Madinah Arabic Reader Book 2 - Lesson 3c

Week 1:

I wrote the following on the whiteboard as a recap, i.e. differentiating between these/those/they and their gendered singular forms (this/that/he/she):

"Ulaika" is the new word being introduced here, but it was pretty easy to pick up and the girls are familiar with it from their hifz lessons. 💕

We read through p.31 together - taking it in turns to read and translate each sentence. This was pretty simple as revision so didn't take long, MashaAllah. The only new word was "wuzaraau" (ministers) which was difficult to explain as the girls didn't know what politicians were. 😂

We also read through p.32, taking it in turns to read, translate and do the activity. Again, I didn't get the cards out as this was pretty simple revision.

Week 2:

More revision.

Madinah Arabic Reader Book 2 - Lesson 3b

Week 1:

We read the passage from p.25 and talked about what we thought it meant. They managed to make sense of most of it MashaAllah. I told the girls we would read it again at the end of the chapter, inshaAllah, so they could see how much they had guessed correctly and how much they had learnt!

I filled the whiteboard with the new words for this chapter, i.e. feminine plurals. I asked the girls if they noticed any patterns and they said they ended in "alif taa", which I clarified as the "closed taa opens up" for the sound plurals. Of course, some words didn't follow the pattern exactly, such as "nisaa" and "banaat", etc.!

We looked at the feminine plurals for adjectives and noticed that they were the same as the masculine plurals.

Finally, we did the exercise at the bottom of p.25 and top of p.26 verbally. We learnt that the plural for "these" is the same for both masculine and feminine, i.e. "haulaai".

We read through the whiteboard at random chances throughout the week, with mini tests in between, and I took the words off once the girls were confident they knew them. Sometimes we just read the words as is, other times as a sentence, e.g. "Haulaai fatayaatun" and with a mix of definite and indefinite, i.e. "Haulaai mudarrisaatun / Haulaai al-mudarrisaatu".

Week 2:

We read through the activity on p.26, with a focus on looking at "hunna" as the plural of "hiya", i.e. "they" and as the plural of "haa", i.e. "their".

I wrote the following on the whiteboard so we could recap the differences:

Then I laid out all the vocabulary mentioned in the activity and read through the sentences in turn. As I read each sentence, the girls found the corresponding cards and then translated the Arabic into an English sentence.

We then needed to tidy up the cards... But rather than just gather them up, I asked them to pass me a card to put in a pile only once they'd used it in a sentence. They took it in turns to come up with sentences and they could use more than one card at a time if they wanted - though obviously this made it more difficult! The winner was the one who had the bigger pile of cards at the end.

MashaAllah they came up with some good sentences, with up to 4 cards at a time! F won with 14 vs 12, so I gave M the chance to make up any sentence using an adjective to describe a group of female people... So in the end, they ended up with a draw. 😉

Finally, I wrote the following on the whiteboard:

Using cards as prompts (I took a mixture from all the cards so far, some of which we've not seen since Book 1!) they took it in turns to pick up cards from face down piles (1 for female people, 1 for nouns and 1 for adjectives) to make sentences along the above pattern, e.g. "Hunna fatayaatun. Baytuhunna kabeerun." = "They are young girls. Their house is big."

Week 3:

I asked the girls how to say "they went" (m), i.e. recapping the verb ending pattern "dhamma, waw, alif" to make "dhahabuu". Then I read a sentence from p.26 and asked them to tell me how to say "they went" (f) - which they correctly identified as "dhahabna". So what was the verb pattern here? The ending changes to "sukoon, noon with a fatha".

I stuck the following flashcards onto the whiteboard and asked the girls to tell me what to write on either side:

On another day, I chose about 10 more verbs from our verb flashcards to go through with the girls. I showed them the Arabic side for them to read (1st person, past tense, singular male) and translate the meaning for, e.g. "dhahaba" means "he went".

Then I challenged them to go through all the cards and change them to third person, past tense, plural male (e.g. "qafazuu" means "they [males] jumped") and to third person, past tense, plural female (e.g. "qafazna" means "they [females] jumped"). MashaAllah they managed this OK and this really helped solidify the verb ending patterns!

Next, I put the verbs into one pile and next to them a pile of people (both male and female... I was originally going to just do sentences all in the masculine form followed by all in the feminine form, but because they were confident enough in the previous activity I thought I'd just mix them all up from the start!). Along the top I laid out the prepositions we've come across so far, so they could use them as prompts if they got stuck.

