Letter Ee

Bismillah

Assalamu alaykum

To download letter Ee coloring page, click HERE.
Since I bought some board paper on the weekend, I thought of making simple coloring pages for my son with the introduction of each letter, I know there were something like these for Arabic letters. These coloring pages will inshaAllah include pictures with Islamic elements too.

With letter Ee, we did lots of coloring and pasting. Letter Ee printables were taken from http://3dinosaurs.com/wordpress/. As per their terms of use, I can not give you the direct link to the pdf files, browse their website and inshaAllah you will find lots of good stuff..
http://www.education.com/ - another website that I came across this week that has lots of great printable worksheets.

Building with blocks

Bismillah

Assalamu alaykum

Yusuf has been playing independently with the blocks since he was 2,5. His Dad would build him masjids, towers, etc., when he was young and Yusuf would sit and watch him. As soon as he hit 2-2,5 he started building by himself, whenever AbuYusuf builds something, he usually helps him to put a block here and there.

Blocks are great fun and really good at keeping your child busy for some time, alhamdulillah. (smile)

Below are few examples of what they did together in the past few months:



Sometimes Yusuf comes up to me and asks me to build with him, I'm not as creative and good as his Dad. Together we built masjids, zoo, farm, shops, parking lots, etc..

Yusuf's work:

Yusuf mostly builds masjids and then parking lot next to the masjid. He likes building ships and trains too. Once he is into it, he can spend an hour playing with the blocks. Alhamdulillah I can leave him to play on his own for some time, although I have to be close-by, whenever he calls me.

Letter Dd

Bismillah

Assalamu alaykum,

Letter Dd

Reading Alphabetti Book 1-1, from Progressive Phonics' website.

What is letter 'd' made of?

d is for daisy:

Ocean diorama with dolphins on top. Dd is for dolphins:

Ocean life:

D is for dua coloring page:

We read D is for dhikr page from "A to Z of Akhlaaq" book. 

Learning the 5th pillar - Hajj

Bismillah

Assalamu alaykum,

Alhamdulillah the most blessed days are upon us. May Allah accept the Hajj of the hujjaj and make it mabroor inshaAllah, ameen. 

We are learning about Hajj this week. Alhamdulillah so much available on the internet to use and get the inspiration and ideas from, thanks to the technological advances. MashaAllah Muslim Ummi Bloggers input is amazing and may Allah reward them and their families with all the goodness for their hard work, ameen! 

We started with a Hajj mobile, we copied the idea from HERE. May Allah swt reward the sister Umm Sayang and the team at Smart Ark. The coloring pages are taken from Smart Ark, Yusuf colored the pictures (I helped him a little too with few of them), we added extra pictures of air plane and sheep to our Hajj mobile. We used cardboard, hole punch, few pipe cleaners and stapler to make the mobile. Yusuf was really interested in knowing more about the Hajj rituals, was asking questions, so I thought we should not stop here, but continue learning as he is eager to learn more. He likes when we do craft work, he always comes up to me and says Mom I love you, when you do crafts with me. (smile)

The next thing we did was Hajj Bulletin Board, we got all of our materials from IBB. May Allah reward sister at talibiddeenjr and sister Umm AbdulBasir for all their work, ameen. 

I explained more about the Hajj rituals using the map and Hajj day by day cards. To help him understand a little more, I thought of making a Hajj rituals display on the little table. We started off by making mini paper tents.

Our Mina tents:

They were supposed to be white in color, I only had yellow construction paper at hand, hence they are yellow looking. I went ahead with yellow, just to give him an idea of how tents may look like.

We made palm trees using construction and crepe papers, have a look HERE for step by step pictures on making a palm tree. Our Mount Arafah model is not yet finished, but I took a photo of it anyway. I need to add more layers of construction paper to make it look more mountain like. 

Finished mount Arafah:

We also looked through few Hajj related books, the one I liked was "Hajj and Umrah from A to Z" by Mamdouh N. Mohamed, it is uploaded at http://www.kalamullah.com.

We will inshaAllah be doing Hajj theme activity packs designed by sister Umm An-Numan. We also looked through mini books made by Umm Sara, may Allah swt reward the sisters with Jannah, ameen. 

Learning alphabets

Bismillah

Assalamu alaykum,

It's been a while since I last posted about our early learning journey. Time's flying, subhanAllah. Life's been a bit busy and I could not really post much. Few times I attempted to write something on here, but then got interrupted/something came in the way and then I never returned to my draft posts again.

Yusuf is now 3 years old, growing fast, alhamdulillah. He likes learning, reading and playing with his cars and blocks. He is at home with me. At his age, he knows the alphabet, recognizes all the letters, we are learning the letter sounds now (phonics). For phonics we are using Progressive Phonics Program. The books are FREE to download from the website, alhamdulillah. I have read good reviews about the program on the internet. InshaAllah I will try posting about our activities as we learn. The Montessori method calls this time a "Sensitive Period", where the child is more aware of and interested in learning a certain thing at this time. I am just using this moment, as he is showing an interest in learning the alphabet, he often comes up to me and says Mom, let's do school. Parents should go with flow in my opinion and not burden their kids with loads of information to learn.

Alhamdulillah so much is available on the internet nowadays, we are using materials from other blogs and educational websites. We are/will be learning our Arabic letters at the same time, inshaAllah. He recognizes most of the Arabic letters. We will be using FREE printable materials for our Arabic letters from Tarbiyah Homeschool. MashaAllah our sister at Tarbiyah Homeschool compiled Arabic Letter Packs, they are FREE to download, alhamdulillah. There are many Arabic alphabet coloring pages on the internet, age 3 and above is probably the right age to do the coloring activities. 

He is good with his numbers, he knows and recognizes them in Arabic and English, alhamdulillah. Like most of the bloggers I try and make the learning process fun and not too educational. 

By listening to Qur'an and us reciting he has learned his short surahs, basic duas and adhkar. We listen to Qur'an on computer/phone and use wathakker kids for visual purposes. In the kid's section you can find Qur'an recitation (adult reciter reads an ayah and child repeats after him), nasheeds, coloring pages and much more.

Letter A activities:

For this letter we got most of our printable materials from Confessions of a Homeschooler.



We read The story of Ants (Children's Stories from the Qur'an by Goodwords Books) and did the coloring (Coloring Book by Goodwords Books). 

We watched documentaries about ants and anteaters on National Geographic.



Arabic alphabet out of playdoh:

Letter B:

Letter B is for Bismillah, boat, balloon, ball, etc. He colored the pictures, I helped a little too.

Learning letters by using blocks, pom poms, playdoh and DIY bus foam puzzle:






Letter C

Book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle

Life cycle of Butterfly on youtube.

"The Very Hungry Caterpillar" worksheets, coloring pages from the internet - http://www.eric-carle.com/ColoringSheet.jpg

DIY life cycle of Butterfly, I really liked this idea on the internet, we didn't end up doing it only because we didn't have different varieties of pasta in our pantry.

Caterpillar craft idea from here.



Letter C is for Creation coloring page.

DIY car foam puzzle

C shaped bread