Conjunctions

Working more on sentence level skills, I made a set of conjunctions cards for the twins (print, cut, laminate, cut!). Loosely based on the old QCA framework and posters of writing levels found on Google, I've colour coded the words by level of expected use... At the moment we're just looking at the red, orange and some of the green words (i.e. Levels 1-3).

Using our 19 chosen words, we laid them out on the table and put them in a simple sentence one by one. When we were done, I asked the twins if they could group the conjunctions by words with similar meanings/purposes (e.g. cause and effect, opposition, time, etc.). With some extra questioning, they came up with the groups below.

On a piece of A3 paper I wrote the title for them to colour, then laminated it. Using blu-tack, they then helped arrange the conjunction cards onto the poster. We now have it on display next to our whiteboard. 😊

The plan is to add to the poster as they learn new conjunctions (so the freedom is there to rearrange the cards!), have the poster there as a reference point while doing extended writing, and to take cards off and have them stuck on the table in front of them when we're doing focused work on that particular conjunction/sentence structure. InshaAllah!

You can download the file here.

Juz 27 / Qaala famaa khatbukum - Poster

MashaAllah, we've started the next juz of the Quran, working backwards from the end. 💕

As usual, we've made another target tracking poster for these 7 surahs (the juz actually ends partway through Adh-Dhaariyaat, but we've decided to just complete the whole surah for simplicity's sake). We talked about the meanings of the surah names, coloured in corresponding pictures and decorated with stickers. This poster is only A4 as opposed to the previous ones being A3 - partly because there are fewer surahs to cover this time and partly because we're running out of space on the door where we display them!

You can download the template here.

The pictures correspond to the surahs as follows:

Adh-Dhaariyaat = wind
At-Tur = Mt. Sinai
An-Najm = a star
Al-Qamar = the moon
Ar-Rahmaan = the two seas not mixing (one of the miracles mentioned)
Al-Waaqi'ah = an hourglass (the inevitable time)
Al-Hadeed = a meteorite (containing iron)

Light & Dark - The Sun / Bouncing Light

Working through the suggested targets from the National Curriculum, we discussed the importance of not looking directly into bright lights and why (we took turns to look into each other's eyes while looking in and away from a light to see how the pupil grows and shrinks accordingly) and in particular the sun, then I asked the girls to draw a simple poster to summarise this information.

This is their first time making a poster (they didn't even know what one was!) so we first skimmed through some of their non-fiction books to talk about which layout features made the text inviting and easy to read, so which features did they want to copy for their poster... We came up with the use of pictures, bright colours, boxes and borders and simple sentences. I showed them a piece of A4 paper and asked them which was more effective - to squeeze everything into one corner or to spread it out over the whole page by writing and drawing larger than usual... They answered with the second option! Then I left them to it as A needed a nap.

Tbh I wasn't expecting masterpieces from them since they were doing it for the first time and unsupervised, so I was pleasantly surprised with the results!

The next week we focused on the fact light bounces off everything (revision: which is how we see things) but shiny surfaces seem to reflect more (not getting into the full details at this stage!). We talked about which kinds of materials tend to be shiny (glass or metal, sometimes plastic... Water! e.g. puddles, the sea) and focused in particular on mirrors. How do they work? We can see our reflections because the light bounces off the mirror's shiny surface.

In the 6th Famous Five book, Five on Kirrin Island Again, Julian advises his uncle to use the sun's light and a mirror to signal from far away (we learnt a new word here: heliographing!) so I thought it would be fun for the girls to try and do some heliographing of their own.

We were fortunate with the weather this week in November and headed to the Botanical Gardens where I knew they would have a safe, wide open space in which to have a go! I gave them a mirror each, and a walkie talkie so we wouldn't have to keep shouting to each other, and spread out over the main lawn with one twin at the top of the hill, one at the bottom near the bandstand, and myself, Z and A wandering around in between. It was a little tricky for them to catch the sun's light in a way for their sister to be able to see it, but a great practical experiment into understanding how light travels in straight lines and a subtle introduction to the idea of angles of incidence/reflection. 😁

After a good play around with mirror signals, the girls did some backwards walking through the gardens using the mirrors to see where they were going! And, of course, we ended our day with a trip to the playground. 😀

