apple day

a day full of apples, a day to get plenty of fresh air and exercise, i day to press fresh apples and see how apple juice is made, a day to get lost in a fabulous holly maze, a day to learn about the apple's life cycle, a day to taste freshly squeezed apple juice, a day to enter an apple colouring competition, a day to get some apples to take home........a day when apples took centre stage big time!

the best days....

The best days are those days that the kids wake up thinking that it’s going to be a day of workbooks, numeracy, writing.....they slowly do their morning routine and make their way to the table, and then.....you tell them...put your shoes on kids, were going out! And the real excitement begins when you tell them that you’re going to their favourite science museum where there’ll be plenty of hands on activities, a planetarium and a huge dinosaur head. When you’re a child, what can be better than news like that?

space frieze

this has been a work in progress for long time now! but finally alhamdulillah we've got it on the walls.

the components of this frieze have been ready and sitting at the bottom of the drawer for months, the kids kept nagging me to put it up, and i kept telling them that we didn't have enough blue-tac, well it's true we didn't (uh-hum), but finally we got there, and it looks brilliant.

most of the planets are made from paper plates, and the larger ones are cut out from cereal boxes, the stars in the background were happily done by my kids who couldn't beleive that they were being allowed to splatter paint everywhere.

we will keep adding to it, inshallah, moons need to be added, may be some shooting stars and perhaps a rocket, and don't how long it will take us to 'completely' finish it, but for now, i'm just happy that it's up.

the water cycle

this week we have been learning about the water cycle, the miracles, the blessings, the science behind it etc. we started by getting some books from the library, we read and discussed them.

then we made our own picture of the water cycle, to make it a little more fun and crafty, we made the picture out of tissue and crepe paper (this part they loved), then we wrote what happens during the whole cycle on separate pieces of paper and stuck them on (by this part they my sons hands were aching! if you know what i mean)

today we done an experiment by boiling some water in a pan (just a small amount), i held a cold plate over the boiling water, to show the kids that the steam turns back into water when it cools down, after a while the water had almost evaporated completely, we discussed that this is a similar process to the water cycle.

other things that i want to do relating to this topic are:

one of the books above 'a drop of mercy' has some refrences of the qur'an which i want to go through and discuss.

maybe some worksheets.

http://www.kidzone.ws/water/index.html

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/Homework/swater.html

some videos

http://www.neok12.com/Water-Cycle.htm

another experiment

http://www.mcwa.com/kids.htm#cycle

science project: space exploration

it's been a long time since we started a new project, when i first started teaching my kids at home , we did one project after another based on whatever was going on around us at that time, whether it was my daughter losing her teeth, the changing seasons, certain islamic events, whatever it was we did a project on it.

space exploration was something that i have been planning to do for a very long time, but we have never got round to it, until now.

we started with these 3D pictures, my son has been into all things 3D, so i used that interest of his and applied it to this, the results were absolutely great!

science fayre

we had our very first science fayre last week, and it was absolutely brilliant. the experiments ranged from tornadoes in a bottle, we blew up balloons with vinegar and bicarbonate of soda, we done a sink or float experiment with layers of different liquids such as golden syrup, water and oil, we had cleaning metals with vinegar, kaleidoscopes, sticking skewers through balloons and much more.

there were two down sides to the day #1 due to several hindrances we couldn't do an experiment and #2 the battery of me camera went flat so i couldn't take as many pictures as i would have liked.

all in all we had a great day, well done to all those who took part, can't wait for the next one inshallah