Different Kinds of Lists

Introducing another kind of non-fiction text: lists!

We use lists all the time anyway: shopping lists (which they see every time we go to Asda, sometimes reading them out to me as we go round), To Do lists (often I write these on the whiteboard e.g. as a plan for the day or the week), etc. etc. They even include them in their play, sometimes taking out a notepad and pencil/pen and copying words from their posters into a list...

So it wasn't much to just clarify and teach them the basic features:

- lists go down the page
- start a new line for a new thing
- they can have bullet points
- or they can be numbered
- they need to have 3 or more things

That's it!

Then I gave them each a piece of paper with two titles on it: "A List of Animals I Like" and "A List of Things I Like To Do". They needed to complete the first list using bullet points and the second list using numbered brackets. I showed an example of each on the whiteboard then left them to it until they got bored. 😂 One wrote the lists pictured above; the other did about 7 animals and 3 things to do lol.

I decided to save writing a list using commas for another day, as that's slightly different in terms of format and learning about punctuation. 😊

Place Value and Partitioning

We recently bought this wooden abacus as both a learning tool for the twins and a toy for the 2 year old. Since the older two can count confidently back and forth to 100, I thought now was a good time to introduce larger numbers and place value to them.

I explained to them how to use an abacus to represent larger numbers, writing a colour-coded list on the whiteboard to clarify and make clear the pattern:

1s = units
10s = tens
100s = hundreds
1,000s = thousands
10,000s = ten thousands
100,000s = hundred thousands
1,000,000s = millions
10,000,000s = ten millions
100,000,000s = hundred millions
1,000,000,000s = billions

 I stopped there since our abacus has 10 rows, but I was pleased when they asked if ten billions came next, then hundred billions and what was after that? MashaAllah they're both very logical in their thinking (to make up for their lack of artistic flair lol).

Over the next few days we played with the abacus, taking turns to make numbers for each other to read - first only using the top 2 rows, then the first 3 and finally the first 4) - or saying a number and getting the other to make it on the abacus.

Once they were confident with this, I modelled on the whiteboard how to partition two digit numbers into tens and units, i.e.

          Tens       Units
12  =    10     +     2
          (1 ten  + 2 units)
58 =     50     +     8
          (5 tens + 8 units)
93 =     90     +     3
          (9 tens + 3 units)

etc. then carried on the list, leaving the Tens and Units columns blank for the girls to try and fill in together. I made sure to get them to further split the Tens into e.g. 5 tens = 50 which helped practise their 10x table too.

We repeated this over a couple of days, with different numbers on the whiteboard each morning for them to fill in independently, going up to 3 digit numbers on the last day for an extra challenge. 💪

To summarise and check their understanding, I then photocopied the relevant pages from Letts Monster Maths - Maths (Age 5-6), Collins Easy Learning - Mental Maths (Ages 5-7) and CGP Key Stage One Maths - The Question Book onto a double-sided page, for them to work through together and then file away in their folders - pictured at the start of this entry.

Since then, they've continued to play with the abacus both alone and with each other, repeating our games from earlier. 😁😁

99 Names of Allah - 04 - Al-Malik - The Absolute King

[04] اَلْمَلِكُ (Al-Malik): The Absolute King

[Download resources here]

Sing 99 Names (5min)
Play PowerPoint of the first 33 names, 2-3 times. Sing together and do the actions so far plus:

Action for Al-Malik: mime putting a crown on your head.

Today’s focus is on the name Al-Malik which means The Absolute King.

Story relating to today's name (12min)

Watch the episode of Raa Raa the Noisy Lion: Kings and Queens of the Jungle.

Did the other animals like it when Topsy was queen? Why not? She was bossy and didn’t listen to them when they weren’t having fun. She kept telling Raa Raa and Ooh Ooh off. She wasn’t nice when she broke the crown; she just sulked when she didn’t get her way. How did she become a good queen? When she listened to Raa Raa and thought of something the others would like – i.e. when she looked after her subjects properly.

