Stay Tuned....

As-salaamo alaykum/Hello Everyone,

Our blog is going on a small hiatus while I try to get all our posts caught up.  In doing our home reorganization, and setting up our new classroom, the posts have gotten back logged, very back logged.

Our original intention in starting this blog was to give friends, family, and other homeschooling families a look at our homeschooling day. Insha' Allah, I will be taking the rest of the week, and the upcoming weekend, to write up, and organize the posts, and begin getting them out once a day.

We have some great topics coming up insha' Allah,  from Arabic Sandpaper letters, to Turtles, to one of my personal favorite early childhood milestones, Representational Drawing.

Insha' Allah, look forward to sharing our journey with you. See you all Monday! : )

National Building Museum: Building Zone.

Over our Eid Al Adha break we took the Professors to one of their favorite places to play, the Building Zone inside the National Building Museum in Washington D.C.

We have been taking the Professors their since Professor #1 and #2 were about 2 years old, maybe younger, and it has always been free. We were devastated to learn upon arriving, that it now costs $3 per person to enter the play room. It really put a sour note on our trip. To boot, the playroom closed an hour before the Museum closing time, and this was not noted on the website. We stayed, but I don't know when we'll go back.

Here are some shots from around the Building Zone to give you an idea what a great place it is. 

A corner shot of the overall Zone:

The Book Nook area with Puppets:

 Masha' Allah, The Professors have all always enjoyed this area, especially as babies. They enjoyed plenty of room for tummy time, or reading with one of us. The puppets being a favorite highlight. While we were there this trip, Professor #1 and I enjoyed this book together: 

It was a neat book about building roads, and other sites. I plan to add it to our pick up list next Library trip.

Along the wall near the Book Nook is a Block Play area with large canvas bags full of different building blocks, including wood, magnetic and linking plastic blocks, as well as, large colorful vynil covered foam blocks for building large towers. 

I didn't get a shot of the foam building blocks as they are very popular, and were in use at the time.

While Baby Professor and I were in the Book Nook area, all 3 Professors were hard at work on a project in the Block Play area with the magnetic blocks. They rolled one of the large metal dump trucks over from the Construction Zone and began building a 'Sea Urchin.'

To the right of the Book Nook area is a large Dress Up area. Masha' Allah, Professor #1 just LOVED this area as a little guy! You can be a fireman, police officer, construction worker, and so much more! The large mirror is actual "kid" size.

In the center of the Zone is a large, working house. There's not much to it inside but the lights turning off and on is a particular highlight. 

Toward the back corner of the Zone is a Construction Zone. It has a large amount of oversized building blocks, including blocks that look like bricks. There is also a floor mat that looks like a town, and many very large, and very small trucks and cars to push.

There is also this: 

I don't know about anyone else, but whenever I walk into a Museum and see this my heart sinks a little. There is usually only one table, with a few trains, and twice the number of kids. No amount of coaxing will deter the Professors (or many other kids) to something else, once they've engaged in Train Table play. 

Masha' Allah, we enjoyed another great trip, but were saddened to have to leave an hour earlier than we had planned. On our way out DH and I hung our heads a little as we were uncertain when we'd be back with the new fee in place. Insha' Allah they will decide to return it to a free play place again. If your visiting DC from out of town however, I'd say its worth stopping in.

'I'm not done yet!'

Alhumdullilah, we have really been enjoying the 30 Days to Hands On Play Challenge: http://www.handsonaswegrow.com. After a few attempts, I have decided against taking pictures of this activity. Each time, respectfully after the 15 minute no interference limit, I tried to snap some pictures of what the Professors had created, it zapped the creativity, interupted their flow, and I was met with many a scream of 'I'm not done yet!!' I figured this would happen, and tried to find a way around it, but alas its not meant to be.

We've really enjoyed playing, and hope to keep up the 15 minutes of uninterupted play. The challenge is winding down now, but there are still 5 more days to play along, and like us, you can always go back and revisit the days you missed. Enjoy!

http://www.handsonaswegrow.com/

Thank you to @handsonaswegrow and @imaginationtree for a great month of play ideas. And a special thanks to @nurturestore for all the retweets, so we didn't miss a day. 

We're (almost) Done!

