Darul Kitab - Give Away II

Assalaamu Alaikum warahmathullaah Ya Akhawaat!

Well the title of the post may give all of you a sweet surprise Insha Allaah!

As you all know we had the Darul Kitab Learn About Series Give-away last month and we picked the winner sister Umm Safiyyah. But unfortunately Qadarallaah Masha Allaah this sister did not contact me even upto this very moment. And I was thinking what should I do. And the sister at Darul Kitab wants someone to benefit from this gift, so do I. Then I decided to have the Give Away again and pick the winner again. But Umm Safiyyah's gift is still there and one day if she comes to me I will give her this gift she won Insha Allaah (Aboo Maimoonah has generously agreed to sponsor this gift so that we do not tax Darul Kitab Insha Allaah, May Allaah bless him). This way I presume I have not taken anyone's right and that all of you will benefit once again bi idhnillaah!

Also all those who participated in the last give away will receive the pdf books that they have requested as promised Insha Allaah from me as soon as they are ready. Just to let all of you know I have not forgotten you! : )

Those of you who are new the blog please check out this post to know all about Darul Kitab Learn About Series Wonderful benefical Books Insha Allaah!

Also Alhamdulillaah Darul Kitab has put out an ipad application which could be downloaded here Insha Allaah. So please do check this out as well!

So what do you have to do. Enter the Give Away by posting a comment according to the rules given below and Maimoonah will pick a winner and the winner will receive all 26 books of the Learn About Series from Darul Kitab Insha Allaah!

This Give Away will start from Today (Thurday 28th of April 2011) and end on Saturday 7th May 2011 Insha Allaah!

Here are the rules Insha Allaah.

• Please leave a comment on this post answering this simple question Insha Allaah. "What is the best thing that you child or children have taught you? ( If you do not have kids, you can write what any kid has taught you)
• One Comment per reader
• No Anonymous post (you can choose the anonymous option but please leave the Name or Kunya at the end of the post)
• Please leave your Name or Kunya or Profile name. If you have no problems in leaving your email adress as well then please do so. If you do not want to do so no problems.
• The winner must contact me within one week of announcement. If she fails to do so then the draw will be held again and we will pick another one Insha Allaah. In case the second winner too does not contact within a period of 1 week after announcement then we will keep picking the winner again until the winner contacts us. (This is purely because we want to earn rewards by giving you this gift not by just keeping it with us as we know when you use this with your kids we get rewarded too : )

Here are the contact details of Darul Kitab

Dar ul Kitab Bookstore

6, Nimal Road Colombo 4 Sri Lanka Tel: +94 11 5358712 Fax: +94 11 5358713 email:info@darulkitabonline.com , website: http://www.darulkitabonline.com/learn/

So happy commenting and have a great time bi idhnillaah!

Giveaway- Everyone is a Winner at River City Homeschoolers!

Assalaamu Alaikum dear Akhawaat!

Here is an excellent opportunity to be a winner Insha Allaah! Sis Umm Tafari at River City Homeschoolers is hosting a great Giveaway masha Allaah. And the good news is everyone is a winner!

Umm Tafari is a well experienced homeschooler with more than 10 years of home-schooling experience along with professional teaching experience masha Allaah! And she is a great adventurer as well! Check out her blog and I am sure you will be amazed of her and love all her activities. She was a great inspiration for me during my early days of homeschooling and still continues to be so bi idhnillaah!

I admire her patience, teaching style, time management and of course her personality from the little I know her masha Allaah! And love her for the sake of Allaah! May Allaah give her the best in this world and the Aakhirah.

She would love to get to know more sisters and hop on to her blog and leave a comment and take home excellent Unit Study guides with resources Insha Allaah!

Summary - Week 15 - Allaah gave me a house to live!

Allaah gave me a house to live!

So this week was full of activities. Discussed about the blessing of having a shelter and animals, birds and human beings need shelter and Allaah is the Provider of this. We talked about why we need a house. She said we need a house to protect us from rain, sun and we need a house to sleep and go to the toilet. We also discussed about etiquettes of entering one's house and entering other people's houses.

We learnt about Housing through the Ages from the encyclopaedia.

We made this small board house.

She coloured this and then cut the shapes and pasted and made this.

Next we learnt the different parts of the house.

She named all the things in a living room, bathroom, kitchen and bedroom.

We did these worksheets on matching and tracing.

Then we spoke about animal homes and did this worksheet from sis Umm An Nu'man.

Also we did the Homes have shapes worksheet. And we took our shapes out and did a bit of a revision in Arabic and English.

We read the Little People Book on Welcome to our home and then she did the sticker activity at the end of the book.

We had this beautiful felt stuff on Homes theme which I got from the Early Learning Centre was very cute and helped her to do a little bit of interior decoration as well. Masha Allaah while she was doing this she was using full of descriptive words. This is indeed a great activity.

Maths

Continuing with MEP, we did the next few chapters. We learnt to count upto 7 with fingers and did this counting board game. I changed it according to Maimoonah's ability.

She learnt the right side, left side and middle of something in a row along with the ordinal numbers. The concept of how many missing and subtraction concept along with adding I think she needs more practice with more numbers. So we just did this with counters for the moment and as time goes she can re do it Insha Allaah.

She also did the next few pages on her number work book.

Alhamdulillaah, after our circle time now Maimoonah can count upto 50 and knows to tell the times o clock and half past.

Reading, writing, Language

We made this Homes book and Maimoonah is able to read.

We spoke about our Final home Jannah or Jahannam and read all about both the abodes from the lovely Darul Kitab books, My little Book of Jannah and My little Book of Jahannam.