Discuss meaning, apply to children's lives (8min)

Al-Malik means The Absolute King. What is a king’s job? They look after all the people in their kingdom and make sure everything is running smoothly; the whole world, the whole universe, all the heavens and everything in creation is Allah’s kingdom! Allah watches over us and looks after us all. Allah is the Absolute King because he doesn’t need us at all but we all need Him. We worship Him and listen to Him for our own sake.

How are we supposed to treat a king (or queen)? We need to treat Allah with even more respect than any person on this Earth. If Allah has ordered us to do something, we need to obey it! Can you think of any rules Allah has made for us? Things we can’t do? e.g. we can’t eat pork, we shouldn’t use bad language, etc. Things we have to do? e.g. the 5 pillars, we should listen to our parents, etc.

Craft activity (20min)

Complete the page for the book. Use paints, glitter glue, sequins etc. to decorate the crown and make it look special.

Remind the children we cannot imagine what Allah looks like as nothing in this world can compare to Him – we’re just using a picture of a crown since that’s what people who are kings and queens wear. It doesn’t mean that Allah is wearing a crown!

When to use this name (10min)

If you were to meet a king or queen in person, how would you act? What kind of clothes would you wear? Would you look around or not pay attention whilst talking to them? Would you turn up late to the meeting? Every time we read salah, we are standing in front of Allah, Al-Malik, the Creator of Everything. We need to remember this when we pray. We should rush to pray on time, make sure our clothes are tidy, recite our words carefully and pay attention to what we’re doing.

Can you think of a surah which has the word “malik” in it? Recite Surah An-Nas together. Point out the second ayah which means, “The King of mankind.” (N.B. Surah Faatihah has the word "maalik" which is slightly different but the children may think of it too! If they do, this can be a good opportunity to teach the importance of pronunciation when reciting Quran as just one letter can change the meaning of what they say!)

On the back of their page, help the children write a few thoughts about the name Al-Malik and their feelings.

Sticker chart (5min)

Ask individually: Which of Allah’s names did we learn today? What does it mean? Give children a sticker each for their chart.

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Other activities:

- Watch the film “The Lion King”. Discuss how it isn’t easy to be a king – compare what the Pride Lands were like during Mufasa/Simba’s rule and Scar’s. Why did Scar want to be king? Because he was selfish and wanted power and everyone to do everything for him. Was he a good king? Was Mufasa a good king? Did he look after his subjects? Did he put in a lot of hard work, e.g. chasing away the hyenas? Allah is the Greatest King of all – he looks after everyone and everything without any mistakes and without finding it difficult. [Remind: we don’t believe that kings or people turn into stars when they die – what do we believe happens? We wait until the Day of Judgement for Allah to look at all our good deeds so we can go to Jannah.]

- Make a crown out of card and decorate with sequins, tinsel, glitter, etc.

- Play the Pass the Crown game from the Raa Raa episode.

- Role play using soft toys/dolls etc. Have the child pretend to be the king or queen. Let them enjoy having their subjects do everything they say but then have the toys start coming to them with problems and getting upset. Let the child see it isn’t easy being a king – it’s not just about getting their way. But Allah is able to do everything with ease.

Prophet Ibraheem (AS) - 04 - In the Fire

Before continuing with the story of Prophet Ibraheem (AS), I read the story of Frances the Firefly to the twins (a story I remember from my own childhood! Though that was linked with fireworks and Bonfire Night 😅) and we talked about the dangers of fire and how horrible it would be if our homes burnt down or we were trapped in a fire. Then I lit a match for them to see - with VERY (!!!) careful supervision they didn't actually touch the flame, they put their finger close enough to feel its heat.

Later, we read the next part in the Migo & Ali book (pages 30-36) and discussed it as we went along: what they thought about what happened, how it made them feel, etc. They related it to our previous discussions from reading about Frances the Firefly and looking at the match.

Then I gave them a worksheet each to fill in the gaps (they took it in turns to read each sentence and we talked about what could go in the blank - then they each wrote their own version of the answer) and the option to colour in the fire at the bottom. You'll notice it didn't matter if their fire looked realistic or not, it's more to do with the process to aid with their memory of the story. 😂

You can download the worksheet template here.

