Stories of the Prophets- Ibrahim and Ismail

Hi guys, today I wanted to share with you our lesson on Prophet Ibrahim and Prophet Ismail. I shared on a previous post that I've been teaching grammar and handwriting using the stories of the prophets. We've so far read about Adam, Nuh, and Salih (AS). In that post I detailed the lay out of our lessons and what I cover with my first grader. If your interested click the picture below.

Since the story of Ibrahim and Ismail contain so many different parts, I decided to break them up into mini stories for my son. The first story we read was about when prophet Ibrahim was young and broke all the idol statues. As a punishment the people of the town threw him into a big fire and Allah had saved Ibrahim.

On the first day we read the story and just talked and my son completed an oral narration. On day two we worked on our drawing. Day two we talked about nouns and verbs related to the story.

I wrote down sentences on a piece of paper and my son used the Montessori grammar symbols to label each part of the sentence. For day three my son practiced the cursive letter I.

 The second story we covered was when Prophet Ibrahim left his son and wife on a barren desert. After running out of food and water, baby Ismail started to cry. His mother ran between As-Safa and Al-Marwa seven times looking for someone to help her. Then and angel came down and kicked the earth causing a spring to gash forth-Zam Zam water.

We talked about proper nouns vs common nouns for this story and also reviewed verbs, articles, and adjectives. For handwriting my son worked on cursive letter z. For some reason I don't have a picture of that, but If you follow me on Instagram I share our daily lessons on there.

The last story we read was about Prophet Ibrahim and Ismail building the Kaba.

For this story my son practiced the cursive letter K for Kaba.

That's it for our lessons. I hope that you guys are enjoying this series just as much as my son and I are enjoying it.

Mountain Unit Study

Hi guys, today I wanted to share with you guys our mountain unit study. This was a short unit that went with our India study.

We learned the different parts of a mountain using these three part cards from the Montessori print shop.

We also learned the different animals that live in the mountain also using three part cards.

Here are all the books we used for this unit. Our two favorite books are A Day on the Mountain and Let's Explore Mountains.

We also made a mountain diorama together, which the boys really loved.

We used a Amazon box as our base and created a mountain shape using aluminum foil and once we were satisfied with our shape we covered it with plaster sheets. We waited 24 hours for the plaster to dry.

Once everything dried we painted the whole thing gray and waited for that layer to dry. After lunch the boys painted the white peeks and the base of the mountain green.

The next day the boys added more detail to the mountain: animals, trees, and a stream. 

Once the mountain diorama was done, the boys added facts to the side of the box. We finished off this unit by learning the Arabic word for mountain.

We're off to China for our next unit and learning all about the ocean.

If your looking for more mountain project and unit study ideas check out our topography study post. 

Arabic Alphabet Activities

My six year old has been asking to learn the Arabic alphabet so that he can start memorizing Quran like his older brothers. I was so excited that I started setting out activities for him to explore and work with. I wanted to share some of those activities with you guys.

I try to incorporate Arabic into our monthly themes as much as I can. For our moon unit we worked on the letter Qaaf. He practiced writing the letter on the moon printable, which was just a picture of the moon that I laminated.

Here he is working on the letter (noon) for tiger. He built the letter out of attribute blocks and practiced writing the letter from his worksheet.

For our farm unit he worked on the letter baa for cow. He drew a picture of a cow labeled it and wrote the letter on top.

We also practiced the letter noon during our bee unit. This time we used our sand board to trace and build the letter. We talked about beginning, middle, and ending letters also.

Here for the letter Zaa we build a giraffe out of blocks and drew one in his notebook. We also practiced the letter in sprinkles, which was very exciting for him. He wanted to know how to say tall in Arabic so we added that word in and build it with our Arabic move-able letters.

We use a lot of different materials to help him learn the letters and still keep it fun and hands on.

1. Playdough
2. Writing in sand or sprinkles or shaving cream
3. Building the letter from blocks
4. Making the things that start with that letter out of blocks
5. Writing and drawing in his notebook.

I hope this gave you some ideas on how we learn our Arabic alphabet. How do you guys teach your children and still keep it fun and hands on.

Home-school Geography and Map drawing.

Hi guys, today I wanted to share with you how we incorporate map drawing/study into our home-school day.  Every year we make a goal as a family to learn to draw and label one continent. This year we have been working on Europe to go with our WWII study. The boys will spend 15-20 minutes drawing and reviewing on the white board. By the end of the year they will have mastered that continent and will make a final copy colored and labelled to store into their notebooks.

Here is my 10 year old with his completed map of Europe. He was so proud of himself and I was too. I find that small bite size chunks daily has really helped him achieve this goal.

We love this Draw (Europe, USA, Canada, etc.) books. They have funny little information and descriptions for drawing out each country. I see the boys sometimes giggling while they're drawing, which is always a plus.

So far we've covered Canada, United States and Europe, Central America, and South America. My plan is for us to practice Africa next. I'm not going in any particular order. We will go along with our history theme.

Along with map drawing we do lots of reading using living books. We also play professor noggin geography trivia games and do a lot of puzzles. Once a week they will do a map drill with me, where  I hand them a blank map and they must label as many countries as they can. That's about all the geography we do in our home-school and it's been working so far.

How do you guys incorporate geography into your home-school?

Stories of the Prophet- Adam, Nuh, and Salih (AS)

Hi guys, today I wanted to share with you what I've been doing with my first grader as far as his Islamic Studies is concerned.  We have been studying the stories of the prophets together. We incorporate cursive writing and grammar into our studies. So here is what a typical study looks like;

Day 1- We read the story and talk about it.
Day 2- We read the story again and do an oral narration plus draw a picture in our notebook
Day 3- We review the story and work on our chosen letter
Day 4- We incorporate grammar
Day 5- We review that weeks story and the previous weeks stories.

I am reading the stories from Migo and Ali love for the Prophets. I find this book to be perfect for where he is at as far as comprehension. I plan on doing the stories of the Prophets with him every year and adding more information as he gets older.

Here is a drawing of Nuh (AS) and the ark. We talked about words from the story and practiced writing the letter N in cursive.

Here is another picture from the story of Adam (AS). We were working on identifying nouns in the story. We used our letters to write each noun and talked about whether it was a common noun or a proper noun.

For the drawing inspiration I follow Hana over at pepper and pine. She has a wonderful alphabet series using the stories of the Prophets on her YouTube channel.

This was for the story of Salih (AS) and the she-camel. We talked about all the Proper nouns in this story (Salih, Thamud) and the common noun (camel). We also practiced the letter S but I didn't get a picture of that.

If you follow me over on Instagram  @teachermomplus3 I show the process and the daily routine over there. I have a whole highlights video dedicated to our Islamic Studies.

We've only done three prophets so far but I'll share more as we progress through out the year. How do you guys teach Islamic Studies? I'm always looking for more books and ideas, please share any recommendations or tips you use.