to make ours as a mini version. We were also going to use PVA glue to stick our pieces together... but do they think Prophet Nuh (AS) used glue? No! He used a hammer and nails.., But we were just going to use glue since we're just making a model.

I gave them all the lolly sticks we had left in our craft supplies, some PVA glue and a couple of brushes to spread it with. Then told them to work together to make a boat and we could test it in the bathtub later, inshaAllah!

This is the first open ended creative building kind of task I'd set the girls, so I was interested to see what they'd do... It was great to see them discuss ideas, try something out, evaluate as they went along, make mistakes and change their plans... I tried my best not to give them any input from myself but used comments and questions such as, "What are you going to do next?", "Did that work the way you wanted it to?", "It keeps falling down. Why do you think that is?", "How could you make it stronger?", etc.

They began by making a "floor" by gluing a row of lolly sticks together. It kept sliding apart so one had the idea of putting a stick perpendicular underneath to keep them in place, which then became a stick glued on top perpendicular to the rest and they glued some more in the original line to complete the length. They were still sliding up and down a bit, so the girls decided to glue another perpendicular stick on top at the other end - then decided to just fill in in between and have another long row of sticks on top but perpendicular to the ones underneath. They were happy this gave a solid structure so now wanted to put some "walls" on their boat. First, they tried gluing a stick on its edge, which took several attempts to get to stand straight. Then they tried gluing another on top to make their wall taller, but no matter how they tried it wouldn't balance right. So they decided to keep the wall only one stick high and make an identical wall on the other side. Then they wanted to put a "roof" on the boat by gluing a stick on top of the two walls to join them together - but the weight of the stick on top made their walls fall down. So they came up with the idea of making their walls thicker and, because they wanted them identical, made both walls three lolly sticks wide. They only had two sticks left now so glued them both across as the roof.

I think if we had more sticks they would have happily kept going! I was really pleased to see them so engaged and determined even when it was tricky to get the sticks to stay in place and the structure didn't work out the way they wanted it to. 💕

We left their boat to dry overnight (why? because the glue was still wet so if we tried to put it in the bathtub now it would just fall apart!) then took it in the bathroom to test.

We talked about the story of Prophet Nuh (AS) again and the girls remembered that it wasn't raining at all when he built the ark, so there was no way Nuh (AS) could test it would work! He just had to trust in Allah, which he did. So we put their boat into the bathtub without any water.



Then the rain came (turn the shower on!) which didn't stop for 40 days and 40 nights! The girls were excited to see their little boat float up on the water as it rose (I purposefully aimed the showerhead to the side of the bath rather than on top of their boat!) and watched it spin and float this way and that. Was there any way of controlling which direction the boat was going? No, it was just being carried away with the water, just like the ark was with Nuh (AS) on it. We turned the shower off and watched the boat float for a while. What happened next in the story, after the rain stopped? The girls said the water all went away and then Nuh (AS) and all the animals could come off again. So we drained all the water away from the tub.

I asked if the girls wanted to do it again but this time with animals on their boat? Of course, the answer was yes! So we put a pair of animals on the boat and turned the shower on again. There was only room on their boat for one pair of animals - we talked some more about how large the ark must have been to fit in a pair of every animal, plus Nuh (AS) and all the believers! We tried squeezing another pair of animals on but their boat sunk and the other animals fell off... much to their amusement. 😂

Finally, we drained all the water away and retold how the ark stopped on top of a mountain for Nuh (AS) and the believers to finally disembark. By this point the glue on our boat was starting to get washed away and the sticks come apart, so we talked some more about the materials Nuh (AS) used to make the ark and what we could do next time if we wanted to make our lolly stick boat last longer!

MAR Book 1, Chapter 8: The hospital

I made a worksheet for the end of this chapter to help consolidate the new vocab and sentence structures.

The first side is a simple cut and stick activity to complete the sentences in a way which makes sense (cut and stick as opposed to choose and copy, since the twins aged 5 aren't that confident writing in Arabic yet!). This was also good reading practise for them.

The second side they just needed to draw pictures either in front of or behind the hospital, then say the sentences to describe what they had done.

You can download our worksheet here.

Editing a piece of (descriptive) writing

Following on from their typing practise, we used their typed up work as a basis for learning how to edit.

Since we only have one laptop, the girls needed to take it in turns. F went first with M watching, as I talked her through what she needed to do. When she was done, we discussed together what they thought the steps were for editing something and I wrote these on the whiteboard:

1) Read your work.

2) Fix any mistakes.

3) Change words which are the same.

4) Make it sound better!

5) Add more detail.

