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Islam Homeschool Journaling

Juz ‘Amma Gems

December 14, 2016 by Imaan No Comments

So… my set up is all ready for 2017, in shaa Allah. I have my A5 dori, my grid paper notebooks (I only write on grid paper… grid is good… heh) and my trusty fountain pens. I can’t wait to dig into journal goodness.

Here are some links that I have found very useful for starting out. They are Juz ‘Amma resources:

  • Sheikh Navaid Aziz
  • Sheikh Muhammad Alshareef’s Touched by An Angel
  • Touched by An Angel Tafseer Workbook
  • Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan
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Homeschool Good Reads

Geography through postcards

August 31, 2012 by Imaan No Comments

I should be getting out more instead of plonking away at my laptop, but it is SWELTERING here in Islamabad and I am trying to draw up a homeschooling schedule… so, I guess I am justified? ;)

Anyway, I’ve got something to share! Marz enjoys Geography/Social Studies. We had been reading books about children from different parts of the world in June to acquaint ourselves with other cultures. The library has been a wonderful resource, but what we really wanted was some kind of human connection to enhance the experience.

Alhamdulillah, I came across a wonderful idea! Postcard swaps! There are numerous groups on yahoo – some are for homeschooling families and others, for postcard collectors. I think with parental supervision, they are safe, but for added security, you can get a PO box.

You can put together an album of postcards received, label a huge map, branch off into unit studies and research each country/city’s history… great possibilities!

I’ve joined a couple of groups and am already committed to some 30 exchanges, ma shaa Allah!

Here are some links to get you started…

  • Homeschool Exchange
  • Homeschool Shoebox Swap
  • Postcards Around the Planet
  • Postcard Heaven
  • Postcard Kids
  • Postcard Kids’ Geography Lessons
  • Postcard Plus
  • Postcrossing
  • State and Country Exchange

Update!

Here are books we have enjoyed for Geography/Social Studies:

  • Books by Miroslav Sasek a Czech artist and writer. His This Is… series is simply delightful – the illustrations are cheery with a special touch of whimsy. I purchased a few from The Home Library. They were a little pricey, but since I don’t have access to a library in Pakistan, I found them well worth the money!
  • Children Just like Me by Dorling Kindersley Publishing, in association with United Nations Children’s Fund – I had a preview of this book when I bought a condensed version from a second-hand bookstore in Islamabad. This book features children in more than 30 countries – we get a chance to visit each of them as we learn about their families, homes and food. It’s one of those books I wish I could have written :)
  • A Life like Mine by Dorling Kindersley Publishing – I bought this book a few years ago at a book sale for myself… now it will come in handy for my kids in shaa Allah. It profiles 18 children and is formatted around basic needs for survival. Leaves you counting your blessings…

Two other series we like are Child’s Day and Letters from Around the World:

  • Child’s Day: Bongani’s Day by Gisele Wulfsohn
  • Child’s Day: In a Vietnamese City by Jim Holmes & Tom Morgan
  • Child’s Day: In an Egyptian City by Khaled Eldash & Dalia Khattab
  • Child’s Day: Iina Marja’s Day (From Dawn to Dusk) by Jaako Alatalo
  • Letters from Around the World: France by Teresa Fisher (author)
  • Letters from Around the World: Spain by Cath Senker
  • Letters from Around the World: Pakistan by David Cumming
  • Letters from Around the World: Costa Rica by Patrick Cunningham & Sue Cunningham
  • Letters from Around the World: Greece by David Cumming
  • Letters from Around the World: Canada by Andy Orchard & Clare Orchard

I also found a set of books called Maya’s World by Maya Angelou about children from different parts of the world. This is a good introduction to other people and cultures.

(Credit: Postcard photo from Pexels)

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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

Homeschooling the Charlotte Mason way

February 1, 2011 by Imaan No Comments
Charlotte Mason homeschooling books

Free reads from Simply Charlotte Mason

Is there such a thing as too many freebies? Not necessarily :)

I find these freebies from Simply Charlotte Mason too good to pass, especially “Smooth and Easy Days” by Sonya Shafer. Homeschooling days can become insanely hectic, especially for those who have numerous responsibilities and little help. Charlotte Mason said, “The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days.” Shafer’s work talks about how “habits produce character” and how to go about habit-training gradually but surely. She also reminds parents to look into their own habits and to address their shortcomings while at the same time making it a valuable learning experience for the children. I really needed this reminder! You can download the book here.

