Toddler storytime and other activities

Assalamu alaikom and hello everyone,

This is our fourth week in school, and I decided to disrupt our day on purpose with a trip to the library's toddler storytime.  We did this last year on nearly every Tuesday so that Aisha could benefit from the little storytime they do there.  She  was in awe the first time I took her!  She was just looking at all the other little kids, the moms, and especially the storytime lady with all her puppets, song, and books!  We decided she needed that little weekly storytime, and the big kids would take along Math or some other subject they could do at a work table while I was in the storytime room.  Maryam stayed with me, being a bit young, but the older two worked.  Going back today after a long break, even the librarian noticed how far along Aisha has come as far as knowing what is going on. It was neat to see her know more stuff (animals, colors, counting, etc..)

The Story Room in one of the libraries we go to:

Our new schedule has been working out really nicely.  I tried a new system this year giving each child a block of time to do a certain subject.  I did that because I had to stagger the subjects they need one-on-one time with me with.  Things like grammar, dictation, and other language lessons.  Break times are scheduled, and that's been really better than having it be a floating break. 

The second best thing I've changed this year is having everyone go for a morning jog (or walk if they're feeling lazy) at 7:30 before breakfast.  This is obviously subject to change considering weather and daylight hours, but so far it's been great.  I'm also taking a morning walk earlier than the kids before my husband heads out to work.  I personally love spending more time outdoors, and that's not easy in many places and in many lifestyles we live today.  I'm guilty of not spending a lot of time outside but I sure wish it were different; it makes us feel so much better in mind, body, and soul!

Well, I don't have much direction in today's blog.  What I'm often most curious about is how other moms of many children manage their schedules and chores.  I'm just so happy I've found a way that is keeping us all running smoothly.  I realize this can change at any time, but for now it's awesome.  I'll just describe some of the main "pegs" of our day.  To me, a "peg" is something that happens each day like breakfast, lunch, dinner, prayer times.  We try to tie other activites to a certain peg.  So in order for school to start, the following things have to be done: walk/jog, dress, eat, morning chores.  This is also my time to get out bread dough to bake later, get myself dressed, and to prep anything I might want for lunch or dinner.  Then each child follows his schedule for each subject till we break for lunch.  At the lunch break I switch out laundry if needed, put away morning dishes, prepare and eat lunch, and let the kids play a little.  I get Aisha ready for a nap and also prep anything in the kitchen that might need my attention.  We then finish our last two subjects of the day, pray Duhr, and then each go our separate ways for an hour or so :D 

Once the 'rest time' is over we fold and put away laundry, play outside, snack, and get ready for any out-of-house activity.  This is also another kitchen time for me when I might chop up a salad without dressing, get the rice ready, and clear the table for dinner.

Once we get back from the activity, dinner is ready to go and we just hang out at night.  Usually we have to do a "ten minute pickup" where I set the timer and everyone has to clean up rooms regardless of who played with what.    Preparing the bread dough in the way discussed in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day has been an awesome new discovery, too.  I have loved baking bread in this easy method.  No kneading and protecting from drafts.  It's a very user friendly recipe, and everyone in this family is so happy with the difference.  Alhamdullah, it's easy to prepare especially since I'm home for blocks of time to give the bread a chance to come to room temperature and then to bake.  Here's a pic of the one I made this morning:

So that's my random outlet for today.  Feel free to comment!

Homemade Granola Bars

Assalamu alaikom

I was curious to try this recipe for granola bars after reading good things about it from some other moms online.  The main recipe is simple, and you can substitute your favorite mixings to put in it if you want something other than what's in the original recipe.  Here it is:

3 cups quick cooking oats
1 can (14oz) sweetened condensed milk (low fat or skim)
2T melted butter
3-4 cups "other" ingredients of choice such as:
     1 cup flaked coconut
     1 cup sliced almonds
     1 cup mini chocolate chips
     1/2 cup craisins
Grease a 9*13 dish.  Mix all ingredients well, press firmly into the baking dish, and bake for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees.

Once you see brown around the edges you're done.  Or else you'll get much crispier bars.

I'm loving these, and they serve as a good snack for my kids who seem to be hungry all the time.

Cabbage Stew

So after I made a large pot of stuffed cabbage leaves I had a ton of leftover cabbage that was too wrinkly and curled up for me to stuff.  (I like to use the smooth upper layers and just move on to the second head of cabbage once I start to reach the center of the first one).  I didn't want to let all that slightly boiled cabbage go to waste, so I looked up some recipes and made the following.  It was pretty good, although my kids complained all about it at lunch today.  I told them that's all we were having for lunch, to just eat it, and that it was the same cabbage they'd be eating at dinner.  Ok, so it would be with rice, beef, and spices at dinner, but that's ok.  I like this kind of thing b/c it is light on calories, healthy, and actually hearty.

