Daily report (16/12/08)

Today we only managed to do work in the morning, but we covered quite a few lessons alhamdulillaah. I let dd(5)sleep in a bit, as she didn't go off to sleep till a bit late, felt bad to wake her, so she did miss out on most of the morning.

Well, we started off again with our morning adkhaar (remembrance) really trying to keep this up insha Allaah, and make it a daily habit, alhamdulillaah I'm starting to remember some of them off by heart, as well as dd(8).

Qaa'idah - still working through the lesson on 'sukun' Now on line 3 masha'Allaah.

Handwriting - dd(8) didn't get to start her worksheet yesterday, so started it today, same as what dd(5) did, started on the O's and C's, as I mentioned before, the reason for taking her back to the same stage as dd(5) is to ensure each letter is being formed correctly, and any bad habits are corrected early on insha Allaah, also to encourage neatness in each individual letter.

Maths - Both dd(8) and dd(5) started on the Singapore maths books today. dd(5) started on some counting exercises, this is actually a year one workbook, so I'm gonna see how she gets on with it insha Allaah. dd(8) worked on number bonds, there was a few tears, as she didn't quite get it at first, so I had to keep explaining, and giving different examples, eventually she seemed to understand the concept of the lesson a bit more, but I want her to start memorising her addition facts again, as this will help her in this area insha Allaah.

Remembered to continue our lesson on telling the time, this was very informal, just told dd(8) to get the baby's play cube which has got a clock on it, and just revised what they learnt yesterday, dd(5) decided to join in and grabbed one of the time books with a clock face on, this was while I was in the kitchen doing something and they sat in the hallway, the simplicity of homeschooling ey! Not every lesson needs to be done at the table masha'Allaah.

Reading Reflex - dd(8) worked on the a-e word list, she had to sort the different words all with the a-e/ay sound, but into different spelling groups, for e.g rake would be in the a-e list, day would be in the ay list and so on. Need to start working on her spelling insha Allaah, I intend to put together some word lists based on sounds/words we've already covered and work through a few at a time, it's through teaching this book, that I've actually realised how confusing the English language must be for a child and someone who is learning the language, but with time and effort it can be mastered insha Allaah.

We didn't do science today as I intended, late morning the baby needed a nap, and I ended up taking a lil nap with him, I was so tired! dd(8) read a bit from her madinah arabic book, the one for kids, and that was our homeschooling done for the day. SubhanAllaah I'm just finding it a bit hard to fit everything in, the morning flies by, by the time we've had our breakfast, got dressed etc... but I'm trying to make good use of the time we have and mainly get the most important subjects done, if they're done I'm happy masha'Allaah. One thing we need to focus on also is Islamic studies, this is most important along with the Qaa'idah, insha Allaah I need to make a plan for it and get started asap.