Together We Read – The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Alhamdulillaah since we started on our Islaam is My Life Pre school Curriculum week 7, to go along with the topic we read “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and did many activities masha Allaah.

This is one book Maimoonah and I have always loved and a favourite read aloud book for sometime. But Masha Allaah now that she is beginning to read independently I am enjoying it more, (still I feel she enjoys very much more when I read it to her.)

So after reading the book we learnt the Days of the week in order in English and Arabic. I read the book many times to Maimoonah in fact in between each activity we did so that she would know to think and relate. I kept on asking her questions like when did the caterpillar eat a cup cake? When did he get a stomachache and so on.., and taught her how she should answer. This I wanted it to be a stepping stone for comprehension exercises in the years to come Insha Allaah.

She traced these sheets on “Days of the week” that we got from the first school website and coloured the pictures too.

Then we had made these small booklets ,“The ABC’s “, “Colours”, and Counting butterflies”. She enjoyed reading these independently.

We learnt how to read numbers from ONE – SEVEN and after she learnt to read I gave her this small worksheet. Asked her to read and match the correct numbers and she did well Masha Allaah.

Then we made this caterpillar with numbers. Asked her to sequence the numbers correctly and paste.

She also made this butterfly puzzle which we got from the net (I am very sorry sisters I cannot give you the right links as I have very limited internet connection, but am sure if you google you will find many such activities Insha Allaah.) She coloured, assembled then pasted and was proud of her independent work.

Then we cut out caterpillar words and learnt to read them and stuck on to our board for it to look some what like a caterpillar…

Then we studied about the “Life Cycle of the Butterfly”. Learnt some facts about the butterfly from her encyclopedia.

And on her environmental studies book we wrote, drew coloured and pasted the life cycle of the butterfly. Reminded her that Allaah is Al Khaaliq, Al Khallaaq, Al Mussawwir. And How perfectly Allaah created the butterfly in a perfect cycle. Subhanallaah.

Finally I made her paint butterflies. Masha Allaah during our break her Abi taught her how to use water colours and paint. She loved it and wants to do painting everyday. Insha Allaah I will post her paintings when I update the posts.

I gave her a stencil that has tiny butterfly shapes and asked her to paint any colour she likes. Abi joined her a bit too for little bit of painting classes. Here is how it looked …..

She enjoyed this as usual.

We are so glad to participate this time in “Together We Read” after a long break and hope to do so more frequently in the future Insha Allaah!

Summary - Week 7 - Allaah Wakes me up each day!

Trust this finds all of you in the best of eemaan and good health! Qadarallaah masha Allaah we have had a long break due to unavoidable circumstances. I have not been blogging mainly because I have no internet connection since Eid. But Alhamdulillaah we are back on schedule but unfortunately we still have problems with internet and I will try to post occasionally as and when I can Insha Allaah. Here is one long post, hope you will not be bored… smile.

Allaah wakes me up each day!

Masha Allaah we enjoyed learning about different things on this topic. First I explained to her that Allaah Created day and night. And we studied how the day and night happens. Showed her the earth and the sun and explained a bit about the sun going around the earth and the formation of day and night.

“The Big Book of Space Discovery” came handy and we did this small experiment to show the sun going around the earth and how the alteration of the day and night happens. (Please check this link http://rivercityhomeschoolers.wordpress.com/earth-science-curriculum/ to know more about the Islamic position on the sun going around the earth contrary to what is norm which is the earth goes around the sun. My sincere advice to sisters is to please take extra care to teach our kids the correct theory according to the Qur’aan and the sunnah in all aspects Insha Allaah).

So after going through the book I gave her two balls and showed her how the two balls(The Sun and the earth) move. Here she goes…

Then we learnt the Aayah:

““It is out of His Mercy that He has put for you night and day, that you may rest therein (i.e. during the night) and that you may seek of His Bounty (i.e. during the day), and in order that you may be grateful. (Al-Qasas 28:73).

She was so thrilled to see sis Umm An Nu’man’s mini work book on her table and almost finished the whole book in just one session. She enjoyed reading it as she was able to read independently masha Allaah and she coloured and did the cutting and pasting independently too. I could really relax this time masha Allaah and I can see her confidence has increased within a couple of months.

Now that she knows the “Night and the Day”, I made two labels “Night” and “Day” and gave her some action cards that I had bought sometime back to teach her actions/verbs. Then asked her to categorize them according to actions done during the day and night. She did well masha Allaah.

After she completed this is how it looked.

Then I asked her which has the most amount of cards, “The Night or the Day”? Obviously she said Day, then I explained to her the aayah again saying Allaah is so merciful that he created the Night to rest and the day to seek his bounties. This led us to learn more about sleep.