Stewed Cabbage (I omitted the celery)

Ingredients


1/4 cup butter

2 onions, chopped

1 stalk celery, chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 medium head cabbage, cut into squares

1 (14.5 ounce) can stewed tomatoes, with liquid  I used a can of Rotel

salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1.Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, celery, and garlic and saute for 3 to 5 minutes, or until translucent. Stir in cabbage, reduce heat to low, and simmer for 15 minutes.

2.Pour in tomatoes and season with salt and pepper to taste. Cover pan and cook over medium heat for 30 to 40 minutes, or until cabbage is tender.

Back to School 2011/2012

Assalamu alaikom,

I'm sitting on the couch after our first day back to homeschool.  What a great day it was; I have great kids, masha'Allah.  They know there is a place and time for things.  They don't try to be all goofy or distracted when school starts.  They don't try to sit and play video games.  They know when it's time for school that they're on a schedule.  MashaAllah, la quwwata illa billah ( this means there is no might or power except with God, and that what He wanted to happed did happen ).  So our first day back went really well. 

The funnest addition to our day is the "Jogging Club" I started (stole the idea from their public school).  I used an iPhone app called iMapMyRUN (free) to see how far it was from our door to the water fountain located on the city trail by our house (and back).  That is 0.86 miles and it took about 8 minutes for my son to run it.  I'm going to have them do that little run/walk every morning.  I spent some time figuring out a schedule so that we can all get some exercise in addition to schoolwork.  It's worked great so far, as I'm on day 6 of my morning walks.  I'm also going to have them record their time once a week, and then we can graph it (math lesson).

A tradition I started last year was for the kids to fill out this questionnaire on the first day and then to share it.  At the end of the year we were amazed at the change in handwriting and likes/dislikes!  I'm filing this sheet in their Geneology Binders (blog on that later) for a memory.

It was fun showing them new books I chose for this year.  We're using a new curriculum for Science, and I'm beefing up History and syncing up their Reading with the History as is explained in The Well Trained Mind.   An awesome mom made up lessons on her own that coordinated the reading with the history including questions, copywork, and other activities.  Here's a link to her blog Classical House of Learning.  So I'll be going with that for a few weeks and see how that works. It is completely free. 

Alhamdulillah, all praise to Allah, everything was fine and will be fine I hope.  It feels great to be into the routine; I can't go on enough about how right that feels.  It felt great to be homeschooling, and I was reassured a few hours into it that I was, indeed, doing the right thing.  We're incorporating Arabic, Quran, and Islamic Studies into our day now which is different than last year.  I found a new-ish company called Ad Duha whose products are laid out similar to our other homeschool books; language easy for the student to understand, short easy lessons, and a layout that is updated.  I didn't buy a whole grade level, rather I had to pick and choose b/c my children were at different levels in the different subjects.  However, for my youngest one, I could easily start with their preK level and then she could move up with their program.  If you're interested in something to do at home without paying for and driving to lessons (kids and I dreaded that routine), then I highly recommend you check this out.

Last night I had a good little pep talk (from a fellow homeschooling blogger) and summoned up my words of encouragement, some patience, a few prayerful words, and a good attitude for the new school year.  May Allah guide me and give me the strength and knowledge to be successful in raising and educating my children!

Meal Planning September 4 2011

Here's the idea for this upcoming week!

Sunday: Mujaddara (rice, lentils, topped with caramelized onions; yogurt on the side)
Monday: (Invited out for brunch/lunch) Gazpacho and homemade bread for dinner
Tuesday: (first day of school, first day hubby goes back to work) Fasuliah (green bean stew, rice)
Wednesday: Malfoof (stuffed cabbage rolls)
Thursday:  Chili and baked potatoes, Salad
Friday:  Soup (some wisdom teeth are coming out), leftovers

Schedules

Last year I used a planner from Rainbow Resource (planner) that had blocks for me to write in what subjects each child was to complete each day.  It had enough weeks for a full school year plus calendars and extra pages to log in what curriculum I used, reading logs, and field trips taken. 


This year I need to take a slightly different approach and actually designate certain blocks of time to certain subjects.  Rather than the child choosing what order to get his work done in, I will have to assign the order it is done in this year.  The reason is that I have 3 children in school now (last year's kindy wasn't very time consuming), and some of our subjects need to be one-on-one with me.  So if I organize and stagger the subjects properly, I hope to be able to get to each child at the right time!  So I'm fiddling around with the planners and timers over at http://www.donnayoung.org/ such as these. 


