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.

Islamic Studies

Hey guys, today I wanted to share with you some of our Islamic Studies topics we've been covering. The boys each have their own workbook they work through daily, but we also do some work together.

Here are some of the resources we use along with the Quran. 

I usually pick either a Surah or a topic I want to cover with the boys, and we read through it together and draw lessons from it and journal in our notebooks.

Surah Feel (The Elephant)

After we learn the background story of each Surah the boys will narrate and write out their narration. They will also add a drawing, copy out the Arabic and English translation.

Surah Masad (Palm Fiber)

I give them some art supplies to help make their notebooks more colorful and enjoyable to work in. They can use colored pencils, markers, stamps, stickers, washi tape, and whatever else they want to help with their creativity.

Surah Quraish

I will also complete a page along side them just to give them some ideas and show them mommy studying the words of Allah. 

Surah Ikhlas

They boys and I also pick out vocabulary words to concentrate on from each Surah. Throughout the week they will practice writing out the words in both Arabic and English. 

Pillars of Islam

We also take topics they are learning in their individual books and expand on it. Here we covered the 5 pillars of Islam.

Since Ramadan is approaching we took this opportunity to expand on the fifth pillar which is fasting. 

We focused on Surah Baqarah Vs. 183-186.

Click on the image above to grab this game. 

We learned the phases of the moon since Ramadan is dependent on the sighting of the new moon. We also learned the Du'a(supplication) for sighting the new moon.

We played this fun matching game I put together for them. I just painted some wooden discs I got from Michael's.

With each lesson, if it is applicable, we add in some Arabic language lessons. I usually pick a theme related to the study, for example, in Surah Masad it talks about the hands of Abu Lahab. So we learned about the body parts in Arabic.

We also use our movable Arabic alphabet letters to spell out the words. 

I hope you enjoyed getting a peek into how we incorporate Islamic studies into our homeschool.

Kindergarten Fall Activities

Hi guys, it's been a while since I posted anything on the blog. We've been busy learning and living life. But it's time for me to up date you guys and what we've been up to. Today I am sharing all the fun fall activities my kindergartner enjoyed.

Learning Shelf

Language Arts

Pumpkin Rhyming Words

Pumpkin Sight Words

syllable counting with candy corn

CVC craft

Math 

Skip Counting by 5 with leaves

Measuring

Science

pumpkin life cycle

pumpkin dissection

Art

I hope you enjoyed seeing all our fall activities. I know we're a little late, but I'll share all the winter activities soon.