The activity was to use the verb and plural for the person to create a sentence. (I took out the verb "fa'ala" before we started when I realised it was difficult to make a sentence with using the vocabulary and grammar we knew so far!)

Some of the sentences they came up with were e.g. "Jalasna at-tabeebaatu 'ala al-maktabi" (The female doctors sat on the desk), "Akaluu al-muhandisoon at-tuffaaha" (The male engineers ate the apple), "Kharajna al-mudarisaatu min al-hammaami" (The female teachers exited from the bathroom).

I wasn't fussed if the sentences actually made sense! But this was good practise for word endings (i.e. changing to a kasra if preceded by a preposition or to a fatha if it was the object being affected by a verb) and for making them think about which vocabulary they knew, without any flashcard prompts, to complete their sentences!

Finally, we talked about what to do if we had more than one group of people in the sentence, i.e. two groups of males, which form of the verb would we use? The masculine... Two groups of females? Use the feminine... What about a group of males and a group of females? Then we'd use the masculine. What if there were more females, say three groups of females and only one male? Still use the masculine!

Then we practised making up sentences along this pattern, drawing 3 cards at random from the people pile and thinking about which form of the verb to use in a sentence. (I chose to use 3 rather than 2 as I'm not sure if there's a dual form for past tense? We're not that far in our studies yet! So to be safe, just avoid using 2 lol)

Week 4:

We did the activities on p.27 and p.28, taking it in turns to read the sentence, translate it and then give the suitable pronoun/change to plural. This was pretty much just revision so I didn't get the cards out - we just did it verbally sitting together around the book.

I wrote out the words at the bottom of p.28 into their handwriting books and they told me what the plurals were for me to write next to them. Then they practised handwriting by copying the words once each.

Madinah Arabic Reader Book 2 - Lesson 3a

This chapter is an introduction to plurals.

I split this part of the book over several weeks, as I felt it was worth spending longer to help with learning all the new vocabulary.

Week 1:
I just introduced the plural form of the nouns mentioned on pages 16-17 as stand-alone words, not in sentences. I wrote the words on the whiteboard and gave the girls the corresponding flashcards to match up where they thought they went. The next day, I rearranged the board to move the words they knew to the top of the board and the words they were still unsure of to one side (so we had space to use the whiteboard for other things!).

(My husband pointed out I forgot the shaddah on the laam in "tullaab" - which I fixed after taking these photos!)

Then I introduced the word "haulaai" as the plural equivalent to "hadha". We read through the cards on the whiteboard practising the simple sentence "Hadha X" followed by "Haulaai Y", i.e. "Hadha mudarrisun, haulaai mudarrisoona."

Week 2:
We recapped the words learnt previously and introduced the plural forms of the adjectives mentioned on pages 16-17. Again, we used flashcards to match up with the words on the whiteboard and practiced saying sentences along the "hadha X, haulaai Y" pattern using the cards.

We read through p.15 together and mashaAllah were able to translate the meaning - referring to the whiteboard when unsure of a word's meaning to help.

We learnt that "hum" is the plural equivalent of "huwa", but left that information at that for now.

Week 3:
We put together all we had learnt so far by making some simple sentences using the flashcards as prompts.

1) After recapping how to say e.g. "This student is poor" as "Hadha taalibun faqeerun", we made up sentences in the plural form e.g. "These students are poor" as "Haulaai tullaabun fuqaraau". We did a couple of sentences in both singular and plural form to help solidify the differences.

2) I put together each adjective with a noun and would ask a question e.g. "Man haulaai tiwaalun?" for them to answer with the correct noun, e.g. "Haulaai fallahoona." They took turns to ask the question of each other, we reshuffled the cards and repeated a couple of times.

3) I turned the cards face down in two piles and the girls had to flip one card over from each pile. I would ask either "Man haulaai?" or "Man hum?" for them to answer in a complete sentence, e.g. "Haulaai awlaadun kibaarun" or "Hum muhandisoona jududun". If I asked "Man haulaai" then they would need to move the cards to the pile closer to them; if I asked "Man hum?" then they would put the noun in the pile further away - to help signify the difference between "hum"/they and "haulaai"/these. The adjective pile simply stayed face down with the top card moving to the bottom after each question.