I hope you can find some of her tools useful, it's a treasure trove of freebies!

Thoughts on my first year homeschooling

Assalamu alaikom wa rahmatullah.  Hello and peace everyone.

I'm really so flattered that you're reading my blog.  I'm always excited to see that people have visited and viewed my blog :D 

Last year brought us another shift: homeschooling.  Usually, that shift would be being pregnant or having a newborn, but alhamdullah, this time I prayed about it and decided to let homeschooling be my new 'baby'.  I want to share some of more significant impacts homeschooling has had on us.

To begin with, I will start with how and why the topic ever came up in the first place.  I was concerned about a handful of things that my two older kids were going through at public school, grades 2 and 3.  Looking at the big picture, and after researching and praying about it, I decided it would be so worth the risk to give homeschooling a shot.  If it didn't work out at all, that school would still be there and they could return at any time.  Thankfully, our district is pretty good in education, so that was not our main motivator for bringing them home.  (some families homeschool because they live in districts with very poor public schools)

Second thing worthy of mention is the world of homeschool curriculum.  I was blown away when I received my first books.  The way the books and lessons are organized is nothing how it looks like in a traditional school textbook.  Lessons are divided into daily portions so that the student simply goes to the next lesson the next day.  Teacher portions are scripted like a play (!) so that Mom knows what to say and how to guide the student to achieve the desired result.  If any mom feels she 'can't' be the teacher, I say give it a try because the books spell it out so that you can be the teacher!!

Lastly, and this is the most fun part, is reaping numerous benefits that I didn't expect just because of the nature of our lifestyle change.  That routine of the old way faded away and we started a new one.  This one didn't have us rushing around early in the morning, inevitably ending with some shouting or some tension to get out the door.  This one didn't have that after school crankiness they all came home with when I'd have to tiptoe around them and their moods (keep in mind they were only in 2nd and 3rd grades!).  This one didn't come with new words and attitudes that I had to spend time reversing.  This one came with increased patience, with more relaxed attitudes, with more time spent with Dad in the mornings or if he came home early from work, with enough time to pray, and with a sense of everyone helping in the running of the home.  When the 8 year old wanted to try making scrambled eggs for breakfast I could let him (and later, her).  When we have some free time, we like to bake cookies from scratch.  My point is that we had time and mental energy for stuff like this.  They also found many ways to play together rather than grow divided because of age and grade differences.

Last year my Kindy daughter spent only about a full hour on actual work like math, writing, and phonics.  She spent a lot of time reading for fun, doing crafts, coloring, or playing with her little sister.  This year she will need to spend about 2 hours or so per day doing work.

My 3rd and 4th graders last year spent about 4 hours a day on work.  If we didn't have any morning appointments, they could be done by lunch some days.  This left after lunch for tidying up, praying, playing, and reading (or resting).   My 5th grader will have a heavier load this year, and I dont' expect him to be done till closer to 3pm.  My 4th grader will probably have around 4 or 4 1/2 hours.  I've laid out a spreadsheet to fill in when I will do one-on-one subjects this year with each child.  They don't need me for ALL of their subjects, and for others they might need me for 15 or 20 minutes.  So, while last year I did not have a detailed schedule, I will have one this year because I will have 3 kids to juggle instead of 2 (my kindy was very easy and could be done after the big kids were done for the day).  My sweet 2 (nearly 3) year old will have puzzles, books, markers, and blocks to play with.  She will also have her own seat at the table because, well, she's just old enough to want one and will cause trouble if she doesn't!  I plan to do the big subjects like history and science (alternating days) during her naptime after lunch. Insha'Allah (God willing)

Some of the challenges:

* I would lose my patience at times when they'd all be talking to me at the same time, when the toddler was going nuts writing on the walls, or when they had their own bad attitudes towards work.  UPSIDE: i would apologize and we would learn how to get over bad moods like that.

* Going out to places during the day felt weird sometimes because we'd get stared at.  I would limit my outings and try to consolidate trips for when my husband got home or for the weekends.  Anyhow, we were usually busy doing school.  And another anyhow is that more and more people do homeschool, so people guess it right away.

*  I would occasionally feel like I needed to have some alone time out of the house.  Thanks to my super supportive husband, all I had to do was schedule that in to the weekend.  I also would sometimes sneak out after dinner and do a Target trip on my own.  I had my own morning routine in my room without any kids, and I often took a nap or a lie down in my room with the door shut around 3pm.  We would all kind of split up and do our own thing till dinner or at least for an hour.  I expect this year will be easier than last b/c my youngest is older and more independent thus requiring less from me.