The other book available for download is “Getting Started in Homeschooling” also by Sonya Shafer. This book tells the difference between the five main homeschool approaches and will guide parents to find the approach that will help your children flourish, to create a rich, comprehensive, and engaging education for your children, to save time by teaching all your children together and to begin homeschooling with confidence. You can download this book here.

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Homeschool

How Children Learn

December 31, 2010 by Imaan 7 Comments

This is an article I wrote for HomeWorks, a Pakistani homeschooling newsletter. I had not written an article in ages and never done one on homeschooling so I was chuffed to bits that the editor accepted it.

How Children Learn (Classics in Child Development)How Children Learn by John Holt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I was first given copies of John Holt’s “How Children Fail” and “How Children Learn”, I was loath to give them more than a scant perusal. I had read a few articles by and about the man who was probably the first to coin the term “unschooling” and generally considered one of the early instigators and champions of the homeschool movement, but I had, for the most part, distanced myself from reading his works in depth.

Born, raised and schooled in Singapore, I had had a rigid and rigorous education. As an adult, I had enough of the adventurer (rebel?) in me to wish for an alternative for my children, but still product enough of my youth to feel unsettled and unnerved with the ideas of the father of unschooling. Let my child have carte blanche over what, when, where, how and how much they want to learn? Come on!

It didn’t sit well with me though, this prejudice. The very reason why I had always wanted to homeschool was because I wanted my children to have a more generous and fulfilling education than the one I had had – one that I had become disillusioned with. Why then was I so afraid of reading Holt’s works? Was it because I had been so conditioned that I could not entertain anything less than complete structure in learning and teaching? I finally decided to give “How Children Learn” a good read and I have no qualms in admitting that it was a long time coming – the book is nothing short of remarkable and enlightening, not to mention totally in line with my aspirations for my children.

Holt’s book is a profound collection of his observations about how children learn. He watched with fascination as they tinkered with various equipments; he played with them patiently as they created their own games and rules and he celebrated their every achievement with delight.

He was absorbed by 16-month-old Lisa’s experiments with a portable electric typewriter – she was curious as to the machine’s inner workings and learnt how to make it work and what to do when the keys became stuck. Most parents would do one of two things – we might put the typewriter out of reach so as to stop a baby from destroying it or we would give the child explicit instructions as to how to use it. Holt, on the other hand, recommended neither.

He maintained that it is better to teach children how to treat things carefully and respectfully rather than to rob them of an exercise in curiosity. As Holt rightly pointed out, “One of Maria Montessori’s many valuable contributions to education was that she showed that very little children could easily be taught to move, not just exuberantly, but also deftly, precisely, gently.”

He strongly advocated allowing children to experiment, struggle and improvise with little interference. Lisa’s younger brother Tommy, when about 3 or 4, for example, “hated to be taught” the alphabets. Danny, aged 2-and-a-half, tore down the models that his father and Holt had built out of Cuisenaire rods. Holt concluded that when instruction and help is unasked for, the underlying message given to children is that they are not smart enough to learn something on their own. Competence models can sometimes undermine their self-esteem for it emphasises the divide between their abilities and that of adults’. How many times have we heard children say frustratedly, “You know so much and I don’t!”?

Holt believed that children learn best when the lessons and work are meaningful. Reading can be facilitated by good literature rather than simplistic (and thus, insulting) books. Art can be pleasurable with quality materials. Numerous practical skills can be better acquired by working alongside adults.

Holt’s book should not entail a leap of faith – we as parents and educators should already have faith in our children. They will learn, God willing, if we give them the opportunity to do so without fear. They will try, God willing, and succeed if we learn to recognise their strengths and do not despair. Holt gave the example of a supposed “hopeless” student who became a successful commercial photographer when grown up – when she first took up serious photography at about age 14, she “learned in a few months, because she needed it, all the arithmetic she had never been able to learn in ten years of school”. Holt advised patience and loving guidance alongside this trust – when children are frustrated, we need to know when to “draw back, take off the pressure, reassure them, console them, give them time to regain – as in time they will – enough energy and courage to go back to the task”.

