Despite my best intentions, I disappeared again… so I won’t make any more resolutions to be regular about maintaining this blog. ;)

A few things have happened in the past few months! Our homeschooling community in Islamabad has grown tremendously alhamdulillah and there are now loads of activities for the kids. Peep is actually out of the house 7 days a week now, busy with co-ops and sports. This has been a huge relief – he has two busy older sisters and being the social sort, craved company. I am so grateful that that need is met!

The older girls are settled into their own routine now. Marz is finishing up her IGCSEs – she has done reasonably well, no thanks to me! (haha) Alhamdulillah, I am so happy and pray that Allah keeps her safe and well on the next step of her journey. Bear is preparing for school – after much deliberation, tears and even more deliberation, this is probably the best, given her temperament and inclinations. She has come very far as a budding artist and I hope that she will get the guidance she so needs.

One good thing that has emerged from the co-ops – for me, at least! – is that I’ve FINALLY come out of my shell and led one! If you know me at all, you will know that I find it extremely difficult to take the lead in or be in the forefront of anything. I much prefer to do the grunt work.

Well, I don’t know HOW the heck it happened, but I ended up conducting a 5-session workshop on William H Armstrong’s Sounder. TWICE! It was awfully stressful and I did overthink things along the way as I always do, but deadlines have a way of forcing you to roll your sleeves up and finish what you started. So I did. Alhamdulillah.

In shaa Allah, once I’ve polished the resources up, I’ll share the teachers’ guide, kids’ workbook and powerpoint presentations for Sounder. We covered history, literary techniques, moral lessons and our deen, to boot. I love the book to bits and I think it has so many inspiring lessons. So watch this space. I can’t say when I’ll upload the materials, though… I’ve stopped with the resolutions, remember? ;)

“Children’s aptitude for knowledge and their eagerness for it made for the conclusion that the field of a child’s knowledge may not be artificially restricted, that he has a right to and necessity for as much and as varied knowledge as he is able to receive; and that the limitations in his curriculum should depend only upon the age at which he must leave school; in a word, a common curriculum (up to the age of say, fourteen or fifteen) appears to be due to all children.

We have left behind the feudal notion that intellect is a class prerogative, that intelligence is a matter of inheritance and environment; inheritance, no doubt, means much but everyone has a very mixed inheritance; environment makes for satisfaction or uneasiness, but education is of the spirit and is not to be taken in by the eye or effected by the hand; mind appeals to mind and thought begets thought and that is how we become educated.”

~ (Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education, p. 12)

I am trying to get into a better habit of curating. I have amassed a collection of quotations, ideas for books and a huge assortment of links to crafts and homeschool materials, but they are all on various devices and in the deep recesses of my head ;) I am now slowly sieving through this stockpile and attempting to transcribe them into my commonplace book.

You might wonder why I should bother when I can just digitise everything. The fact is, it doesn’t really work for me. I have used Pinterest, saved links into bookmarks and even considered using apps like Evernote. All of this should have made me more organized, but I got nowhere to actually synthesizing the information and translating it into actual beneficial knowledge. Cutting and pasting is very quick… for me, though, the pen is mightier than the keyboard. I need more than a cursory glance and prefer a physical repository of ideas.

These are the things I am keeping in my commonplace book:

• poetry
• passages from books that I especially like
• recipes
• supplications from the Quran and Sunnah
• quotable quotes
• speeches
• articles

Do you keep a commonplace book? What do you journal about?

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

Did I tell you that I’ve converted the entire family to my notebook neurosis? Each one of my kids (yes, even 5-year-old Peep) has a dori. Theirs are well made leather covers and I bought them hoping that they will be keepsakes that last my children into adulthood.

Marz keeps a commonplace book, crochet patterns and a smash book and Bear does a lot of drawing and doodling. Peep’s is a passport size cover and it is ma shaa Allah so cute! He has a two notebooks in his tiny TN – one is a sticker notebook and the other contains his reading list. The Dad Man has one too – a larger A5 to our standard sized (11cm x 21cm) ones. He has always jotted down ideas and work-related plans in a notebook of sorts, so I thought he would make the ideal victim candidate for a leather notebook.

Bear’s dori

Peep’s – it is small and fits right in the palm of an adult’s hand but is plenty for his scribblings and studies :)

I’ve recently acquired an A5 one too to add to my dori family (don’t judge me!) and this is expressly for my Islamic studies. I already have an insert for supplications and want to organize new ones for Tafseer and Seerah.

There are alhamdulillah lots of lectures online and for those who are keen on Islamic journaling, Sister Sumayah Hassan of Recite and Reflect has initiated a lovely project called Iman Illustrated. This is an open community of sisters who journal together. It doesn’t matter how artistic or not you are… the idea is to put pen to paper and to reflect on the Quran. Check out the group’s links for more inspiration:

• Iman Illustrated Community Guidelines
• Iman Illustrated’s Facebook Page
• Iman Illustrated’s Instagram

I am keeping my journal simple. I can’t draw for toffee, so I am not even going to try… haha ;) I am just going to try and better my Arabic writing and make my notes tidy. No jazzing things up beyond different coloured inks, no embellishments, absolutely no bells and whistles. Just a simple doable and, in shaa Allah, sustainable effort. I am also slowly moving the girls into Quran journaling. For now, Marz is collecting 25 supplications to write out and memorize and Bear, 25 ahadeeth on good deeds.

So… are you Quran journaling? What resources have you found useful and what do your pages look like?