Odd/Even Numbers

Introducing the idea of odd and even numbers through a mini maths investigation!

Handwritten because I had the idea at night and was too lazy to put the laptop and printer on. 😂😅 [EDIT: You can download a typed version of the worksheet here.]

We used the multilink cubes for this investigation as a nice, simple guided activity.

I gave each girl 10 cubes then used that as the example: how many cubes are there altogether? 20. We can divide 20 fairly into 2 groups, so each person gets 10 each. Half of 20 is 10. So if a number can be halved fairly then it's even. If it can't, then it's odd.

I modelled how to fill in the first line of the table, using 1 as another example. Can you halve 1? Can it be shared fairly between 2? Why not? Show me using the cubes... So they wrote "no" in the first column and ticked the "Odd" column.

I then modelled how to fill in the next line of the table, i.e. Can you halve 2? What is half of 2? Show me using the cubes... So they wrote "Yes, 1" in the first column and ticked the "Even" column.

After watching and prompting them for the next couple of lines, to ensure they knew what to do, I left them to complete the rest of the table themselves using the multilink cubes to help them.

When they were done, we discussed what the pattern was. MashaAllah, one noticed towards the end of filling in the table that the ticks were alternating and the other got the first sentence ("They take turns to be odd and even") by being prompted to read the table out loud. 💕 I then asked them to read just the even numbers out loud. Did they notice anything about those numbers? Yes, it was counting in 2s! So they wrote that sentence too. 👍

Finally, there was another table at the bottom for them to fill in with any other examples of odd and even numbers they could think of. They noticed that even numbers always end (i.e. the units) in the number 2, 4, 6, 8 or 0. After they wrote a few of their own, I challenged them by saying a random number and they had to tell me if it was odd or even. MashaAllah, I ended up going on to 3-digit numbers and they understood it was only the units which were important in deciding if a number was odd or even! One of them didn't want to stop, but unfortunately it was dinnertime so we had to. 😂😂

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.

Prophet Ibraheem (AS) - 07 - Building the Ka'bah

This is the last part of Prophet Ibraheem (AS)'s story I wanted to cover in the Reception year: how he and his son, Ismail (AS), built the ka'bah.

We read pages 40-44 together in the Migo & Ali book followed by pages 125-127 in the My First Quran Storybook, discussing the story as we went along.

I decided to do a few activities relating to this part of the story.

First, we reminded ourselves of which 3D solid the ka'bah is, i.e. a cube, and what the properties of a cube were: 6 square sides/faces all the same (thinking about other examples of cubes around the house, e.g. dice, boxes, to help). Then we talked about how we could build a model of the ka'bah using our Duplo blocks. Which blocks would we need? Which part did Prophet Ibraheem and Prophet Ismail build first? What shape would the base need to be? How tall should we make our model? How could we make the roof? I watched them work together to build their cube, prompting with questions along the way.

When they'd finished, I showed them some photos of the ka'bah and how its outside sometimes looks different, i.e. the design of the covering and how the cloth is sometimes lifted up, but in all the pictures the ka'bah is the same cube shape. I also pointed out where the black stone (hajar al-aswad) is situated, on the Eastern corner next to the door, and where the Station of Ibraheem (Maqam-e-Ibraheem) is, i.e. the stone Prophet Ibraheem (AS) stood on to build the upper walls. They remembered our recent Umrah trip and mashaAllah could link the experience with our lesson. 💕

I found all the images on Google, but you can download the pictures we used here.

I asked them how we could make our model look more like the real ka'bah and we talked about the covering being made from cloth... So we used a small black cloth to cover our model. (While I went upstairs to find some, I gave them the task of adding the Maqam-e-Ibraheem to their model; what colour/size/shape block could they use and where should it go?) After draping the black cloth on top they said it was still missing something: gold decorations! So we tied some gold ribbon across the top. We'll leave this model ka'bah for a few days for them (and their younger sister!) to include in their imaginative play - until they want to build something else. 😂

The other activity I did with them was to introduce the idea of 3D solids being built from 2D nets. I found an old cardboard box (food packaging is good for this) and asked them what shape it was: a cuboid/rectangular prism. Was it 3D? Yes! Then I showed them how to carefully open it out flat. Was it still 3D? No! How many faces does a cuboid have? Can you see the six different faces? Two smaller rectangles, two medium rectangles and two larger rectangles? I highlighted the pairs of faces in different colours and showed them how to fold it back into a cuboid again, then explained that we could do the same thing for a cube and this 2D pattern is called a "net".

