Identifying Plant Structures & Functions

We did a lesson on plant structures and functions a couple of years ago, when the twins were 4 1/2, so I thought we would repeat it now they're older (to see how much they remember/have improved!) and for Z's sake as a new lesson as she's recently turned 4. 😙

As before, we visited the Botanical Gardens. In the morning before we went, we read through the most relevant pages from the Roots, Stems, Leaves and Flowers book from the Fundamental Science Collection we have.

While at the gardens, we discussed the different kinds of plants and commented on how the same structure (e.g. the flower) could look so different on different plants. Did they all have roots and stems? Including trees? Could they find them? We stopped at a couple of points around the gardens so the girls could have a go at drawing some plants. They've not done much drawing from life so this was good practise! Z wanted to do one at first, but then she preferred just running around so I didn't force it. 😊 I modelled how to do a quick sketch first and then adding more detail afterwards.

This tree was outside, so after they identified the different structures I asked them what they thought about its trunk. Why was it twisted? Did it grow like that naturally or did someone make it grow like that? How? F said maybe they kept twisting the trunk as it grew. I'm not sure of the answer myself but that seems like it could make sense?! Maybe it's two different trees being twisted together as they grew? Even if we don't know the answer, thinking about it is still a useful exercise. 😁

We also took photos of the plants they were sketching. At home, they watched how I inserted a picture into a Word file and arranged it on the page. Then they had a go with the other photos we took. As well as inserting images, we paid special attention to cropping, resizing, moving them and using zoom to be able to see more clearly what we were doing. I printed the pictures out and they used them as reference to colour in their sketches with coloured pencils.

I was going to get them to label their drawings, but decided against it as felt it would be labouring the point... They already showed they understood by doing it verbally at the gardens, so what was the use in creating extra work as "evidence"?! 😏

On another day, we watched this video clip from the BBC: Ivy's Plant Workshop - Parts of a Plant.

The twins completed the following worksheet, with the guidance that the bottom of the flowering plant should be at the bottom of the table and the top should be at the top... They could either draw four separate diagrams or have a go at joining them to make one tall diagram spanning the table! We talked about the four structures (roots, stem, leaves, flowers) and their multiple jobs, and I wrote some keywords (mainly as spelling help!) on the whiteboard. If they needed more help, they could look in one of the Science books they have which I'd put in the book box for this half term.

When they were done, I asked them to draw and label a tree with the same four labels.

You can download the simple worksheet here.

Meanwhile, Z did the activity from our previous post, i.e. drawing a picture of a flower from scratch and me guiding her with adding labels. MashAllah the twins were able to work pretty independently so I was able to give Z enough attention!

Shape Poems

I looked on Google for examples of shape poems for KS1 aged children and put together a sheet of examples (download here).

We read through the sheet together and talked about what they liked/disliked, which was their favourite and why, what kinds of layouts did they have and what they thought made something a shape poem. Did it have to rhyme? Did it have to fill the picture or make a picture? Did it have to be full sentences or just words? Did all the writing have to be the same size? etc. etc.! Then I stuck it to the wall as a reminder.

Continuing with our plants theme, I decided we'd do a shape poem about flowers.

On the whiteboard, we discussed the kinds of things we might talk about in our poems. Then we talked about how we might write those ideas into the shape of a flower.

I gave them a faded template of a flower for them to use (in the above download file). Z really wanted to join in so I sat with her as she wanted to know how to spell words, so the twins ended up working independently. I originally planned to sit with them and do more thesaurus work, but it didn't work out that way! And they weren't inclined to plan first, they just wanted to write straight onto the flower. 😏

When they were done, we mounted these onto coloured paper and put them on display next to their acrostics. 😄😄

Blue: F, Green: M, Orange: Z

The twins enjoyed turning the paper to write their words in a way which fit in the petals and in the centre!

Z's poem says: "orange, red, pink" "poppy" "beautiful" "smell fresh and nice" "flower" "roses" "make me happy when they grow"

I asked them if they wanted to do their own shape poem about anything, drawing the picture themselves, but they said no. 😆 They'd had enough of them. 😂😂

What plants need to grow

Our Science topic for this half term is plants: looking at what they need to grow, their basic structures and functions, and their life cycles in terms of flowering, pollination, seed formation and dispersal.