Week 4:
We did the activity on pages 17-18 using the cards.

I laid out all the relevant cards underneath the book. I read the sentence out and the girls found the cards mentioned (translation practice) and placed them above the book as a reminder. Then they changed the sentence from singular to plural in turn.

We then focused on the verb conjugation for past tense plural male using the verb "dhahabu"

I shuffled all the "people" words in the chapter into one pile and the adjectives mentioned into another. Then I chose 6 locations mentioned in the chapter and spread them out on the floor.

I modelled an example then the girls took it in turns to be A and B. A chose a card at random from each pile for B to ask the matching question, e.g. "Ayna az-zumlaau al-kibaaru?". A would then put the cards next to a location card and answer, e.g. "Dhahabu ila Hind."

Finally, they chose three of the sentences they had made and I wrote them onto the whiteboard as they told me what they were. They finished by copying the sentences onto a piece of coloured A4 paper and drawing a picture of one of the sentences underneath.

Week 5:

Day 1:

We looked at the conjugation for past tense plural male using the verbs "to sit" and "to exit" and comparing to how we conjugated "to go", i.e. the verbs in this chapter.

We did the exercise at the top of page 19, verbally.

Then we extended this knowledge to the verb "to do" and asked and answered questions of each other such as "Madha fa'alu at-tibbaau?" "Kharaju min al-mustashfaa wa dhahabu ila al-masjidi wa jalasu ala al-karaasi".

The vocab for "restaurant" was new so we added this to the whiteboard as a reminder.

Day 2:

We did the exercise at the bottom of page 18 verbally, attaching nouns and pronouns to words to show possession.

Then we read through the sentences on pages 19-20, translating the meanings as we went along.

Finally, the girls did the exercise on page 20, first verbally by telling me what the plural forms were, then as handwriting practise in their books. I wrote the words for them to copy as the spelling from memory is difficult for them (even I need to check some of the words still!).

We also added the new vocab words "village" and "field" to the corner of the whiteboard as a visual reminder for the rest of the week.

(Just noticed I forgot the fatha on the qaaf in "the village"! And put a dhamma on "a village". Never mind. It's fixed on the actual board now 😂)

This brings us to the end of Lesson 3a, mashaAllah. Ready for half term and for me to look at planning how we'll tackle the next part of the chapter, inshaAllah!

Madinah Arabic Reader Book 1 Flashcards

I started making these cards as we went through the first Madinah Arabic Reader book, as I thought the visual aids would be useful in terms of learning the new vocabulary and for building sentences of our own as new grammar patterns were introduced.

Alhamdulillah, after a long break (when I started we didn't have a colour printer which is why these cards are in black and white! Then for continuity's sake I continued making them in this way and colouring everything by hand) I've finally finished all the cards I wanted to make for Madinah Book 1.

Lessons 1-4

Lessons 5-7

Lessons 8-10

Here's an example of what they look like once coloured and laminated:

I chose to colour code the borders to help differentiate between the different kinds of word, thinking this would help with memory and understanding!

Red: Noun (masculine)
Pink: Noun (feminine)
Brown: Proper noun (e.g. countries)
Orange: e.g. "here", "there"
Blue: Adjective
Yellow: Preposition (requires following word to have a kasra)
Purple: Time (e.g. "now", "after")
Green: Miscellaneous (e.g. "very", "also")

I've not included the verbs mentioned in the book as I've made a separate set of verb flashcards - so will be using those alongside these.

We've found these cards useful so I'll continue making them for Madinah Book 2 - but this time I'll upload them in chapter batches as we go along rather than in bulk when we finally finish the book InshaAllah!

Simple Arabic Verb Flashcards

I made these simple flashcards of standard three letter verbs which follow the above pattern, to help the girls with their verb practise in past/present tense and so with their sentence building.

I've not included the dual forms as I just wanted to focus on these for now. I might add them in later inshaAllah when we get to that stage! The plural forms are in the file but we're not learning them atm either.

I printed and cut out the cards then laminated them and cut out again... I find this helps them last longer rather than laminate without cutting individually first as this way ensures you get a laminated border around all the edges.

You can download the file for printing here.

Arabic update

The twins have completed Madinah Arabic Reader Book 1 with me and we've just started Book 2, mashaAllah.

Their understanding is pretty good, as we read through the first chapter together and they had no issues with the content.