Holt presented many examples of children working in various settings – some readers have told me that they found this a little dry, but I think it speaks a great deal of the deep interest he had in making learning truly fulfilling for children. What shines through in his detailed and painstaking recordings is the genuine appreciation and respect that he had for children, despite not having had any of his own.

This enchantment he had, I believe, is something many of us harried and anxious parents seem to have lost in our pursuit to give our children the best in terms of learning. We hustle them along, exhort them to work harder, convinced they can do better and in the end, lose track of our initial good intentions. We don’t see them for the passionate and imaginative people they are and instead, worry about their future economic worth. Holt reminded us that children learn best when we understand our roles as gentle facilitators and when they are free to make mistakes without having their self-worth squashed.

I came away from Holt’s “How Children Learn” with a deeper love for and trust in my children. Trust indeed is what John Holt reiterated in his book. I leave you with a powerful quote from his book. I think it totally sums up how children really learn:

In my mind’s ear, I can hear the anxious voices of a hundred teachers asking me, “How can you tell, how can you be sure what the children are learning, or even that they are learning anything?” The answer is simple. We can’t tell. We can’t be sure. What I am trying to say about education rests on a belief that, though there is much evidence to support it, I cannot prove, and that may never be proved. Call it a faith. This faith is that man is by nature a learning animal. Birds fly, fish swim, man thinks and learns. Therefore, we do not need to “motivate” children into learning, by wheedling, bribing, or bullying. We do not need to keep picking away at their minds to make sure they are learning. What we need to do, and all we need to do is bring as much of the world as we can into the school and the classroom; give children as much help and guidance as they need and ask for; listen respectfully when they feel like talking; and then get out of the way. We can trust them to do the rest.

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Yesterday, I had a sobering chat with my friend wh Yesterday, I had a sobering chat with my friend who is a member of a minority group here. (I am keeping things vague for her safety and mine.) She has a relative who is also a friend of mine. 

In both my early encounters with them, I’d always sensed an air of reserve and secrecy. I understood that we had different beliefs, but I could not understand what I perceived as fear. Not being a native here in Pakistan, I’d had my share of bewildering and unfathomable encounters, so I’d left things at that. Maybe I’d understand in time to come, I thought.

They had always been very kind to me and I tried to reciprocate as best I could. For all our (acknowledged) differences in opinion and belief, we found some common ground and focused on doing some good. My friend’s relative donated science kits as well as books for my homeschooling gang and I’ll always be grateful for that. 

I read news yesterday about how my friend and her people do in fact live in danger. She told me how she fears for her husband’s life every single time he leaves home. She jumps every single time her doorbell rings. She worries about sending her daughter to school for fear of bullying or worse… Target killings of her people are a reality.

It made me feel so ashamed because this is tragic and downright disgraceful for any country, but even more so for a Muslim one. 

It’s OK to disagree. It’s OK to debate. It is NOT OK to terrorize and it is NOT OK resort to violence. It is wrong and it is unjust and it is EVIL to do so. When dealing with people of different beliefs, can we not be civilised? Can we not be HUMAN? Can we not behave the way our deen taught us? 

We need to find a way to make things better. It is not right to allow people who know precious little about Islam to desecrate it. 

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#islam #minorityrights #knowyourreligion #pakistan
Journalists say this time it is different. Rushdi Journalists say this time it is different.

Rushdi as-Sarraj, Yasser Murtaja’s friend, told Al-Jazeera, “This task is difficult under normal circumstances, so you can imagine working under a fierce offensive that does not distinguish between a journalist, a civilian or a military leader.” Israel is working hard “to silence the image and voice, and to ban any news or information that exposes its crimes”.

He also says, “My family doesn’t stop calling me, fearing that I could be harmed. It is an endless circle of fear and exhaustion. But we must continue sharing our message.”

Praying for Muna El-Kurd @muna.kurd15 , her brother @mohammedelkurd and all the journalists putting out the truth. 