We were gifted a carnivorous plants display from my parents - which I've been putting off planting over the winter as we were back and forth between Ipswich and Birmingham so wouldn't have been able to look after them well - so we finally got round to planting those! We also had a few flower seeds from my nephew's birthday party so we planted those too.

I asked the girls what they thought the plants needed to grow well - what did they already know? They said water, light and soil because they remembered our sunflower experiments in the garden from previous years. 😁🌻🌻🌻 We looked in one of their science books about plants so they could check and they remembered plants also need air - because they "breathe" in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, which is the opposite of what animals do.

I told them I was going to put their flowers and carnivorous plant display on the sideboard where they could get lots of sun because I wanted them to grow well, inshaAllah. And we needed to remember to water them often! They were already in soil and they weren't covered up so should be able to get plenty of air.

Then I asked them if we could design an experiment to test if they were right about these four factors being important for plant growth... We could use cress seeds and see what happens if we tried to grow them without those things. Could they design an experiment to see which one of those things is the most important, maybe? How could they make it a fair test?

With some  discussion, they came up with the following:

They both found the "no soil" pot hilarious for some reason. 😂😂

Z didn't really take part in the designing an experiment part, but she understood we had 4 different pots to compare how the seeds would grow without either light, water, soil or air. And the 5th pot had all four things to be the control, so to show how the plant is supposed to grow.

Once the cress has sprouted, inshaAllah, we can discuss what they'll observe and why it happened. 🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱

Acrostic Poetry

We haven't done any poetry for a while! So I checked online for a list of suggested genres and picked a few for us to look at over the next few weeks inshaAllah: acrostics, shape poems and couplets.

We started by visiting the library and looking for poetry books - not in any particular genre - just for general inspiration.

Fortunately, there were some examples of acrostics in one of the books we took out!

We read the examples together and I asked the girls what they thought an acrostic poem was... They said it has a word going vertically which is what the poem is about. 👍 Then I quickly made this up on the whiteboard to demonstrate!

As our current science topic is to do with plants, I thought it'd be nice to link our poetry to this. We talked together and wrote the following two examples:

Then I challenged the girls to write their own using a plant-related word as their theme. We talked about how poetry doesn't have to rhyme! And the meaning of what they want to say is more important. 😁 When they were finished, we used thesauruses to make their writing more interesting. Finally, they wrote their poems out in their best handwriting, illustrated them, then trimmed and mounted them onto coloured paper.

Papa was late coming home that evening, so we left this final acrostic on the whiteboard for him... The girls eagerly asked him if he saw it the next morning, but unfortunately he was too tired to notice. 😂

99 Names of Allah - 16 - Al-Qahhaar - The Subduer

[15] اَلْقَهَّارُ (Al-Qahhaar): The Subduer

[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-Qahhaar: Clench hand into a fist and, using your elbow as a pivot, spin your fist in a fast circle like a hurricane.

Today’s focus is on the name Al-Qahhaar which means The Subduer. 

Story relating to today's name (7min)

Read the stories of 'Ad and Thamud to the children e.g. from My First Quran Storybook or Migo & Ali, etc. (Prophets Hud (AS) and Salih (AS)). 

Discuss meaning, apply to children's lives (15min)

Al-Qahhaar means The Subduer. 

What does "subdue" mean? Can you find it in the dictionary? It means to overcome or quieten or bring under control.

This name reminds us of Allah's power and how He is able to control everything at His will.

Think about the people in the stories we just read. Did they believe in Allah? Were they arrogant? They thought they didn't need Allah? But Allah is Al-Qahhaar and He subdued them and their cities. He made them all quiet so they were at a complete loss against Him. What did He do? He sent great winds and earthquakes.

Watch a video of a tornado (such as this one). Talk about how it's a great wind spinning round very fast. Talk about the destruction left behind (e.g. watching a video such as this).

Ask the children if they think natural disasters like these nowadays are punishments just like they were for the people of 'Ad and Thamud? Does Allah only make bad things happen to people He dislikes? What about the prophets - did they have easy or hard lives? Did Allah love them or not? We don't always know why Allah makes certain things happen, so we should always have faith in Him that it's happening for a reason. Sometimes it's a test for those He loves, sometimes it's a punishment for those who don't believe in Him. Only Allah knows.

Craft activity (20min)

Complete the page for the book.