Current targets:

1) To be able to read more fluently (just need more practise, ideally daily!)

2) To be able to write simple sentences (they can spell words but don't have the confidence to write, especially joined... I need to give them more opportunities to do so!)

One of the grammatical concepts in the current chapter is the idea of the object of a verb in a sentence needing a fatha (and revising the subject needs a dhamma), i.e. "Tuhibbu al-baqaratu al-kitaaba" means "The cow likes the book" [as opposed to "Tuhibbu al-baqarata al-kitaabu" meaning "The book likes the cow"]. So we did some work on the whiteboard to this effect, using different familiar verbs and objects and emphasising that the order of the sentence isn't important, but the meaning comes from the vowel sound on the words.

Then the girls (Z included!) drew and painted a picture of 5 foods they liked to eat (so we could practise the verbs eat, like and want). They painted them with cottonbuds and a dot effect (I'm trying to introduce them to different art techniques where I can within other subjects, as we don't really have a set "Art" time atm!)

Around the house in Arabic

We started this activity off at Arabic club then finished it at home - the girls filled in a template of a house with things found in that room and a family member in each room too. When they were done, they had to describe what they'd drawn in Arabic. MashaAllah, using their knowledge from Arabic club and the Madinah book, they're now able to say sentences such as "My dad is in the bedroom. My sister and I are in the sitting room. My mum is standing in the kitchen with my sister. I am sad on my bed. Z is sitting on the toilet. My sofa is brown. The kitchen is big." etc.

(F is sad in her pic because it's showing the time Z pushed her and took F's car - I think it happened the day before? So obviously still on her mind! Which was a good eye opener for me that things might need following up on a little more for her to get over them... But alhamdulillah she's able to express herself like this and could talk about it easily with me when asked.)

Arabic: Grandparents & Love

In Arabic club last week, we practised making sentences about our grandparents and conjugating the verb "to like". At the end of the session, they made cards for their grandparents with pictures of things they like inside. When we got home, we finished them off and wrote the sentences inside - ready to post and surprise my parents in Ipswich!

The writing inside says "I love my grandfather. I love my grandmother" and "My grandfather likes books. My grandmother likes flowers."

We wrote the translation in an accompanying letter to explain what we did. 😁 I didn't realise they didn't yet know properly how to post a letter lol... So we talked a bit about the layout of the front of the envelope (where the address goes, why it's needed, briefly how letters are sorted, where the stamp goes, why it's needed) then went for a 5min walk to the end of the road to post it. 👍

Stories from other cultures - 2 - The Middle East

Our next stop on our world tour was (North Africa &) the Middle East. 🌍

We went back to our globe, maps and atlas to find this region of the world, point out any familiar countries and read the names of others. We looked at the general climate, talked about deserts and discussed why some of the culture between the Middle East might be similar to areas of Northern Africa, such as Morocco.

I decided to use this week as a good opportunity to read some general stories of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW)'s life (e.g. from books such as this and this, which were hand-me-downs kindly gifted to us from a friend) as well as practise our Arabic reading and understanding by going through the relevant Big Cat books we have (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

It was difficult to find any books from the library set in the Middle East, with the exception of Sanji & the Baker - which is a beautifully illustrated retelling of a well-known story which I love. 😁 We really got the most out of this book, talking about the clues in the pictures to tell us about the setting, the characters, etc. and a good discussion on the moral of the story, fairness and greed. 👍

As all these stories were set in the past, to remind them of what the region is like currently we rewatched some episodes of Iftah Ya Simsim - as it contains clips of children doing different activities in various Arab countries - and looked back through our holiday photos/videos to Istanbul and umrah last year. We also watched a random travel blog of some people camping in the Sahara!

As we didn't do a focused Literacy task last week, this week I decided to have them continue writing a story I started which was set in a desert:

You can download the story and template writing sheet here. (I included little cliparts on the second page as reminders of what was mentioned so far and so prompts for what they could include next. Excuse the pun in the title, too. LOL. But a good chance for a mini recap lesson on homonyms. 😂)

I wasn't so focused on their spelling, grammar or punctuation with this task, but more on their imagination, text structure and organisation. We talked a bit about what could happen next, but without me giving them any ideas - literally just a few questions about the cliparts and this on the whiteboard. Lol.

I then set the 30min sand timer on the table in front of them and let them write as much as they could, in silence, for that time.

