Geography from A-Z -A picture Glossary by Jack Knowlton

Assalamu alaykum( May Peace be Upon You),

Geography from A-Z -A picture Glossary by Jack Knowlton, is one book that we got last year in the Summer. It is a cute, comfortable size and not too thick with geography terms and their definitions in easy language and a nice cartoon-like illustration by Harriet Barton accompanies each.

It looked really useful yet was in the shelf  where it stayed for months until I ran across these cute and simple printables while searching for ideas to use this book.

I'm sure DS would have read it and might've remembered a big part of it but these printables have helped him solidify a lot of that information. He understands what Continental Ridge, Mesa, Lagoon, and Palisade are can recognize them when he sees a picture.

 We started last September and did them off and on. We have completed about half of the book using the printables since we took a long break but we're back again. These printables are really just the Term and definition on the top with space to draw the picture followed by lines to copy. They are Free to download and use. All she asks is that we give her credit and link them to her blog. Thankyou Jenn :) from MamaJenn. This has helped incorporate Art, Copywork into Geography.

Arabic First

Assalamu Alaykum ( May Peace Be Upon You)

This is a quick post to share a wonderful resource that a sister kindly shared. It is really amazing Subhan Allah.
It is called Arabic First.They have a really nice Downloads section that has Free resources to download that include:
Arabic Curriculum
Arabic Grammar
Arabic Reading Tree
Animated Series
Hadeeth
Quran
Stories of the Prophets

They have other sownloads and a free game as well.
I'll extend this post InshaA llah once I start using the material, Insha Allah.

Classic Literature arrives in batches.

We have added a HUGE as in HUUUUGE list of books from the classics. I'm planning to write a teeny tiny review of these very popular books as we go along. Here's a list of the Literature Collection. Now, I thought I would just post a list of these and add reviews as we would read them. And then, life got busy and I totally forgot to continue my post. Anyway, I returned and realised that I was in two minds now. 1. Post a list of all books ordered and recieved. Add reviews later. 2. Write a review as we go along without posting the list. As is obvious now, I went with option 1. :)

Jack's Insects

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This is one book among the ones out of copyrights that was not available online. A friend had got a copy from Amazon and was reading aloud to her children. It was on her own suggestion and experience since her children enjoyed it a lot, that I bought the book. 

Here is what i already knew:

Originally published in 1910, Jack's Insects by Edmund Selous and illustrated by J. A. Shepherd, is a classic living science book. Charlotte Mason used it in her schools and their lesson plans are available online which contain a reading schedule they used. It was for Grades 4-6. It has fascinating facts about insects interwoven with the story of Jack and Maggie's adventures inside Jack's new insect book.

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This is what I found:

When Jack receives a book on insects for his birthday, Maggie wishes one could get inside a book. They end up in the insect book, experiencing adventures with insects of all sorts as they travel. Along the way they encounter a butterfly with a grievance and other insects like caterpillars, spiders, as well as fireflies, locusts, grasshoppers, wasps, bees. Since we are in the second chapter(we started last week), it would  not be possible to give a complete review but I have had my son begging for more when I stopped reading while trying to keep my eyes open before bedtime. :).

Edmond Selous wrote many books about animals for both children and adults which are still popular today. There is a great amount of information about animals that is transmitted to the reader through the conversations his youthful protagonists have with the animals they encounter. 'Each animal is brought to life so vividly through the story that the reader unconsciously absorbs the details of its existence: its physical characteristics, its habits and preferences, and its interactions with other animals.'

The quality of language and scientific information is hard to find in today's world. Even though Charlotte Mason actually used this very book in her schools, it still remarkably holds its charm for today's children almost a century later.

This thick 430 page book with 20 chapters book says that it is for ages 9 and up but can be read aloud to kids a bit younger, too if the reader is prepared for some explaining along the way. This book however has very long sentences and requires slower reading and sometimes re=reading of phrases. (The language is not dumbed down as in today's books).

I feel it was a good buy and am looking forward to more of Jack's Insects.