Alhumdullilah, we made it, and accomplished our challenge of cleaning up and reorganizing, with the small acception that the dining room has become a version of Self Storage. That should be all cleaned up and back to normal tonight insha' Allah (horray long weekend). Masha' Allah we are all feeling great with the new routine, and that fact that it looks like adults actually live here. The Professors are really settling into their new, clean classroom space and I am thankful that my kitchen is looking, well, like a kitchen.

Insha' Allah, we plan to keep progressing, and our next challenge is going to be trying our hands at this:

http://countingcoconuts.blogspot.com/2011/11/our-school-library.html

I think this is really going to help the Professors continue to take that next step of taking care of their space.

Back to the basics: Clean up time!

I was wondering how we were going to spend this week homeschooling, just coming off a long vacation, and having another one come right on the heels of it, with DH being off work most of this week. After getting the Professors settled in bed for the night last evening,  I took a look around our house, and I didn't like what I saw. 'We need to clean up!' This morning DH reminded me that we had been diligent in making sure the Professors took care of their classroom spaces, and that we had been slacking off on that.

I informed the Professors during their morning routine,  that instead of our usual circle time, today we were going to clean our main classroom. We started off by standing in the corner of the room and surveying, then calling out who was going to attack what area. I said I would clean stuffed animals, Professor #2 stated he would clean up the block clock, and Professor #1 stated he would take the books (a big job).

Masha' Allah, it went amazing. No arguments, no grumbling, only a few reminders to stay on task. When Professor #2 was done his job, he voluntarily said he would help Professor #1 with putting away the books. Next up, decluttering all the basement playroom toys from the classroom, and getting all Baby Professors toys back to his play area. A few healthy trips back and forth got the job done, again with a reminder that toys go in their bin, not chucked down the steps, that does not count as being put away. To round up the job, with supervision, I allowed the Professors to run the vacuume. After getting all the sillies out, they each took a few laps across the carpet. At the end they declared they were 'tired! siiiiigh' and needed water.

This afternoon, insha' Allah, we will be getting our basement play area under control. Insha' Allah, we will be spending this entire week on these two areas, and hopefully getting back to a habit that makes everyone feel sane.

30 Days To Hands On Play Blog Project.

One of the things we have been doing, or trying to do, over our break is participate in the http://www.handsonaswegrow.com/ 30 Days To Hands On Play Challenge. (See the super cool badge on the right of our blog!)

We haven't always been able to keep up with each daily activity, but we are jotting down some of the great ideas we missed, and hoping to pull them out later, insha' Allah.

We were looking forward to today's challenge Kids in the Kitchen because many of you know Masha' Allah, how much Professor #1 loves to cook! Unfortunately, all the Professors are sniffely and coughy and probably not in the mood for making (or eating) Waffles and OJ.

Please play along with us! and if you want me to post any of your challenges let me know. We'll post it here. We will  make sure the originators of the project see your ideas too, or at least we'll try! : )

Welcome Back!

As-salaamo alaykum/Hello Everyone,

Alhumdullilah, we are back to school, and back to blogging after a wonderful Eid vacation! Masha' Allah, we had a blast and did some great things (a few school related too), but now its time to get back to work, and we couldn't be more excited, or more ready! Insha' Allah, in the coming days we'll start getting some new material up on the blog for you, but until then, Welcome Back everyone : )

My Chatter Zone: A Blog for kids, by a kid.

To help her son recover from what they both deemed: 'school burn out' and kick off their homeschooling year, a friend of mine, and her son, started a blog, My Chatter Zone: http://mychatterzone.blogspot.com/. The intention behind the blog was for her son to rebuild his writing skills. I'm not sure if he types them, but he narrates all the content of the posts. Masha' Allah, this is a unique idea, and one I hope to start doing with the Professors in the future, insha' Allah. Enjoy! Great work Muhammad!

Columbus Day: Lueker Family Blog.