Juz 28 / Qad Sami'a - Poster

Continuing with our Quran journey, another motivational poster to keep track of where we are:

The pictures this time correspond to the following translations:

Al-Mujaadilah: She that disputes - speech bubble
Al-Hashr: Exile - empty desert
Al-Mumtahinah: She that is to be examined - magnifying glass
As-Saf: The ranks - rows of people
Al-Jumu'ah: Friday - masjid to signify Friday prayer
Al-Munaafiqoon: The hypocrites - person saying one thing but thinking the opposite
At-Taghaabun: Mutual disillusion - set of scales
At-Talaaq: Divorce - man and woman walking away from each other with a broken heart between
At-Tahreem: Banning - stop sign

As usual, we read through all the surah names and meanings, looked at the pictures and the girls had a go at matching them up. Then they coloured (with glitter gel pens this time!), cut and stuck them down onto an A3 sheet along with random stickers of their choice for decoration. As we complete each surah, they can then choose a coloured pencil to colour the corresponding line in.

You can download our list and pictures here.

You can find our previous posters here: Juz 29, Juz 30.

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.

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. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Song: The 6 Articles of Faith

Another simple song I made up because I find it helps my girls remember things... and even the toddler joins in! The lyrics are just the simple facts, really, arranged in a way that rhymes as best as they can. It's more about being able to sing a catchy tune and having the words stuck in their head. 😂 I printed it out and stuck it next to where our Five Pillars song is, for easy reference.

The 6 Articles of Faith

(Sung to the tune of: She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain)

There are six articles of faith,

There are six articles of faith,

There are six main beliefs,

In Islam,

There are six articles of imaan.

We believe in Allah,

We believe in all His messengers,

His books and the angels,

The Day of Judgement,

We believe in the qadr of Allah.

You can download our mini poster here.

Juz 29 / Tabaarak - Poster

A simple homemade poster to keep track of hifz progress. 💖

I printed out the list of surahs in the juz and some pictures to represent the basic meanings:

67. Al-Mulk: hands making du'aa to show blessings from Allah
68. Al-Qalam: quill pen
69. Al-Haaqqa: sun peeking out from behind clouds to represent truth
70. Al-Ma'aarij: stairs
71. Nooh: an ark
72. Al-Jinn: fire
73. Al-Muzzammil & 74. Al-Muddathir: cloth to represent a cloak
75. Al-Qiyaama: mountains to represent the plains of Arafat
76. Al-Insaan: outline of a person
77. Al-Mursalaat: wind

We read through the list together, looking at the Arabic spellings to help with pronunciation, then I laid all the pictures out and we went through the meanings one by one while the girls had to find which picture matched with which surah.

They coloured in the pictures then we stuck everything down onto an A3 coloured sheet and decorated it with stickers.

This poster will then go on display and as they memorise each surah we can colour it in on the list, insha'Allah. 😊

You can download our template here.

Juz 30 / 'Amma - Poster

A simple homemade poster to keep track of hifz progress. 💖

I printed out the list of surahs in the juz and some pictures (clipart from online) to represent some of the basic meanings:

86. At-Taariq: a star
90. Al-Balad: a city
91: Ash-Shams: the sun
92. Al-Layl: a night sky
95. At-Teen: figs
100. Al-'Aadiyat: a horse running
103. Al-'Asr: a clock
105. Al-Feel: an elephant
113. Al-Falaq: a sunrise

We read through the list together, looking at the Arabic spellings to help with pronunciation, and we talked about what the pictures were of and why I chose them - some of them they could match with surah names themselves since they knew the Arabic words, i.e. sun, night, fig, elephant. The rest, they told me what the picture showed and I told them which surah it went with.

I trimmed the list and stuck it onto a coloured A3 sheet of paper. Then we glued the pictures around the edge and decorated with some stickers.

As they were able to read each surah we coloured it in on the list, with them choosing which colour to use each time. Since the surahs at the end of the Quran are short, it was a nice visual for them to see the colours fill up quite quickly as we started; by the time we got to the longer surahs, they had a good portion of the chart coloured and looked forward to colouring the next one in. 😊

You can download our template here. (I didn't notice the Arabic text had gone funny until after I'd printed it - some of the letters at the ends of the words aren't joined properly in the picture above; goes to show how basic my Arabic was at that point! But it's all been fixed in the download link.)