Print the spiral template onto grey card for the children to cut out. Use felt-tips to follow the spiral and add some colour. Cut out. Stick the centre of the spiral to the page. Use string to decorate, following the spiral with a piece of string and gluing down. Leave a short length of string overhanging to act as a handle - so the spiral can be lifted off the page to represent a hurricane.

When to use this name (8min)

When we see or hear about natural disasters happening around the world, we should be reminded of Allah as Al-Qahhaar. He has the power to subdue - to destroy and bring things under control - and has destroyed many groups of people in the past. Can you think of any examples? 'Ad, Thamud, the people of Nuh (AS), Firawn and his followers, etc. We should remember their examples and give thanks to Allah for guiding us to the correct path. We are blessed to be able to worship Him as Muslims and to have the opportunity to make our book of good deeds as large as possible! 

On the back of their page, help the children write a few thoughts about the name Al-Qahhaar 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:

- Read and watch videos about natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. Talk about how strong they are and how they help to remind us of Allah's power as Al-Qahhaar.


Please leave a comment if you know any other related activities for this name!

Writing Informal Emails

Part two of learning about letters was to compare to writing and sending emails!

First, the twins did a comprehension exercise based on an email text (from this book) and we talked briefly about the conventions in layout: the email subject, email addresses, the similar layout in terms of paragraphs and a "Dear...", "From..." beginning and end.

Then, I set up email accounts for the girls - including Z, as she had written a letter and posted it too - using Gmail. In hindsight, I wish I had adjusted their birth years so I could automatically forward their emails to mine (Google doesn't allow automatic forwarding for child accounts! And neither can I add their accounts to my phone as I set my email as the parent account which is already signed in on my phone... Settings might get confused, apparently, so it's not possible 😖) as now I need to manually log in to their accounts to check for replies... But this is a lesson in itself for them re: the conveniences of snail mail vs electronic! It may arrive there straightaway but that isn't much use if you forget to sign in and check. 😂

They watched me set up their accounts (the username F wanted was already taken so we added a number to the end; we talked about how usernames/email addresses are unique for everyone in the whole world!) and came up with a password (their first one lol... I set all 3 as the same for ease 😝).

When they composed their emails, in turn, we looked at the layout of the inbox, how to write an email by clicking "compose", what the subject line is for and where to put the recipient's address. They wrote a simple email to the same aunts they had sent letters to, explaining they were comparing the two forms of communication, and added emojis to their emails (which they enjoyed the most lol).

We talked about how email is free to do, how long it takes to arrive, the convenience of not needing to physically buy stamps or walk to a postbox and how mistakes in an email can be easily corrected, compared to rubbing out or crossing out written mistakes in a letter. We also didn't need to write the date or our own address because it was put there automatically for us.

So what could be the benefits of sending letters by post? Because you don't have to remember to check for a reply, it just comes! And if you want to send something (like Nani sent a present in the post to us) then you can't email it, you have to post it... And it's fun getting post. 😂

99 Names of Allah - 15 - Al-Ghaffaar - The Forgiving

[15] اَلْغَفَّارُ (Al-Ghaffaar): The Forgiving

[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-Ghaffaar: Hold one palm face up and use the other palm to rub circular motions onto it.

Today’s focus is on the name Al-Ghaffaar which means The Forgiving. 

Story relating to today's name (7min)

Read the story of Prophet Yunus (AS) to the children, e.g. from the Safar series or Migo & Ali.

Talk about the mistake Yunus (AS) made and what he did when he felt sorry. Did Allah forgive him?

Discuss meaning, apply to children's lives (15min)

Al-Ghaffaar means The Forgiving.

This means that Allah has the power to forgive our sins - He can rub them out from the book the angels write our deeds in and make it seem as if it never happened. Why do we want our book of bad deeds to be as small as possible? So when our books are weighed on the Day of Judgement, our good deeds will be heavier and we will be able to go to jannah, InshaAllah!

So if Allah is forgiving when we say sorry to Him for doing something He doesn't like, how do you think we should behave if someone does something we don't like? Should we forgive them or not?

Forgiving someone doesn't mean you don't mind what they did. It means you aren't going to let it affect you anymore. You need to be a strong person to forgive when you've been wronged.