#palestine #freepalestine #freemunakurd #freemunaelkurd #savesheikhjarrah #savesilwan #savelifta #savemohammedelkurd
«THROWBACK, Summer + Winter 2019» «We returned «THROWBACK, Summer + Winter 2019»

«We returned to the park after the lockdown earlier this year… sadly our tree for all seasons is no more 😢»

FOREIGN LANDS by Robert Louis Stevenson
Up into the cherry tree
Who should climb but little me?
I held the trunk with both my hands
And looked abroad on foreign lands.
I saw the next door garden lie,
Adorned with flowers, before my eye,
And many pleasant places more
That I had never seen before.
If I could find a higher tree
Farther and farther I should see,
To where the grown-up river slips
Into the sea among the ships.
To where the roads on either hand
Lead onward into fairy land,
Where all the children dine at five,
And all the playthings come alive.
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#throwback #pakistan #islamabad #lifeinpakistan #lifeinislamabad #homeschool #homeschooldays #homeschoolcoop #homeschoolinislamabad #homeschoolinpakistan #naturediary #naturejournal #science #charlottemason #charlottemasoninspired #charlottemasoneducation #charlottemasonnaturestudy #charlottemasonliving #charlottemasonhomeschool #cmnaturestudy #cmnaturejournal #naturewalk #natureramble #naturestudy #naturejournal #homeeducation #outandabout #ilookisee #islamabadhomeschoolers
A couple of you asked me to make a post of my stor A couple of you asked me to make a post of my story in response to LV’s despicable use of the keffiyeh design. Pictures in this post are from hirbawi.ps and @palestine.pixel … 

EDIT: yes, my second slide should have been edited and it is bugging me. I repeated 1930s… sorry! If you want a more polished version, DM me. You get my meaning anyway, right? 
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#palestine #freepalestine #keffiyeh #gaza #jerusalem #savesheikhjarrah
«YET ANOTHER THROWBACK, Jan. 2020» I was feelin «YET ANOTHER THROWBACK, Jan. 2020»

I was feeling a little out of sorts (again) – I’d left the house a mess (again) and the boy and I were in a rush to get to the Art Co-op. Habiba @ourlivinghomeschool was doing a session on Wassily Kandinsky that day. 

We were delayed by a massive traffic jam and our stress levels rocketed when an obnoxious motorist kept sounding his horn repeatedly as if to shoo other cars out of the way. What was everyone else to do but wait for the jam to ease? 

We made it just in time though…barely! As we ran towards the gathering, it was as if a huge weight was lifted away. This gorgeous view greeted the boy and me, alhamdulillah. When we got down to studying Kandinsky, we felt more than fine.

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#pakistan #islamabad #lifeinpakistan #lifeinislamabad #homeschool #homeschooldays #homeschoolcoop #homeschoolinislamabad #homeschoolinpakistan #naturediary #desidiaries #charlottemason #charlottemasoninspired #charlottemasoneducation #charlottemasonnaturestudy #charlottemasonliving #charlottemasonhomeschool #cmnaturestudy #cmnaturejournal #naturewalk #natureramble #naturestudy #naturejournal #homeeducation #outandabout #ilookisee #islamabadhomeschoolers #artcoop #artoutdoors
«THROWBACK, Mar. 2019» Once upon a time before «THROWBACK, Mar. 2019» 
Once upon a time before Covid.

The calm before…

We had our Monday meet up again at Fatima Jinnah Park. The air was cool and crisp and the skies sunny when the nature gang got together. Then, it was on to a jolly game of Simon Says – Katelynn’s @_k8erpotater clever way of teaching the kids about body parts and how they move.

The kids did their usual tree climbing and exploring. Then, the dark clouds started rolling in. We took a while to decide whether or not to leave – the park literally looked dark and ominous on one side and cheery and bright on the other. We only started rushing for home when lightning split the sky. The kids were not to be hurried, however. They felt little pellets hitting them and stopped to investigate… hailstones!

Our ramble was cut short and I got cold and wet, but I think it was a gorgeous day. We got to learn about nature in a very real way.
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#pakistan #islamabad #lifeinpakistan #lifeinislamabad #homeschool #homeschooldays #homeschoolcoop #homeschoolinislamabad #homeschoolinpakistan #naturediary #naturejournal #science #charlottemason #charlottemasoninspired #charlottemasoneducation #charlottemasonnaturestudy #charlottemasonliving #charlottemasonhomeschool #cmnaturestudy #cmnaturejournal #naturewalk #natureramble #naturestudy #naturejournal #homeeducation #outandabout #ilookisee #islamabadhomeschoolers
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