Then M had her turn, with me talking her through, but also referring to the steps we'd generated together. F watched for a bit then went to play but in the same room - so she'd keep chiming in to help when she overheard M getting stuck. 😂

These are the before and after results:

For point 2, fixing mistakes, they found spelling errors and use of the wrong tense (I didn't realise they didn't know the meanings of past/present/future! So we discussed this... Though I decided to omit the word "tense" for simplicity's sake). For point 3, they tried to get rid of too many "and"s as well as repetitive nouns or adjectives. For point 4, this was changing boring words (e.g. where M changed "buzzing" to "noisy", although personally I prefer the former!) and rewriting sentences (e.g. F shortened her original to "I could smell stinky mud"). For point 5, they just added an extra adjective here and there.

A little while later we edited a different short description they had previously typed up, except this time I printed it out for them to practise handwriting instead.

I asked if they remembered the steps for editing their writing, which they did! So once they told me what they were, we went through and did them one by one. For each point, I asked them to choose a different coloured pencil to underline with - so they knew when they were copying that if they came across something underlined, that meant they needed to change or add something! Once we'd been through and underlined everything and I'd written correct spellings on the whiteboard, I left them to it to do.

Arabic: Days & Months display

We've had a months and days display on one of our doors for over two years, so I thought it was time it was updated! And this was a perfect chance to introduce more Arabic into our everyday lives by incorporating the Arabic days of the week and the Islamic months written in Arabic. I decided not to include the Gregorian months in Arabic as I felt it wasn't really necessary; having the Islamic months on display is more relevant and useful to us. 😊 

You can download the days of the week display wheel here.

The start of the week is red and the other 6 days follow the colours of the rainbow - the idea being to double up this display as a colour wheel to remind the girls of a) the colours of the rainbow and b) which primary colours mix together to make which secondary colours.

I cut and laminated the wheel then attached it to a piece of A4 card through the centre using a split pin. The A4 card is blu-tacked to the door and the wheel itself can spin freely. I cut out an arrow from an old gift bag to show the current day of the week.

There's currently a large gap on the card under the paper... I was thinking of writing the sentence in Arabic, "What day is it today?", or something similar, but haven't got round to it yet. 😅

You can download the months of the year display poster here: 1st half / 2nd half.

The purpose of the colours on this poster are to show a gradient (following the standard order when using e.g. MS Word or Adobe Photoshop etc.) and also differences in hues, as the Islamic months are simply the same colour as the Gregorian month it's next to but in a lighter shade.

I don't have an A3 printer but I wanted the poster that size, which is why I've split it across two A4 sheets. I trimmed the bottom edge of the first sheet so the white space between June and July was equal to the space between all the other months, then laminated both together in one A3 laminating pocket. This is blu-tacked to the door along with two more arrows cut from an old gift bag, with blu-tac on the back, which can move up and down the side of the poster accordingly.

Finally, I used some silver star stickers to stick in each of our family members' birth month and wrote our birthdays in the centre of each. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

The National Space Centre

We visited The National Space Centre in Leicester as part of our topic on the seasons. Since Leicester is relatively near to Birmingham, we ended up purchasing a year pass as going at least twice means any additional visits work out as being "free". So with the view of visiting again later, we focused just on the exhibits relevant to our topic or the solar system in general.

Some of the things we saw, amongst many others:

A mechanical representation of the Earth orbiting the sun and the moon orbiting the Earth.

A rotating model to show the reason we have day and night.

Part of the Solar System gallery, with each planet having its own themed section to walk through and explore.

The actual Mars Rover scheduled to be sent to Mars, insha'Allah!

Overall, the trip was a really good experience for the girls in consolidating their knowledge and opening up opportunities for more questions. 👍

Planting Tulips

My parents gave us some tulip bulbs as a souvenir from their mini break to Amsterdam. There were 8 bulbs in the pack, and we had 4 pots (one for each girl!), so the twins worked out they could plant 2 bulbs in each pot... They could do their own, and Mama could plant the baby's for her. 😁

The twins had gardening gloves (bought last year!) whilst the toddler didn't... So the former used their hands to put the compost in whilst the latter used a trowel - and we reused the compost from the dwarf beans we had planted in the Summer. The girls, MashaAllah, remembered which way up to plant the bulbs from their time at the allotments and knew how to half fill the pot with compost, make a well for the bulbs to go inside root way down, then cover them up with more compost.

When they were done, I arranged the pots in age order (left to right) against the fence which gets most sun in the garden. Insha'Allah they'll bloom in the Spring without any more work from us!

