The Imam’s Daughter

UmY commented on a previous post: You Can Homeschool Your Child and asked me the following question:

“MashaAllah, reading your blog has been a real inspiration for me. I WANT to homeschool, but I dont know HOW to homeschool. I’ve been reading the links you’ve provided which have helped. But I dont feel that I am all that creative, and I was wondering when you talk about crafts and things like cutting and pasting activities, how do you come up with this stuff? Are there sites or something I could refer to? My son is 3.5 and I really feel he would respond well to homeschooling, if I only I knew how to do it. Jazakum Allah kheir, any advice you can give me would be really appreaciated!”

Here is my reply:

Wa’alaikum assalam UmmY, alhamdulillah that you benefited from the blog and links. I understand where you are coming from as i had a similar problem when i started homeschooling. In the time of writing that post i was subscribed to a program that sends you arts and crafts activities monthly in the mail called Berry Best Preschool (http://www.preschool-program.com/). However, i stopped getting it because it was teaching english and i wanted crafts in Arabic, it had crafts for the holidays, and didn’t include all the subjects i wanted to teach. But it’s good for someone new to homeschooling and it did ALL the preperation and includes ALL the accessories for the crafts.  

Last year what i did was spend a little time on the weekend to search for crafts online depending on what i was to teach that week. For example when i was teaching the letter Alif - Asad i searched online for Lion crafts and pictures. I made up worksheets on MS Word where i pasted a picture of a lion, a picture of Alif, and along the bottom put several Alifs in a light grey color (for the child to trace). I got the idea from a craft online to glue pieces yarn around the lion’s head as his hair. Another day i just printed a coloring page of some lions with some light grey Alifs on each Lion. Another day we made a Lion puppet, again a craft i got online. etc.

There are tons of sites with free crafts! I uses this one a lot: http://www.first-school.ws/. But the easiest thing is just to type in google ‘Lion craft’ and you’ll get all sorts of crafts from several sites. I also search for ‘Lion coloring’ for a picture of a black and white outlined lion.

This year i am using Ad-duha.org pre-K program and they give you suggestions of crafts (in addition to their workbooks) but you have to prepare and plan them.

So spend some time on the weekend to plan the week: schedule, school time, eating time, prayer times, outdoor play, free time, computer time, etc and make a poster out of it for your son to look at. Get him some nice wide pencils, wide crayons, markers, colored pencils, paint (and apron), etc to make him excited and also stickers and stamps to put on his work when he completes it.

In the school time for my son (almost 4) about 1 hour: Mondays - Qur’an & Tafseer (Review Math & Arabic & Religion), Tuesdays - Qur’an & Arabic (Review Tafseer, Math, & Religion), Wednesdays - Qur’an & Math (Review Tafseer, Arabic, Religion), Thursdays - Qur’an & Religion (Review Tafseer, Arabic, Math). Review is done using flashcards or suitable toys or computer program.

There is a very nice site for Arabic and Islamic crafts: Yemen Links, you should check that out too. I would also suggest getting a book on the Montessori Method of Teaching.

InshaAllah you will see an improvement in your son’s behavior when his time becomes structured and feels happy to do fun activities and learn from his mom :)