The Story Book of Science

Assalamu alaykum ( May Peace be Upon You)

I promised that I would write about the living books and I'll start with the first we started using.
A Story Book of Science by Jean Henri Fabre in French and translated to English by Florence Constable Bicknell, is a wonderful, true living book about nature and science from a perspective of a believer. My son LOVES it and so have I loved reading it to him. It is a book that all ages will enjoy.
It is perfect for read-alouds.

We spend about 30 minutes a day. This has 3 phases.
1-I read aloud a chapter while explaining the difficult phrases or new vocabulary.
2-We read that chapter that we did the previous day together, taking turns paragraph by paragraph.
3-I read the next chapter aloud.
I find it time well-spent since he learns a lot from this. We do this 3 days a week along with RealScience 4 Kids on the other 4 days.

It is a very mature yet storylike compilation of science stories that honor the Creator while teaching about His creation. The topics include and are not limited to Insects, Animals, Plants, Metals, Printing, Clouds, Sound, Atmosphere, Sun, Locomotive, Fruit, Pollen, Shells, Peals, Corals, Wax, Volcanoes and Earthquakes. We are on the 6th chapter. The chapters from 1 through 7 are about Ants and Plant Lice.

The Story Book of Science

All stories feature Uncle Paul who with rare literary charm tells these stories in conversations with three children. The books cover mentions it as Suitable for ages 9 and up but as with most good living books, the younger children can pick up a lot from listening to it read aloud. It has 438 pages and 80 chapters.

This book got my son interested in the real story of Jean Henri Fabre when he leanrt that the three children in the story were his own and we went here to learn more about him.

I also found these notebooking pages shared by a kind homeschooler but I am yet to use them. But they are so simple and easy to use, I am thinking of adding them soon.

Jean Henri Fabre has another book with Uncle paul and the children titles The Wonderbook of Chemistry. We are yet to use it though since it is considered a sequel to this one..

Totally New Way Of School For Me

We started school in a different way last month. DS had a burnout phase and had refused to do any kind of workbook. We had been following a curriculum for Math and had added the workbooks for Treasures from McGraw Hill in October. Some of the excercises in these three workbooks are extremely easy and 'boring' especially the ones in the Spelling Book. The ones in the Grammar book are mixed, some he enjoys and some he doesn't. Most of the ones in the Practice book is what he totally dreads. Anyhow, last month he said he wanted NO ENGLISH.

I left hm alone and did not ask him to do any work for a month and just read a few classics to him. He LOVED this! Alhamdulillah.
We started with
Pinnochio, The Phantom Tollbooth, Mrs. frisby and the Rats of NIMH. One chapter from one book and another from the other the next night before bedtime. He would beg me to contnue but I wouldn't :). I found out later that he had been reading these and had finished the first already and was rereading on his own masha Allah
He had moved ahead on the second book soon, too.

We remade our schedule - DS and I- and added more Science since that's where his passion lies.
We have a new Science curriculum- Real Science 4 Kids by Gravitas and it is really nice. It warrants a separate post so that's where I plan to write about it.

Another addition has been loads of Living books Charlotte Mason Style complete with narration. These make me wonder why I didn't add them sooner. I'll write about these in a separate post Insah Allah along with how it is working for us.

We have also included the Perfecting the Pillars series from Ad-Duha and this has been wondeful! :) We have learnt so much Alhamdulillah. We decided we wanted to do lapbooks on the topics we covered so i made a few minibooks on tawheed, Shirk, Salaah, Pillars of Islam,Imaan and Ihsan taking help from Talibiddeen Junior and printed them out. Alhamdulillah DS enjoyed this activity and gave wonderful suggestions, masha Allah.
 I'll add the link to these minibooks here incase someone wants to make on similar topics.

All in all these changes resulted in something that was a pleasant surprise, masha Allah. DS decided that he needed Math since he wanted to be an astronomer and added Math to his schedule 6 days a week on his own. Masha Allah la quwwata illah Billah.

Then we started watching Arabian Sindbad on Youtube. They have some of the clips from their program available there. The kids loved these and learnt so much from it. We have decided to get their deluxe package InshaAllah.
Last but not the least, after hearing and reading so much about life of Fred series by polka Dot, we decided to go ahead and but the complete Elementary set and Middle School set. We havent received them as yet. Let's see how Ds take to this. .