This week we are working on our Arabic letters. It is fitting the word we would work on this week is: Kabah
Instead of printing the word out we simple wrote the word Kabah in Arabic and English and had our son trace the words.
This week will continue writing practice inshaAllah
For this month of Dhul Hijjah and Hajj we decided to do some Hajj related activities this week. We kicked things off with making our own Kabah.
We found some awesome history facts on the Kabah on Soundvision’s website, We shared with the children some facts about the Kabah and we looked at pictures of the Kabah online before we made it.
The boys did most of the work while we instructed them on how to glue the construction paper.
The boys paid much attention to the details of the kabah in the pictures we have seen. We even said that Kaf is for Kabah.
They went glue happy on this one “sharing” turns together and squeezing the glue, alhamdulilah they were happy and did not get glue all over the place so I was happy too 🙂  
The boys did an awesome job and after they added the yellow, hubby wrote the word Kaba in Arabic and English for the children
Facts about the Kabah taken from Soundvision’s website:
The other names of the Kaba
Literally, Kaba in Arabic means a high place with respect and prestige.Â
The word Kaba may also be derivative of a word meaning a cube.
Some of these other names include:
Bait ul Ateeq-which means, according to one meaning, the earliest and ancient. According to the second meaning, it means independent and liberating. Both meanings could be taken
http://www.soundvision.com/Info/hajj/kaba.asp
Bait ul Haram-the honorable house
We have been meaning to make this for a long time. We thought this would be a fun way for the children to learn using the cereal boxes. For homeschooling it’s a great way for us  to search for letters, ask about colors, learn new words, and learn numbers.
There is so much you can do with this idea and it is fun to take with you in the car, children can write on it and on some cereal boxes there are games the children can play. Especially if you laminate it, you can use it over and over again.
The materials you need are cereal boxes, hole puncher, thread yarn etc, and contact paper (optional) We did not have contact paper or a laminating machine but it’s okay we figure the boys can color and write all over it.
So you cut the front out and the back of the cereal box, not using the side panels.. though I thought they would make for interesting bookmarks or if laminated used for learning about nutrition facts for older children.
After you are done cutting out the front and back of the cereal boxes, you should measure them to make sure they are all even and make the holes now with the hole puncher.
We used regular glue and mixed the cereal boxes up the front and backs and glued them to different ones.
After that we tied it with a strong string and to make it extra fun we wrote on it, we put the boys’ names and labeled some of the pictures on the cereal boxes.
Today part of our learning about the ocean we saw this great idea about Jellyfish in a bottle. A great idea from:
Bhoom Play  http://bhoomplay.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/diy_jellyfish_eng/
I must admit for a simple easy to do project the first time our jellyfish seemed to float at the top kind of limp!
The materials you need for this are: clear bag, food coloring, and a piece of thread.
We cut the handles off the plastic bag, then cut the sides of the bag and disregarded one side.
After we grabbed it from the center and tied the thread like it was a little balloon but not too tight because after it is tide and you cut the tentacles ..you have to place some water in the bag (the head) of the jellyfish.
It was kind of hard  to take a picture of it in the water so we made a video of it.
This was a fun to do project with the kiddos. We will continue to explore ocean life this week inshaAllah
You can see the video on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/habeebeehomeschooling
I love teachpreschool.org and Deborah recently was on a news broadcast sharing about different pre writing and writing exercises. We tried two of them here with our little spin on it.
Ziploc bag, Food coloring, and liquid soap and this became a fun writing exercise for our children.
The boys pressed on it, patted it, and rubbed their hands on it.
After getting to know this little contraption. We begin to make letters with it by tracing out letters with our fingers on the bag.
Our oldest son made a T. He eventually wrote his name in the goo.
This is a great mess free idea that the boys really enjoyed for a long time. We made many letters and talked about the sounds they make,
In our next writing exercise we used oats and farina (it’s like cream of wheat) and wrote in it more letter practice.
For pre-writing fun our two year old made circles and lines in it too.
Simple fun pre writing and writing exercises.
You can see Deborah’s video here for more great ideas:
http://www.teachpreschool.org/2011/09/teach-preschool-in-the-news-promoting-prewriting-skills/
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