We did our usual reading game this time with marbles and pom pom balls. Every time she picked and read the piece of paper she wanted one marble or a pom pom ball as reward!

Also at the beginning of the post you can see our white board for this week. Maimoonah is able to read that Masha Allaah!

Arabic

We read and learnt the Homes From Different parts of the world from arabicfirst and did the activities.

She learnt the next few letters.

And we practised reading.

I added 2 more flash cards (4 new words) from Word Flow for this week. Previous flash cards words are familiar to her to read now.

Qur'aan Memorization

We are memorizing Soorah Taariq but going slow as I am facing an emotional issue with Maimoonah. She is actually going through a phase now that she feels when she makes mistakes while reciting the soorahs she already know that she is defeated and breaks down. And gets very frustrated when someone is correcting her and refuses to accept that she made a mistake. So it has become a small sensitive issue. If any sisters dealt this with their kids please share as to what they did. I am just ignoring these days and asking her to correct me if I am wrong. So lets see how it goes bi idhnillaah!

Montessori Activity

Lacing with different shapes and number of holes.

We revised the Asmaaul Husnah and did not learn the new Names as I realized I do not have those particular names and meanings printed out and I am unable to trouble sis Umm An Nu'man right now as she is having a busy schedule. So Insha Allaah we will do these two names later and also the mini book for this week will be available whenever sis Umm Nu'man is able to do as usual I have asked her to take her time. The previous week's mini book is available to download and we will be completing that and updating the last summary post soon Insha Allaah! A big Jazzakillaah Khayr for sis Umm An Nu'man.

All the links for resources that I have used for the week are available on the Pre School Curriculum documents for this week Insha Allaah!

Skating!

Abu Maimoonah always wanted Maimoonah to have roller blades and masha Allaah he got her one yesterday and he taught her how to do today.

She was thrilled and was with them the whole day and trying to control. I guess it will take some time Insha Allaah! She needs a lot of practice!

Classroom/Circle Time

Sis Umm Suhailah keeps asking me where are the pics of the "New Environment" for Maimoonah after we moved.

So finally I got sometime to blog about it. Subhanallaah finding time these days have become a Jihad by itself. May Allaah give barakah in our time. Aameen.

Ok so first of all I was really inspired by Umm Sara and her circle time even though I was having thoughts of making it very official I was a bit unsure how I should do this to suit our schedules and situation. But Alhamdulillaah after her post and the post from countingcoconuts I knew what exactly I should do to make this a beneficial learning activity for Maimoonah and Alhamdulillaah after I put this up I am still getting little little ideas to add up as we go along Insha Allaah!

So First let me show our small classrrom. This is part of our living room. You can see a small floor area. Her Desk and chair, her book cupboard and the big white board.

This is the closer look of her desk and chair.

The books that she uses most of the time are kept in these shelves.

These are the reference books and her Noddy Books kept in her bedroom (due to not enough of space and she loves to see these books while she comfortably sits on her bed smile).

Then these shelves have some of her Montossori Activity stuff, and her collections. When she is in a mood you can see her taking something from here are doing lacing or spooling or puzzles.

Then this is the closer look of the floor area, where we sit together and read, make puzzles, build blocks and she plays and does all what she wants.

This is the white board that my husband forced me to have May Allaah bless him for all his generous help. Aameen. We have a huge problem using the walls for charts so he got me this board which can be used on both sides and would be ideal for displaying charts and bulletin boards and use for other classroom purpose as well. So We will use this for all of this Insha Allaah. Also it has wheels and very light in weight so can be moved wherever you need.

This white board is ready for the next day's lessons.

Circle Time

We used our old white board for this masha Allaah. This Area is seperate from the classroom area due to space issue and also just to give a different environment.

This is how the area looks. (Please ignore some of the colours that you see on the print outs as I am facing a crazy colour issue on my printer, any way I presume it does not look bad Insha Allaah)

Now for some details.

So we have the calandar. This time I included a complete calandar as well. Insha Allaah I hope to change this complete calendar every month, just to make a difference. You can download this and the others from TJ Insha Allaah! We use a magnet to indicate the current date.

Then you get the Hijri Calandar referance chart, Days of the Week both in Arabic and English and The seasons in both languages.

Then I have displayed numbers 1- 100. We count all of them.

Then we have the beautiful weather wheel which I took from here. It has in Arabic and English. So we set the arrow according to the day's weather.

I could not get a decent clock for a reasonable price and My husband said he could get me a nice actual clock for a reasonable price for Maimoonah to use and learn. So until such time I made this small clock with card stock and put it up. I took the template from mrspancake. Maimoonah knows all the o' clocks. So she teaches me the time every day. Gradually we will learn the other timings too Insha Allaah!

And finally I put up the names of the soorahs of Juzz Amma to make it easeir for me to ask Maimoonah to recite a particular Soorah for revision.

Then below the board on the table we have kept the essential books for that week and the materials used for circle time. Also the worksheets, hands on activities that will be used for the week. This way I will remember to pull out all the resources available and use them Insha Allaah! I realized when things are inside the cupboard they just do not get used and its a waste. Subhanallaah!

We also use the Arabic Curriculum Book from Arabicfirst to revise some words, numbers and to do exercises. She likes this. In between the circle time I ask her to do run, turn, jump, stand all in Arabic.

Then on the other side of the table you can see her kitchen. This is the place she uses to cook. Her microwave, refrigerator, cooker and other stuff are there.

So this is the new set up and masha Allaah it is successful so far. We feel we have more space for one thing and Maimoonah is very happy with her classroom to the extent that she only wants to learn. And troubles me to give her some activities all the time.

So what do you think ?