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!

Recording the Weather

Linking together our work on measurement from Numeracy and the weather in Science, we talked about different weather types and ways we could measure (i.e. record) them:

We then put this on the wall underneath our Prediction/Results posters so we could use it as a quick reference as and when the weather changed and we felt like measuring it!

The first weather type we ended up doing was rain, which we measured by leaving a couple of measuring cylinders in the garden on a rainy day then bringing them inside at the end of the day to see how much rain had been collected. ☔

Investigating Capacity

I bought a set of plastic measuring beakers (from Amazon) so the girls could get a feel for equivalent volumes in different sized containers. We just used water as the liquid, but I dyed it with some food colouring to make it easier to read the scales on the beakers.

First, I poured 50ml into the smallest (50ml) beaker and asked the girls to tell me how much liquid was inside, i.e. what was the capacity? Then I asked them to find the next largest beaker (100ml) and to tell me what they thought would happen if I poured all the liquid from the current beaker into that one? This seems like a pointless question, but it's easy to forget just how innocent children are when they have no prior experience of something! One of them said nothing would happen, just that it would all fit inside... Which it did! And so I asked them to tell me how many ml of water were inside this beaker. Note that to them it only looked half full as opposed to a full beaker before, so they were surprised to read the scale and see it was 50ml. To be honest, I was surprised they were surprised. 😂

We continued: I asked them to find the next largest beaker in size (250ml) and, again, what they thought would happen if I poured all the liquid in the current beaker into that one. This time, one said that they would end up with less water like last time because it wouldn't be as full... So we poured the water in and read the scale - still 50ml - and I asked if there was less water in the beaker or the same amount? She said less because it was less full, but her sister said no, there was still 50ml so it was the same amount - though she said it in a questioning tone herself. 😂

Again, they found the next beaker (500ml) and again, I asked them what they thought would happen... This time, they recognised that it would still read 50ml but they said it would look like even less because the beaker was bigger! And finally, we repeated the question again for the 1000ml beaker. When we poured the water in they all (including the 2 year old lol) found it hilarious how it was just "a little line at the bottom". 😂

To complete their understanding, I picked up the 50ml beaker again and asked them what they thought would happen when we poured the liquid from our current beaker back into this one... Would it fit? How full would it look? They both said yes, it would fit because that's where all the water started from! One asked if it would look almost empty like the 1000ml did, to which I asked her if that's what she thought would happen and to which she just laughed. Lol. So we poured it back into the 50ml beaker and they all squealed with delight to see it full to the brim. 😂😂

So if you're looking for a quick and easy "magic trick" to amaze your young kids, you know what to do! 😆

Next, I put a few different sized drinking vessels on the table for them to practise etimating with: one of their plastic cups, Papa's mug for tea and Mama's glass for water!

We poured water from the jug into them in turn, estimated what the capacity of each one was and then decided which beaker was the most suitable for measuring the actual capacity: i.e. would it be sensible to use the 50ml beaker? No! Why? Because the water would't fit and just spill over the edge. What about the 1000ml beaker? No, because the water would fit but it wouldn't fill the beaker properly and it's harder to see what the capacity is - brief introduction to accuracy but not the focus for this time so didn't go into it too much! Just that look, the 1000ml beaker doesn't have 50ml on it so we had to guess it was about 50ml in there but the smaller beakers did have 50ml on them so we could just read it easily.

Finally, I let them have some (supervised!) play with the water and beakers, so they could observe what happened to the perceived volume of water when it was poured between the different sized beakers and compare it to the actual reading on the scales!

When we finished and it was time to tidy away, the two-year-old wanted to help by stacking all the beakers up. MashaAllah she independently sorted them into size order first, then put them inside each other starting from the largest. 💕

Mixing the Colours of the Rainbow

A simple creative revision task: I gave the girls paint in the primary colours and a plain white piece of card, then told them to paint a picture of a rainbow. 🌈

Arabic: A/The/This Noun + Adjective

I made this chart because I was having problems getting my head around the difference between e.g. "the apple is red", "the red apple", "this is a red apple" etc. So I made the effort to sit down and make a colour coded list of all the combinations in both masculine and feminine form.

To be honest, it was going through systematically and working the sentences out myself which really helped it to all click, and I'm sure this kind of thing already exists elsewhere... But if you want it as a reference anyway, you can download the mini poster here.

I've backed ours onto coloured paper, laminated and holepunched it to keep in our Arabic resources folder.

Making Gingerbread Men

Cross-curricular Literacy and Numeracy skills in a real-life setting. 😜

Continuing with our fairytales theme, it made sense to make some gingerbread men! After re-reading the story, we looked at the recipe together (revising our work on instructions).

INGREDIENTS
For the biscuit:
100g butter (softened)
175g brown sugar
1 medium egg (beaten)
4 tbsp golden syrup
3-5 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
350g plain flour

To decorate:
75g milk chocolate
Smarties, sultanas, sprinkles, etc.

METHOD
1) Cream together the butter and sugar using an electric hand whisk.
2) Beat in the egg, followed by the golden syrup, using the whisk.
3) Mix together the ginger, bicarbonate of soda and flour in a separate bowl.
4) Stir the dry mixture into the wet mixture using a wooden spoon, a little at a time, until it begins to form a dough. Once all the flour has been added, work it together with your hands to make a ball.
5) Leave to chill in the fridge for 20min.
6) Pre-heat the oven to 180°C and line 2 baking trays with greaseproof paper.
7) Roll the gingerbread to 1cm thick, cut out shapes and place on the trays.
8) Bake for around 10min until golden brown. Leave to cool completely on a wire rack.
9) Decorate using melted chocolate as a "glue".

You can download our recipe sheet here. The ginger in this recipe is quite mild (for Papa's sake!) so you may want to increase accordingly.

Usually, I pre-measure the ingredients so the girls can just concentrate on the baking, but this time they weighed and measured everything themselves - which ties in with their next Numeracy topic on length, weight and capacity. (The cm reference in the recipe was new to them! But a good conversation starter 👌)

How I set up the table ready for them to decorate the gingerbread men:

I demonstrated how to do one: take a gingerbread man from the bowl, dip its feet in the chocolate then in the sprinkles, lay it flat on your plate, take one of the Smarties and dip it in chocolate then stick on the gingerbread man's tummy, repeat for another one of the Smarties, put the finished gingerbread man on the big plate. Then I left them to it - only helping to refill the bowl and change the big plate to an empty one - and mashaAllah they did all 26 without any problems, the 2 year old included! In the past, we've used sultanas for eyes and drawn mouths with icing... But with the baby, this was simplest for today. 😋

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While we were waiting for the gingerbread to cool down before decorating, I decided to use the Smarties as a way of practising the work we'd done so far on tallying and bar charts - simply by having the girls tally the different colours in the packet and draw a graph of the results.

I had them predict which colour they thought would be the most common before they started - which added to the fun as they tallied - and the colouring in at the end was optional, but they both decided they wanted to do it. 😊

You can download our worksheet here. Feel free to edit as you wish - I'll probably use this template myself in different contexts and will change the questions at the bottom to practise different ways of analysing data. 👍