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.

Target Sheets

Some laminated posters I made to put on display, which we change as often as we need to: just use a whiteboard marker and a cloth!

Having our current focus on the wall acts as a reminder both for me and my kids - sometimes inspiration for an activity strikes when I least expect it, just because that constant reminder is there...

I've noticed the girls look at the targets randomly throughout the day; sometimes they choose to copy the sentences on scrap paper for fun... and they both get excited when it gets changed to something new. 😀

I wanted to include Islam so they know from the beginning our religion is of no less importance to the standard core subjects. And that learning about it can be just as fun. 💗

Download a digital copy here. (Download icon in top right corner: fonts display differently in actual Word file as opposed to in Google)

100 Square Template

Sometimes you just want a simple resource, like a plain 100 Square, for free (!) but it takes more effort to find online than to just make it yourself. 😑

So I made one myself and you can download an editable copy here, if you like. 👍

Useful for all sorts of Numeracy work, e.g. addition, subtraction, patterns (times tables), etc. The first one is shaded in to make it easier for using as e.g. a number line; the second one is plain white for colouring in and finding patterns, etc. I laminated my shaded ones for repeated use with the girls.

Song: The Five Pillars

I wrote a simple song (nasheed, if you prefer?) to help my girls not only learn but understand the very basics of the five pillars of Islam: testimony of faith (shahadah), prayer (salah), charity (zakat), fasting (sawm) and pilgrimage (hajj).

Sung to the tune of "The Wheels On The Bus". 🚌

(CHORUS)

In Islam, there are five pillars,

Five pillars,

Five pillars.

In Islam, there are five pillars,

Which Muslims all believe in.

The shahadah says that Allah is One:

Laa ‘ilaaha

‘illa-llah,

And Muhammad is His messenger:

Wa Muhammadur-rasoolu-llah.

(CHORUS)

Salah we pray five times a day:

Fajr, Dhuhr,

And ‘Asr,

Maghrib, ‘Isha, five salah.

The prayers we offer daily.

(CHORUS)

Zakat we give to charity,

To help the poor

And the needy.

Zakat, it makes our wealth all clean,

And stops us being greedy.

(CHORUS)

Sawm, we fast in Ramadhaan,

Don’t eat or drink

Til the sun goes down.

Be patient, kind and helpful.

Fasting makes us grateful.

(CHORUS)

Hajj is the holy pilgrimage,

To where Prophet

Ibrahim used to live.

Just once in our life when we have the means,

We should make this journey.

(CHORUS)

I then made it into a small poster (two A4 sheets trimmed down, stuck together and laminated), which you can download a copy of here. 😊

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It was a little difficult to think of another, useful, separate activity to do with the shahadah... We've made it a habit for the girls to recite it in Arabic every night before sleeping, so they were pleasantly surprised to discover they already knew it! As for the English meaning, it's covered in this song... So there wasn't really much else to do lol. That level of detail is fine with us for now. 👍

Song: The Five Daily Prayers

We've always made it a point to include salah as a normal part of our lifestyle, by praying in front of the kids and inviting them to join in if they want (though there's no compulsion, they're still young, and if they want to just continue playing that's fine as long as they're reasonably quiet). Winter time is especially good as they're awake for Maghrib, usually Fajr and sometimes 'Isha too - so they can hear the prayers being recited aloud. 😊 So the girls have been aware of salah for as long as they can remember.

I decided to make them a poster just to highlight when the different prayers take place (by hand, so no download link today, I'm afraid! I like to have a mix of typed/handwritten things on display) and made up a simple song to go with it:

Fajr in the morning,
Dhuhr at midday,
'Asr in the afternooooon!
Maghrib at sunset,
'Isha in the nighttime...
That's the five daily prayers!

...I told you it was simple. Lol.

The tune is one I made up, one of those kind of random/slightly out-of-tune yet catchy melodies you hum around the house while doing chores... Not something I'm willing to record myself singing but I'm sure you could make up a simple tune yourself, if you wanted. 😜

The main points I wanted to include in the poster were:

- pictures of the sun/sky at each point in the day
- the name of each prayer
- pictures to show which prayers are loud/quiet (open/closed mouth smiley faces)
- the rough time each prayer takes place