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Homeschool The Stuff of Life

Homeschooling – Our Joyful Journey

March 6, 2012 by Imaan 4 Comments

I come from a dual-income family – my mother was a nurse who worked shifts and my father was an Assistant Commissioner of Public Health in Singapore. During early childhood, my siblings and I had a helper who took care of us when my parents were at work and in later years, we became latch-key children when the much-loved nanny left to start her own family. It was inevitable, due to their work commitments and our school schedules, that we would often be left to our own devices.

I did not mind being independent, but I always had the feeling that there was something missing in our lives…

I do not blame my parents in the least – they had done the very best they could. They grew up during the Japanese Occupation and tightened their belts in the difficult post-war years. Their personal aspirations had to be shelved for more pressing considerations. When they had my siblings and me, they made sacrifices so we could have choices.

I believe my parents’ hard work and esteem for knowledge opened up horizons to me alhamdulillah and gave me the opportunity to choose homeschooling for my children.

It has been an exhilarating journey that has enriched us as a family. My husband and I love having Mars and Bear with us every day. We are their confidants and they are each others’ best friends. We have also been able to train them to take responsibility in our household’s daily operation. The girls have learnt to tackle laundry duty, meal-time preparations as well as cleaning and tidying daily. Alhamdulillah, homeschooling has enabled us to work as a team.

Homeschooling has allowed us to maintain close ties with our family. Whether we were based in Singapore or Pakistan, we have been able to make decisions to meet our children’s and family’s needs, without having to worry about school policy and classroom schedules. We were able to be with my father-in-law during his last days and were able to comfort my ailing mother during her kidney treatments and surgeries this year. It has been a blessing indeed that we have always been to make family – rather than school – a priority.

Our children are treated as unique individuals – their strengths are celebrated and honed and their struggles, identified and worked on with love and due consideration. The one-on-one attention they each receive enables them to get through their material in greater breadth and depth. They set their own rhythm, but rather than create indiscipline or inertia, this has made the learning more efficient and given them more time for other pursuits and interests.

Homeschooling has also given us the freedom to choose our preferred approach and resources. At our home, we focus on knowledge and good behaviour rather than on grades. Credit is given not for cleverness, but for good conduct. We encourage striving, but not for self-glorification and competition is tempered with compassion for our fellow learners.

The best thing about homeschooling is that my husband and I have been able to impart and incorporate Islamic morals to our children without compromise. Our faith is interwoven in our curriculum so our children have no need to leave their values at the school gates, set aside their worship or downplay their Muslim identity. Home education has given them a stronger sense of character and self-esteem. They have been sheltered from the bullying, teasing and negative peer pressure that is common in public schools.

A few months ago, a sister I met marvelled at the fact that I am a homeschooling mother. She declared, “I could never do what you do!” I assured her that it has neither been a sacrifice nor a great feat on my part. Being with my children has helped me find what was missing before – joy in togetherness and faith.

I thank Allah every day, for I have learnt more than I have taught and truly taken more than I have given.

This article was originally written for HomeWorks Magazine.

(Image from Pexels.Com)

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Homeschool

Notebooking – Prophet Idris

February 5, 2012 by Imaan 1 Comment

Continuing with our notebooking adventure… here is the second set of notebooking papers in the Lives of the Prophets series :) This is for the story of Prophet Idris `alayhis salaam. His story is a little short, but I’ve included different papers that you can use depending on how you want to write out the lessons.

Mars liked the font that I used in the Prophet Adam papers and wanted her notebook to have a uniform look. I like trying out different fonts. So there are two versions for you to download.

Here’s Set A, which you can download here or at Scribd.

And here’s Set B that you can download here or at Scribd.

I hope you find them useful!

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Homeschool

Geography Notebook

January 28, 2012 by Imaan 3 Comments

More notebooking papers! You know the drill… download here or at Scribd :)

Feedback will be greatly appreciated :)

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Homeschool

Making Your Own Notebooking Paper

January 23, 2012 by Imaan 1 Comment

I am rather enjoying making our own notebooking papers. There are several sites offering such papers for sale, but I’ve found several advantages to making my own. It is more affordable and I’ve also been able to customise them to my children’s tastes and writing.

There are several programmes that you can use like Free Serif Software, Scribus and Microsoft Publisher, but I just use good ol’ Microsoft Word. (I’ve got a plugin that converts my documents to PDF.) My lines are essentially tables – I play around with the row heights, borders styles and colours – and I add in clipart as and when necessary. Nothing fancy-schmancy :)

Below is an example of a basic notebooking template – I’ve included a cover, pages of primary-lined sheets for penmanship as well as regular-lined sheets for regular notebooking. The slideshow below from Scribd is in pdf format but you can download the MS Word format here to adapt to your own needs. You can change the title on the cover as well as the footer, type in your assignments as well as customise the number and size of lines and fonts (I LOVE fonts!).

Enjoy!

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Islam Homeschool

More Islamic Notebooking

January 21, 2012 by Imaan No Comments

The kids are more keen about writing and researching these days, so I’ve been trying to churn out more noteboooking pages. I hope that this time, I will be more consistent about monitoring their penmanship.

Here are a few more pages for recording quick facts about the Prophets of Allah (`alayhimus salaam), and the Companions of Rasulullah sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam (radhiallahu `anhum). I hope you find them useful :)

You can download the pages at Scribd or here.

In shaa Allah I will upload a few templates in MS Word for those of you would like to give making your own notebooking papers a shot.

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Taking stock…. . . . . . . . #pakistan #islam Taking stock…. 
 
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There is a rider there… somewhere. . . . . . There is a rider there… somewhere. 
 
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Taking a breather… . . . . . . . . . . . #paki Taking a breather… 

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Cheerful… not salty! . . . . . . . . . . . #pak Cheerful… not salty!

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New season, new colours… . . . . . . . . . . # New season, new colours… 

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Little man at work . . . . . . . . . . #pakistan Little man at work 

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#pakistan #islamabad #peopleofpakistan #peopleofislamabad #everydaypakistan #everydaypakistani #everydayislamabad #everydaypeople #menatwork #anhonestdayswork #work #jumahbazaar #itwarbazaar #market #marketday #souq #farmersmarket #lifeinpakistan #lifeinislamabad #islamabaddiaries #islamabadchronicles #desidiaries #jumahbazaar  #childrenatwork #kidsatwork #kids

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