Whilst in the garden (we've not played in it since the end of Summer, really) we noticed some sunflowers had grown in the grass! We planted sunflowers last February and really looked after them - watering them daily and weeding the area around them on a consistent basis. The sunflowers which grew last year were taller than the fence, MashaAllah! And the girls were really proud of them. 🌻🌻 We didn't plant any this year since our youngest was born in July, yet somehow some sunflowers had grown... How? The girls worked out some seeds must have fallen from our old plants and planted themselves in the soil! When the shoots and leaves grew in Autumn, they looked familiar... So we asked Papa to mow around them when he did the grass. Now it was almost Winter they had finally grown heads and we were right to have guessed they might have been sunflowers! But these sunflowers were nowhere near the size of our old ones... Why? Because we didn't look after them! So this was a good lesson in the importance of weeding and watering. 👌

They did actually bloom not long after, but I forgot to take any photos of them before they died. 🙈

Learning about Weight

So we'd already looked at grams in the context of making gingerbread men and kg in the context of their own weight, looked at different objects around the house in order to estimate then weigh them, ordered different objects from heaviest to lightest...

I had this worksheet already photocopied but I'd been putting off giving it to the girls to complete because I thought they would need lots of help and the baby needed a lot of attention at the time. So when I eventually gave them the sheet, I was surprised yet pleased to find out they were able to complete it independently! MashaAllah! 😍😍 I literally gave it to them to read through while I went to do something (maybe change the baby's nappy?) and when I came back they were halfway through. Lol. 😂 Shows I need to challenge them more!!

MAR Book 1, Lesson 8: "this/that x ..."

More whiteboard work to help practise grammar from this chapter and revise old vocab:

The pictures are what they needed to describe. The sentences showed how I expected them to begin their descriptions and the words in purple were prompts for them to talk about... Although they ended up not needing them at all the second time round! e.g. "tilka al'bintu tasbahu fil bahri" 👍

Everyone's Skin is the Same!

Focusing in on one aspect of Prophet Adam (AS)'s story, I wanted the girls to understand  that everyone is essentially the same colour when it comes to their skin, we're all just a variety of different shades... Without mentioning the word "racism" at all, but sowing the seeds of understanding there.

So we recapped the part of the story of when Allah created Adam (AS) by collecting mud/clay from all over the Earth and went on to discuss how the climates differ around the world and how everyone looks different, i.e. hair colour, eye colour and skin colour... So we all look different, but how do we all look the same? I told them that essentially, everyone in the world is just different shades of brown. They laughed at this. 😂 Then we got the paints out (tell me which colours mix to make brown? And which colours can we use to make that brown darker or lighter?) and mixed a brown into the centre of one of the palletes. Then with their own separate mixing palletes, they had a go mixing different amounts of the starting brown with different amounts of black/white/red/green/yellow/blue to see which different shades they could make. With each different brown they made, they painted a circle, i.e. a face, on a sheet of plain A4 card.

This is essentially the basics of understanding melanin! They tried their best to paint someone Caucasian but found it hard to limit the amount of brown on their brushes... In the end one commented, "It's hard to get it light enough so they must only have a tiny little bit of brown in their skin!" 👌

Then they painted hair on their people and we talked about the different colours of natural hair in the world.

In the end, people are all people no matter how they look like! And in the end, it's our actions which are the most important, not what we look like anyway. 👍

Why does the day length change?

Following on from our earlier post, we completed the table and wrote up our results - based on knowledge they'd picked up in the meantime from books and discussions...

So even though their predictions were correct - the days, i.e. hours of daylight, became shorter - their reason to do with temperature wasn't correct. So to encourage scientific thinking, we took this experiment further by deciding to measure the temperature over the next week and see if it's also getting colder. (Hopefully there'll be some fluctuation rather than a continuous drop! But if not, it'll just lead to another discussion so it's all good. 😁) I was pleased the girls understood that because they know for definite the days are getting shorter, if the reason for their prediction was correct then the temperature will be colder each day too... If the temperature goes up and the day length doesn't get longer then it means temperature isn't the cause! And when I say understood, I just had to ask, "What should happen to the temperature each day if the day length only gets shorter because it's colder and longer when it's hotter?" and they just went ahead and explained the above to me themselves. 👍 Masha'Allah!

We bought a couple of ethanol thermometers from Amazon for the girls to use. They simply needed to stand in the garden at around the same time each day (depending on our schedule!) and then record it on the poster. Using the thermometers was a good experience too: practising reading scales, an awareness of negative numbers, knowing the bulb end is the part which measures so to make sure to hold it from the middle/other end, that it takes a little time for the red line to move so they need to wait before reading it. I've explained it simply that when it's hot the liquid inside the red line gets bigger and when it's cold the liquid shrink - which they seem happy enough with for now! 👌

So from our results, they came to the conclusion that the temperature getting colder definitely wasn't the reason for the day length decreasing as the season changes from Summer to Winter - because, look! The temperature went up and down each day but the day length was always getting shorter!