Different Kinds of Pets

I wanted to introduce the girls into sorting things out using a two-way table, as they were already pretty good at sorting things into groups. The NC also mentions being familiar with a variety of common pets, so I decided to combine the two things together.

We visited our local Pets At Home store, walked around looking at the shelves and display animals, taking photos and discussing what we saw. A free mini day out before popping next door to Asda lol.

When we got home, we looked through the photos one by one and together we sorted the animals into the correct boxes. The pet store was good in that the display animals all had little information plaques to say what the animals needed to be fed (this was especially useful when it came to the different kinds of fish!), or the pet food in the aisles had a picture of the animal it was for and a description of what was inside.

I quite liked this activity as a recap of the work done so far. The weather is brightening up too so I'd like to repeat it after a trip to the local zoo, insha'Allah. Hopefully there they can find some amphibians this time too!

You can download the worksheet here.

If you just wanted to focus on the 2-way sorting and recapping the key vocabulary, you could also do this with pictures of familiar animals instead. You could print some out or cut up a free leaflet for a zoo/sealife centre etc. which you often find in the library.

Word Problems with the PJ Masks!

My girls are all into PJ Masks at the moment... It comes on TV on TinyPop or you can find episodes pretty easily on YouTube (you can even find some dubbed in Arabic!). So I decided to utilise this by making up some simple word problems using the characters from the show.

Each sheet has 5 questions on it (a manageable amount for their age, I think). The first and second sheet have 1-step problems, the first focusing on addition and the second on subtraction. The third sheet has 2-step problems with a mixture of addition and subtraction.

We worked through them using cubes to physically represent the numbers. You could do it with a number line or whichever method you prefer though. We also wrote down each question as a number sentence (e.g. 5 + 2 =) before writing the answer, so they could get used to seeing how word problems translate into numerical problems. And we didn't do all the sheets in one go! We spread them out over a few days in between standard addition/subtraction practise just using numbers.

You can download the worksheets here. As always, feel free to edit as you wish - so you can change the numbers accordingly to make them more or less challenging. 😀

Carnivores, Omnivores & Herbivores

I introduced the terms "carnivore", "herbivore" and "omnivore" to the girls just through casual discussion over a few days. For example, when we we came across a rabbit in a book we talked about how it only ate things like grass, hay and carrots - it didn't eat meat so it was a herbivore. When we read a book about sharks, it explained how great white sharks have sharp teeth to help them catch their prey - they only eat meat so they were carnivores. One of the girls asked what we were, since we eat both meat and fruit/vegetables... So I told them we were omnivores.

Silly ways to help them remember:

Carnivores: only eat meat/animals. When you say "carrrrrnivore" you need to growl like a tiger, showing your sharp teeth!

Herbivores: only eat plants. We grow herbs at the allotments and put them in our cooking; herbs are plants!

Omnivores: eat both meat and plants. They OM NOM NOM everything!

Before we could work on sorting animals by what they eat, first I wanted to clarify for them what exactly constituted as meat or plants, so I made the above worksheet.

The first side is a sorting activity thinking about whether the pictures shown are meat or plants. The girls cut the pictures out themselves and then arranged them where they thought they should go. I checked them before they glued them down.

Meat: chicken, mouse, fly, cow, worm, fish

Plants: grass, nuts, vegetables, fruit, trees/leaves, flowers

I thought it was important to include insects in the meat section and things like nuts in the plants section - things the girls wouldn't automatically associate with being either meat or plants! As they stuck the pictures down we talked about the kinds of animals who might eat those things.

At the bottom of the page are the three keywords, arranged in a way that shows the carnivores eat only from the meat section, the herbivores only from the plants section and the omnivores in the middle overlapping both sections. We talked about this before moving on to the second worksheet. (My husband thought the layout was a little confusing: I think when I repeat this for my youngest I might edit it so the titles "Meat" and "Plants" are bigger and in the centre of the box, with the pictures stuck around the outside like a spider diagram?)

The second worksheet is a simple complete-the-sentence activity, using the phrases at the bottom of the page to reinforce what we discussed.

You can download the worksheets here.