I wasn't expecting them to complete the story with a lot of detail, but I wanted to give them that chance to free write with no interruptions or worries about "getting it wrong". For that reason, I gave them pens to write with so a) they wouldn't waste time trying to rub out mistakes and b) so it felt a bit more special. I had this video playing in the background as inspiration/to set the mood, and halfway through the time I stopped them so they could read and comment on each other's work so far. This helped as it gave them a short break as well as kept them focused on what to write next. The yellow highlighter shows where they got up to in the half an hour. As they didn't finish, I said they could complete it as and when they felt like it over the next couple of days - so it wasn't sitting in silence, but just writing a bit more for fun. This is what they ended up with! 💕

M

F

Finally, the plan is to go to a Lebanese/Moroccan restaurant so the girls can taste some of the foods from the region again. And as an excuse to go out. 😋

Stories from other cultures - 1 - Africa

This term for Literacy, we're doing a whistle-stop tour of the (non-Western) world to tick off the suggested NC target of stories from other cultures. Each week, we'll go to the library (and I'll check online) for books and stories for that part of the world and then do a few activities to help them learn about and appreciate that culture a little more.

...I have to keep reminding myself the twins are still only 5! So a very basic overview is enough at this point - there'll be plenty of time in the future, inshaAllah, to do each country more justice! I feel like I definitely have to mention that at this point as this week was just spent looking at Africa as a whole, when obviously it's a whole continent, but concentrating more on central and southern Africa. 🙈

I chose to start with Africa as there's an abundance of children's books either set in the savannah or using safari animals (e.g. The Ugly Five), so it kind of feels familiar to them. Also, their paternal grandparents were born in Mozambique and Uganda, so they have some connection to the continent too.

We started off by finding Africa on their world map and globe, and also looking up individual countries (ones they knew and ones which came up in the library books) in their children's atlas. We talked about how Africa is a continent with lots of different countries inside it. We talked about the kind of climate it has and which kinds of animals are found in the wild there.

Three of the library books which really stood out as perfect teaching material were: Mama Panya's Pancakes, Baby Goes to Market and Grace & Family, set in a traditional Kenyan village, a west African marketplace and a Gambian compound respectively. They opened up lots of discussions on village life, different foods and also different families.

In order to paint a fair picture, I thought it was important to point out to them that Africa is a vast continent and it isn't all villages! So we looked at some pictures online of big cities, such as Nairobi, so they could see the similarities between there and a city here such as London.

After all our reading and discussions, two things in particular stood out as being different from here: the clothes people in the books wore and some of the foods they ate. So I planned two related activities based on this. 👌

1) The girls designed their own African inspired prints, based on the illustrations in the books. We looked at a couple of the books again, flicking through the pages to talk just about the pictures and what people were wearing: we used lots of good vocabulary to do with pattern, shape and colour. The conclusion the twins came to was that they wore bright colours with big designs on them, both the men and the women! And they listed out the kinds of common patterns too, such as animal print, stripes, spirals and flowers.

I then printed out a simple template with three outlines of a dress on it (short sleeved like all the dresses in the books!) and one square blank for them to draw their own clothing of choice.

You can download the template here.

MashaAllah, Z is getting a lot better at pen/brush control and is enjoying copying her sisters! I was really pleased with her efforts and desire to join in. 💕

So they used wax crayons first to draw their designs, then watercolours over the top to colour the dresses in - continuing the watercolours theme lol. I did one alongside them as an example, and because it looked fun and I wanted to. 😂

We then watched a couple of episodes of Tingatinga (in Arabic! for listening practise 😀) and talked about the designs of the animals - they weren't coloured realistically, but the patterns were traditionally African. This also doubled up as another example of stories from the African culture.

2) We had a go at making some of the foods in the books, namely the pancakes from Mama Panya's Pancakes (recipe in the back of the book!) and some chin chin biscuits from Baby Goes to Market. The pancakes didn't turn out so great (the batter is using water and I had trouble frying them 🙈) but the chin chin biscuits were a hit. 👍

I followed the recipe from this website but substituted vanilla essence for nutmeg and baked for around 20min at fan 180. The quantities made 45 biscuits, so I sprinkled granulated sugar on 15, demerara sugar on 15 and left 15 plain before baking.