Think of something which someone may have done which upset you... Maybe someone pushing you or saying something mean... Don't tell everyone else what it is, just think about it. How does it make you feel? Bad? Angry? Upset? Give children a piece of paper for them to write down what it is. When they're done, tell them forgiving someone helps you throw away that bad feeling - just like they're going to throw away this piece of paper! Have them rip it up and scrunch into a ball, then play a game trying to throw it into the bin from a small distance away. How do they feel now? Better?

When someone does something bad to you, instead of holding a grudge and keeping that bad feeling to yourself, tell them what they did that upset you. Tell them you didn't like it and you don't want them to do it again. Then tell them you forgive them because that's what a good Muslim does.

It doesn't mean you're a doormat and you don't care how people treat you! It means that you're stronger than they are and you won't let it affect you. Stand up for yourself then make dua for them so Allah can guide them better not to hurt others again. Forgive them just as you would want others to forgive you and how you want Allah to forgive your mistakes too.

Craft activity (20min)

Complete the page for the book.

Print out the whale template for children to colour in and cut out. Glue the lower half of the picture to the page. They can glue the upper half onto card to make it sturdier, if they wish, and cut out again. Use a split pin to attach the upper half through the marked circle - so the whale's mouth can rotate on the pin as if it's opening and closing. Finish by gluing on a googly eye!

Talk about the whale picture and how it should remind us of Yunus (AS) asking Allah for forgiveness.

When to use this name (8min)

Do you remember what "tawbah" is? How do you make tawbah? (We did this lesson previously)

1) Regret the sin - feel guilty about doing it
2) Stop doing the sin
3) Make the intention not to repeat the sin
4) Ask Allah's forgiveness
5) Follow a bad deed with a good deed

Even though one of the steps is to make the intention not to do it again, even if you somehow end up doing the same bad thing again, Allah is Al-Ghaffaar and can forgive you. Allah can forgive us again and again no matter how many times we make a mistake or make the same mistake - He won't ever get tired or fed up, like we might become if someone kept making the same mistake again and again!

This doesn't mean it's OK for us to not try and stop doing bad things, because we know Allah can forgive us. It means that even if we might end up making lots of mistakes, we should never give up hope. Always remember that Allah is Al-Ghaffaar and can forgive us. Don't make excuses for not turning back to Allah, it's never too late! 

On the back of their page, help the children write a few thoughts about the name Al-Ghaffaar 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:

- Play a simple game of catch with the children. Tell them we need to pass the ball to each other 10 times without dropping it and if they do they can have a prize (e.g. a sticker or a Smartie, etc.). Purposefully drop the ball when it's your turn or just before they reach the target, say sorry each time and ask if they forgive you! As they get more frustrated/bored, ask how they're feeling. Do they want to keep forgiving you every time you make the same mistake or is it getting a bit annoying? Remind them that Allah is Al-Ghaffaar and doesn't get annoyed when we ask Him for forgiveness - even if it's the same mistake again and again - and the things we need to ask Allah to forgive us for are not as small as just dropping a ball! Try again to complete the challenge and give the children their prize.

- Research other hadith on forgiveness and see how it's mentioned in the Quran. Discuss! (e.g. http://www.quranreading.com/blog/importance-and-benefits-of-forgiveness-in-islam-learn-from-quran-and-sunnah/)

- Find in Arabic and read Yunus (AS)'s dua where he asked for forgiveness.

- Read the story from the seerah of the Prophet (SAW) at Taif. Talk about how the people there treated him and how Muhammad (SAW) reacted. Did he forgive them? What did he do?

- This name links forgiving with the concealing of ugly things, i.e. sins by erasing them and our ugly thoughts/intentions by hiding them from others. We can reflect on this name by concealing other people's faults from others and looking instead for the good in things. Put a teaspoon of salt in a glass and say it represents a bad thing someone has done. Have a child pour some warm water into the glass, to represent covering up the person's sin and ignoring it - watch as it "disappears". Of course, the salt has just dissolved, it's still there. We can't see it so we can easily ignore it, but if we drank the water would we taste it? Yes! So only Allah can actually remove a person's sins, though that doesn't stop us from hiding other people's faults.

You could extend further by putting 2 or 3 identical glasses next to each other, with only 1 having salt water while the others have plain tap water. Can you see by looking which one is salty? No, we can't. We just see water. But, of course, Allah knows - and only He needs to know! It's none of our business what sins other people have done. Allah will be the one to judge them.


Please leave a comment if you know any other related activities for this name!