Homeschool Eduplaygroup: Creative Creations

Islam is truly a great gift from Allah. It is a way of life as we always say it..thus, it encompasses all aspects of life.. including... the Australian Curriculum ;)
Be it science, history, geography, etc.. inshaallah, there will, or should i say, as a true mu'min, there SHOULD always be some thing in those fields that will remind us of Allah..
of course to be able to recognize Allah through all of these creations of His, we have to sincerely ask from Allah to give us clean hearts that can govern our senses to recognize the Greatness of Allah..
As mothers, especially, who are trying to train the senses of our still, inshaallah, clean-hearted young muslims, we have to take care of our connection with Allah..and the state of our hearts..
A friend once told me that one big thing that is missing in the western education system is in shaping the heart.. the main aim of mainstream education nowadays has always been on the mind or brain, but not the most important thing that actually differentiates us from animals.. the heart..
We all know that for one to become a doctor, he or she needs to learn from experienced doctors... to become a good engineer you have to learn from experienced engineers, thus to have a good heart, you have to sit and learn from good-hearted people..Unfortunately,(or should i say fortunately, cause otherwise everyone would rather live alone,huh?! seeing all the people around them with black hearts, Astaghfirullah..) Alhamdulillah 'ala kulli haal.. Allah knows best!
 as humans we dont have the ability to scan other peoples heart, the best we can do is to judge based on what we see from the outside.. which can sometimes be misleading..
Alhamdulillah, at least we know the state of our own heart.. it might not be the best but we know that its safe for our children, inshaallah...

The first chapter in year 1 science of the Australian Curriculum is to learn about human needs...
So as usual, we need food, water, air.. bla, bla, bla...
but one BIG thing is missing... ALLAH!!!
We need Allah!!
So at first, those young eyes could not see how we need Allah..
This is when our input as believing mothers are very important..
So one of the benefits of using the curriculum as your guideline is that you get to expose your kids with what most kids their age are learning at school, and on top of that you get to give your own input and strong reasoning, that inshaallah will prepare them to stand up firm on their beliefs in a community that was taught otherwise..

The next chapter is the animal needs and variations..
Variety in the creations of Allah just show us how Great Allah is.
How Allah is al-Khaliq, al-Musowwir, al-Hafiiz, al-Bari'.
Which brings us to our first playgroup session of the term.. Creative Creations..
Activities we had in the session include:

1. Passing parcel. A parcel with names of different kinds of animals was passed around while the nasheed was on. The last person with the box when the nasheed stopped had to act out like an animal on the paper so other kids could guess.

2. Book sharing. I brought some animal books with pictures showing animals of different colours coming from different habitats throughout the world.

3. Introducing the names of Allah using flash cards.

Then I raised up a BIG question to the children on why did Allah create all these variety of animals? and alhamdulillah, i was soo happy that one of the kids answered an answer that i would expect from a child who grew up in a house with a deeni environment... to praise Allah!
To recognize how great Allah is..

4.For art, we made our very own patterned sheets using paints then the blunt end of the paint brush to 'carve' patterns in the wet paint..

5. For craft, the children was asked to use the patterned sheets as the skin of their very own creature..

6. For some paperworks, they had to answer a few questions about their creations.

7. Finally, show and tell their creations.

Starting homeschool: Family Tree

The beauty about homeschooling is that no matter what they tell you.. to use this or that method, this or that curriculum etc, at the end of the day.. you decide, of course, by the will of Allah..
May Allah guide us all.. Ameen.
Though it might appear beautiful at some stage, for me, it wasn't that straightforward at first..

It all started with the first official homeschooling letter from the department of education in which there was a long list of recommended websites for all the 8 different areas of learning..
being a first-timer, naturally i was excited with the heaps of resources... but at the end of the day I found that i am not going anywhere here.. or should i say i am just going everywhere and getting myself more and more confused?!

So yes... especially for homeschooling mums.. we really really need Allah's guidance throughout this journey or should i say.. this Adventure of Homeschooling.. somehow it describes it better.. ;)

You wanna make the moderator happy and at the same time you dont wanna get yourself distracted from your main aim of homeschooling..

So what did i do... after finding that i am not going anywhere on the net,
by the way.. there are lots of online programs which i found quite interesting at first, but after getting my son to do the free trial, i thought that i couldnt control what he was learning from the site, the pictures, music and topics etc.. plus they are quite expensive and to top it all.. it reduces my contact time with my kids,..
so i guess, at this point of time, at my kids stage, being 5 and 4 year olds, dont think that online programs are suitable for them..

So i ended up in officemax.. the textbook supplier..
instead of just getting the normal students workbook, i got myself a few teachers resource book by RIC publication. Very expensive indeed but the good thing is you can scan and print the worksheets and use it again and again..
For me, most importantly, it gives me an idea of what topics to cover at what age.. according to the australian curriculum..
i was just looking for the outline and not really the content or how comprehensive the book is on the topics..
cause i thought that, in the end, i will use my input to cover the topics..
inshaallah..

in a way, it helps me get things organized..i take it as the minimum things my kids should know at their age..
we have done a few topics now, and i found that there is always a way of turning these so called australian curriculum to an islamic australian curriculum..

One example i wanna share with you here is our family tree. This is the first topic in history for year 1. Instead of just learning who are their uncles and cousins etc, i used this topic to teach the kids the concept of mahram and non-mahram.

Mahram is green, non-mahram red..

Also to polish their family tree concept, instead of using the examples of family trees in the workbook, i used the family tree of the Prophet sallallahu'alayhiwasallam himself...

Get them to do some color coding; Pink for the wives, Blue for the sons, Red for the daughters etc...

Also some exercises...