Every once in awhile, I will feature blog posts from other Homeschooling friends here on The Little Professors. Today's link is from the, Lueker Munchkins, blog and features their Unit Study/Project on Columbus Day. The family worked for weeks putting together all the projects, research and activities and they did an amazing job, Masha' Allah. Enjoy. 

http://luekermunchkins.blogspot.com/2011/11/example-of-why-we-want-to-homeschool.html

Eid Mubarak : )

Insha' Allah, I will blog our circle time about Hajj tomorrow, then taking the rest of the week off for Eid. Next week the Professors Grammy is coming for a visit, so school's out!  Should have some new posts in about 2 weeks insha' Allah. Take care, and Eid Mubarak.

Number Worksheets.

About a month ago a friend of mine pinned the following link on my Pintrest board:  http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2010/05/prek-numbers-shapes-colors-review.html I fell in love with it, and the blog, and thought these would be excellent, easy activities to reinforce our numbers. Wedendsday and Thursday our are Numbers days, so it was the perfect time to try our first Numbers Worksheet.

Thinking this was going to be a very easy activity for the Professors, I set it up at the kitchen table as a morning Ice Breaker.

At first, everyone sat down and got right into the activity.

 Either Professor #1 or #2's sheet, I can't remember.

Professor #3's Worksheet. He gave it a good go! : )

But then....things got interesting. 

Professor #3 started getting bored....

Professor #2 started counting in a timeline to 10, instead of inside the boxes. When he got to the bottom of the page he declared he was done.

Professor #1 started counting out the number of boxes, till he reached 10.

At which point, I intervened and got him back on track.

 Professor #3 started copying his older brother.

But then just started making a mess.

So we made a quick sensory bin.

 Professor #2 just could not grasp the concept of counting out the amount of pom poms to the amount of boxes, and continued in a number line format.

He eventually completed his work, but did not get the concept at all, even after I worked with him on it. We tried several different approaches, one of which was touching and counting each pom pom out loud then saying and tracing the completed number on the left with our counter finger.

He decided to join Professor #3 in the sensory bin.

Professor #1 started having a catastrophic meltdown because his pom poms were drifting all over the paper.

With my help, he finished, but the activity completley ruined his flow for the morning, and he didn't have the best circle time. Insha' Allah, I'm hoping some fresh, Fall air this afternoon will have him feeling a little better.

The thing I learned from this activity, is that, while numbers 1-5 were easy, the second work sheet was way to overwhelming for them. We need to work alot more on relating number symbols to number concepts, a common problem. We also need to do it one row at a time, not an entire worksheet.  I plan to do this as full circle time lesson next week, insha' Allah. In our circle time today we used our Arabic numbers book to count out objects, but did it in English. Interestingly, they have been counting things using their counter finger all day, so the seed has been planted, Alhumdullilah, we just need alot more practice.

Virtual Hajj

Thursday night, October 27th, started the first 10 days of Zuhl Hijjah, the last lunar month on the Islamic calendar. These are the best 10 days of the entire year. During part of these 10 days, the Hajj is performed, and Eid Al Adha, the feast of Sacrifice, is celebrated. For more information you can click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajj. On Saturday, we took the Professors to a local mosque that holds a Virtual Hajj exhibit, put on by the students of the Islamic Sunday School. This was our first year going and we had a great time! 

To start our 'Hajj' we first had to purchase our travel Visa's.

Then we entered the Virtual Hajj. There was a group tour, or you could do the stations on your own.

The Kaaba.

The Professors were upset they could not go inside the Kaaba, but settled for feeling the cloth and the bricks, and making tawaaf around it.

Meeqat Ibrahim.

The well of Zam Zam. 

 Zam Zam water.
Each Professor got to have a small cup of authentic Zam Zam water.

The running between the moutains of Safaa and Marwa.

The Professors enjoyed this station, but jogged more than ran.

The standing of Arafa'
(This will take place on Satruday, Nov. 5th. insha' Allah)

The Stoning of the Jamara.

The stones were made of tin foil (brilliant idea!) and the Professors loved it! We did this station multiple times, and had a few warnings from Security, and Parents, for Professor #3 not to climb inside the display.

Tent city at Mina.

The sacrifice.

This poster of a sheep represented the sacrifice. The poster was pretty worn out, and had lost a few clumps of wool. The Professors enjoyed petting it.

This year, Eid Al Adha, the feast of Sacrifice will fall on Sunday Nov. 6th, and the Standing of Arafah' will be the day before, Saturday Nov. 5th.

EID MUBARAK.