I asked them how many faces a cube had and what 2D shape they were, so what might they expect the net of a cube to look like? Then I gave them a pre-drawn net of a cube each to cut out. I decided not to include the flaps at this age as I thought they might complicate things/be too fiddly for them. We talked about which lines they needed to cut across (not all of them!) then I highlighted the edges as a guide.

Once they'd cut the net out I helped them crease along the lines then asked them to try and fold it into a cube...

We compared our paper cubes with the cuboid from earlier... Which was stronger? Why? How could we make our cube stronger and how could we make it look like the ka'bah? After some discussion they decided they needed some black card. 💪 (This was our Science link and thinking about different materials 😀)

They stuck their paper templates (new vocab!) onto the black card and cut their net out again. I helped them fold the edges again, then we used sellotape to stick the sides together and decorated our models with strips of gold paper.

You can download our net of a cube here.

I was going to leave it there, but they wanted to put something in their folders... 😂 So I printed out a couple of the photos so they could summarise that part of the story and what they did!

You can download our worksheet as a 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.)

Literacy/Numeracy/Science Targets - Years 1 & 2

Home educators are under no obligation to follow the National Curriculum; however, I like having that benchmark and to know what children of the same age are expected to know by the end of each academic year. So I've used the Primary National Curriculum (last updated 2015) and the Primary Framework for Literacy and Mathematics (last updated 2010) to put together a list of targets for Year 1 and Year 2, in preparation for our next academic year insha'Allah - the year my girls would be in and the year ahead in order to see next steps.

Year 1 - Literacy
Year 2 - Literacy

Year 1 - Numeracy
Year 2 - Numeracy

Year 1 - Science
Year 2 - Science

Feel free to edit the Excel files to suit your own needs! Obviously, I have two columns to show progress as I have two children to assess. 😊 I use the triangle method to record attainment, i.e. one side to show basic awareness, two sides for some understanding, three sides for solid understanding.

I hope someone else finds these target sheets beneficial. 👍

Synonyms for "small"

Another non-inspirational, personal-reference post. 😂

A repeat of this activity, this time thinking of and using synonyms for "small" for the week. This time, I wrote some simple sentences at the bottom for them to fill in the gaps and then they had the task of writing their own sentence which described something small.

Science/Arabic - The 5 Senses

We continued our topic by reading about the 5 senses in a non-fiction book ("My Senses" from this series), which I then left in their book box so they were free to explore it whenever they felt.

We talked a bit about the 5 senses and how we use them to understand the world around us, then I quizzed them on which body part they thought they used for each sense (with them reminding me what each sense was!).

I then gave them another cut-and-stick worksheet to do, wherein they needed to match the sense with the body part (recap) as well as the Arabic translation for each sense (new vocab):

You can download the worksheet here.

This episode of Iftah Yaa Simsim is all about the 5 senses, so we watched it together as a recap. At 6:35, they sing a nice song about the 5 senses - even if, like us, you don't understand a lot of what they're saying, the chorus is simple enough and catchy! They use the indefinite form of the nouns, as opposed to the definite forms in our worksheet, but the words are definitely still recogniseable. 😊

The plan for the rest of the topic is to reinforce this new information by looking at one sense per day in more detail, through an activity/mini-experiment, insha'Allah. The Arabic vocab will also be reinforced on each day, too, as well as the associated verb (e.g. "I see ..." when doing about sight); so only two new words to focus on a day but they've already had the overview of all five nouns from the above worksheet.

Once we've looked at all 5 senses, I plan to take the kids out to a variety of different environments (e.g. the Botanical Gardens, ThinkTank, etc.) so they can link their 5 senses to Literacy and writing detailed descriptions. Insha'Allah a separate blog entry will follow for each thing!