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...