So we went through this is website and learnt a whole heap of things about sleep. Masha Allaah this a very concise website for kids to learn about sleep, I learnt a lot too. After going through this I thought its best to put them on to one folder and keep it so that I can use this in the future when she grows up Insha Allaah to study this in detail. So we took a big board folded into two and made this small folder with details of “Sleep”. All contents are available on the same site.

Here are the details of it. This is how it looks.

She learnt about Why we sleep, the sleep cycle, dreams, (Here I explained to her that if she sees a bad or scary dream she should seek refuge with Allaah from Shaytaan spit and turn the other side and sleep), Why we cannot sleep sometimes etc etc… Interestingly we learnt about Sleep apnea and insomnia and we figured out why sometimes her Abi snores too much, smile! All of this could be found at http://www.sleepforkids.org/

We also did this sleep card matching game, found at the same website. She enjoyed this game.

Aqeedah

We continued with Usooluth Thalaathah and we started reading The Basic Principles on the subjects of Tawheed, Fiqh and Aqeedah by Shaikh Aboo Abdur Rahmaan Yahya bin Ali Al Hajoori Hafidhahullaah.

Masha Allaah this is a good book and I can see Maimoonah is able to understand many things now and memorizing the Quraanic aayahs are easy for her masha Allaah at this age and I hope to continue reading to her until she fully understands the principles Insha Allaah. We are reading the first 6 points now.

Qura’an Memorization

Masha Allaah she has memorized Soorah Zilzalah, Aadhiyaat . She memorized Takaathur this week. We have been reading the interpretation of the meanings too.

Islamic Studies

We went through the etiquettes of sleeping and waking up. She has already memorized the duas, but we still went through again and talked about how Allaah protects us through out the night when we say the dua before sleeping also when we recite aayathul kurs.

As usual at this age she kept asking “Why does the sun go down everyday Ummi?” So I explained to her the following hadeeth

Narrated Abu Dhar:- The Prophet [SALLAL LAAHU ALAIHIWASALLAM ] asked me at sunset:- "Do you know where the sun goes at the time of sunset?" I replied, "Allah and His Apostle know better."

He said, "It goes (i.e. travels) till it prostrates Itself underneath the Throne and takes the permission to rise again, and it is permitted and then (a time will come when) it will be about to prostrate itself but its prostration will not be accepted, and it will ask permission to go on its course but it will not be permitted, but it will be ordered to return whence it has come and so it will rise in the west.

And that is the interpretation of the Statement of Allah:- "And the sun Runs its fixed course For a term decreed, that is The Decree of (Allah) The Exalted in Might, The All-Knowing. " {'Quran Surah 'YâSîn 36.38}

I am not sure if she understood this but she was satisfied with the answer and the “Why Why” stopped for the time being I guess! Smile!

Asmaaul Husnah

We learnt few more names of Allaah , Al Hafeedh, Al Haafidh, Al Mawla. She cut and pasted and we learnt the meanings too.

Montessori activities

Maimoonah got a flag while travelling and I used it to teach her how to roll.

Reading, Maths, Language, Writing

We read the book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” many times and used it to learn and revise the Days of the Week. Insha Allaah you can see all the activities we did on this on the next post as that will be our participation in “Together We Read” after a long time.

Also she has been trying to read this book on her own, masha Allaah. She has picked up many words in another few days she should be reading the whole book independently Insha Allaah.

Added to that I showed her the pages of the Calendar and taught her the numbers from 1-31 and the names of the Months.

She did the tracing too…

We have a daily calendar. She changes the date every day on it and this time she understood what was happening better as she now knows the days, months and the date. She has learnt the names of the days and and all 12 months masha Allaah.

Arabic

We have been learning new Arabic vocabulary lately with Madeenah Books. I got a list of Arabic Words and meanings mentioned on these books, so I read to her and she has picked up masha Allaah.

This week we learnt to ask questions Maa Haadha? What is this?, Man Hadhaa? Who is this? And Ahadha? Is this? She really liked this way of learning as I see she is so eager to learn to speak Arabic so that she could converse at the play area with Arab kids downstairs.

Also we learnt the Arabic Numbers from 1-30 and the Names of the Islamic months and days of the week. We used arabicfirst for this.

Masha Allaah she has memorized the days of the week and months. She traced this too..

So that was the end of week 7 Alhamdulillaah! I am very eager to know if any other sisters are using this curriculum. If so please leave a comment or email me at binthun@yahoo.com and share your adventurous learning too sisters, this will always help all of us Insha Allaah.