I'm so thankful for all the tricks I've learned.  How to talk to the children, how to guide them, how to check my intentions, how to change in my heart how I feel about raising my children, how to keep praying for guidance, patience, and success.  I've learned tricks for getting laundry done, meals cooked, and chores split.  All in all, it has been a great growing experience for all of us, I think, and has been a blessing.  We start our new school year next Tuesday, so if you remember, say a prayer for our success! 

Meal Planning

Well hello!  New posts coming soon, insha'Allah.
About my meal planning: I slacked off most of the summer (being off school) and definitely during Ramadan.  Now that we have a busy week ahead and school starting on the 6th, I've started up again with planning ahead.  I started this by writing down what we normally ate on recipe cards (one dish per card) and trying to collect at least 30 dishes we all like to have for dinner.  I even wrote down the easy peasy spaghetti and sauce b/c the method is that I go through my cards on a Thursday or Friday to plan the grocery list for the weekend for the upcoming week. (We do our grocery getting on the weekend since I try to avoid this errand with the kids as much as possible)  Once you know the main dishes you're having for the week it's easy to buy accordingly and to better plan your free hours in the day.
Without further ado.... the PLAN for this week starting with today:

Sunday:  Roasted Chicken Leg Quarters, Homemade French Fries, Big Green Salad

Monday:  Homemade Hamburgers, More Homemade French Fries (can you tell I bought a big bag of potatoes and my husband asked for fries!!), Fresh Cut Veggies

Tuesday: Eid Day... we'll have brunch out.  Main dish of pureed vegetable soup with homemade bread, cheeses, olives, veggies. 

Wednesday:  Crockpot Chicken with Rotel Sauce, Tomato Sauce, side of Rice and Salad

Thursday:  Leftover Rotel Chicken

Friday:  American Style Meatloaf, Broccoli w/ Cheese, Mashed Potatoes (wink, wink)

Pictured: Fava Bean salad

IPad Apps for Ramadan

Assalamu alaikom! Hope everyone's Ramadan is coming along nicely. The first few days sure are the hardest, for sure, as our bodies and minds get used to the fast.  May Allah give us patience and endurance during this time and help us to increase our worship and good deeds.

A friend of mine has a put together a neat list of Apps you use on your iPad or iPhone.  I downloaded a few of them to be used by myself and some for the kids to use.  Here is the link to her site Muslimas Oasis on the page of the App Reviews.  Take some time to read the rest of her site, it's really nice, masha'Allah. 

We're currently playing Stack the Countries and listening to Quran on the Quran Majeed app.

Quiet Time turned into Overtime!

Not sure what got into me, but I cooked and baked a lot today. My legs are tired, my feet hurt, and I'm cranky from my cranky 2yr old (!)  I've been working on freezing meals to have during Ramadan.  It's often hard to muster up the motivation to spend hours in the kitchen cooking, so I'll be happy to have a few freezer meals ready! 

I did cook a hot meal for dinner, and in the meantime I prepared a completely unrelated chicken casserole for the freezer. If I had planned ahead I would have combined and used the same meat, but I just winged it today.  Then, as I've been craving CHOCOLATE, I decided to make the delicious double chocolate cake recipe I love.  I happened to notice that the Hershey's cocoa box was going to expire in August, and there was just a bit left, so it was definitely the right time to make a CAKE!

Realizing the first day of Ramadan will be Monday and that my husband will be looking for something sweet to eat after Maghreb time, I knew I'd want to have his favorite on hand: pound cake.  So I whipped up one of those too.  (this is a picture of a previous pound cake, not the one I made today)

Add to all of this washing the dishes, serving and eating and cleaning up dinner, catching up with a good friend on the phone for 45 minutes :D (that was a good part), and then getting the girls into the shower and ready for bed.  Add in a few mishaps here and there (like Aisha flooding the kitchen floor with water from the water dispenser in the fridge)  As soon as I was going to get Aisha's PJ's on, I found her in her bed having just marked on herself and her doll in purple marker.  So, scrap the PJ's and go to the bath.  Start over.  I was really on my last straw at that point and was rushing to pray Maghreb too.  I got her in bed, prayed, then realized the chocolate cake needed some chocolate frosting. Whipped that up, put the whole thing in the fridge and parked it right here on the couch.  Glad I had such a productive day, alhamdullah, thank God.  I'm glad I have a comfy couch and laptop to chill out on after all that work! 
My point was really to make food for the freezer which I did accomplish.  Chicken casserole and part of the pound cake.  I like to cut it in half.  Keep half and freeze the other half for the freezer.  That's what I'll do with this cake for Ramadan.  Probably same for the chocolate cake since I know I'll be scrounging around the kitchen for chocolate after breaking my fast!  Thanks for reading, have a good one!