They taste a bit like scones, but crunchy - and after looking up a scone recipe I found they're very similar! - and are usually fried rather than baked, which I can imagine would taste less dry... But I didn't have enough oil and wasn't keen on frying them to begin with anyway. 😀

Next week, we're going to look at northern Africa and the middle East, inshaAllah. 🌍

Teaching Resources for KS1

I thought I'd compile a list of books I've found useful over the past couple of years as either reference material or worksheets for KS1.

[Last updated: 22.02.19]

LITERACY/NUMERACY

Letts Make It Easy… Maths & English (Age 3-5)

Letts Make It Easy… Maths & English (Age 5-6)

Letts Make It Easy… Maths & English (Age 6-7)

Letts Make It Easy… Maths & English (Age 7-8) [link]

LITERACY

Letts Monster English – Reading (Age 5-6)

Letts Monster English – Grammar & Punctuation (Age 5-6)

Letts Monster English – Spelling & Phonics (Age 5-6)

Letts Monster English – Handwriting (Age 5-6) [link]

Collins Easy Learning – Comprehension (Ages 5-7) [link]

Schofield&Sims - First Comprehension 1 [link]

Schofield&Sims - First Comprehension 2 [link]

NUMERACY

Letts Monster Maths – Maths (Age 5-6)

Letts Monster Maths – Addition & Subtraction (Age 5-6)

Letts Monster Maths – Multiplication & Division (Age 5-6)

Letts Monster Maths – Fractions (Age 5-6)

Letts Monster Maths – Measurement (Age 5-6)

Letts Monster Maths – Telling the Time (Age 5-6) [link]

Collins Easy Learning – Mental Maths (Ages 5-7) [link]

CGP Key Stage One Maths – The Question Book [link]

Schofield&Sims – KS1 Problem Solving 1 [link]

Schofield&Sims – KS1 Problem Solving 2 [link]

Schofield&Sims – KS1 Problem Solving 3 [link]

SCIENCE

Science in Action Collection - KS1 [link] (see this post for a note re: the Fossils book)

Fundamental Science Collection - KS1 [link]

ISLAM

Migo & Ali: Love for the Prophets [link]

My First Quran Storybook [link]

Safar Islamic Studies Textbook 1-6 [link]

ARABIC

Madinah Arabic Reader Book 1 [link]

OTHER

Heavy & Light Letters / Venn diagrams

As part of their hifz practise and improving their pronunciation, it was suggested to us by a friend to look properly at which Arabic letters are "heavy", which are "light" and which can be either depending on where they are in the Quran.

We started by simply sorting the letters in the alphabet into the three groups: heavy, light, either.

Then I helped them make an A3 poster to help them visualise and so remember the information better (similar to how we made a poster of the "sun" and "moon" letters - which I've not written up a blog post for yet!).

You can download the letters to cut out here.

Next, we practised their sorting skills in terms of a Venn diagram on the whiteboard. I explained how the diagram worked with a couple of examples, then asked them where a letter would go before asking them to tell me a letter which fit into each section.

To check their understanding of Venn diagrams, I drew another one for them to sort the sun/moon letters with. This time, I just asked them where letters went before asking them for examples. Then I coloured in the centre section to emphasise that there are no letters which belong in both categories!

Finally, we recapped the sun/moon letters along with this new heavy/light information by sorting some of the Arabic alphabet using a two-way table, again on the whiteboard, and labelling it as a Carroll diagram.

The heavy/light letters poster is currently on display in our front room and we use it to sing the alphabet to the tune of this song: starting with the light letters, then the in between and finally the heavy letters in alphabetical order (they're kind of arranged alphabetically on the poster!). We sing it through 4 times; first with the letter names, then as if each letter has a fatha, then a kasra and finally a damma. The girls enjoy it as finishing with the heavy letters sounds good! And it's a fun way to practise for them too. 😁

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While we were there, we looked at a Venn diagram in the context of numbers, too! Just to reinforce understanding and to recap our recent work on their multiplication tables. I drew the diagram on the board and asked them where certain numbers would go, then for examples of numbers from each of them which belonged in each section. Lastly, I gave them a number which wouldn't fit in any category and asked them where they thought it would go - M laughed and F said nowhere! As a joke, she pointed in the corner of the whiteboard so I said yes, she was right - if something doesn't fit in any of the categories, then it just goes outside the diagram! And we did a couple more examples to finish.

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.

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. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

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" 👍

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.