Friday 20 September 2013

Learning alphabets


Bismillah

Assalamu alaykum,


It's been a while since I last posted about our early learning journey. Time's flying, subhanAllah. Life's been a bit busy and I could not really post much. Few times I attempted to write something on here, but then got interrupted/something came in the way and then I never returned to my draft posts again.


Yusuf is now 3 years old, growing fast, alhamdulillah. He likes learning, reading and playing with his cars and blocks. He is at home with me. At his age, he knows the alphabet, recognizes all the letters, we are learning the letter sounds now (phonics). For phonics we are using Progressive Phonics Program. The books are FREE to download from the website, alhamdulillah. I have read good reviews about the program on the internet. InshaAllah I will try posting about our activities as we learn. 
The Montessori method calls this time a "Sensitive Period", where the child is more aware of and interested in learning a certain thing at this time. I am just using this moment, as he is showing an interest in learning the alphabet, he often comes up to me and says Mom, let's do school. Parents should go with flow in my opinion and not burden their kids with loads of information to learn.

Alhamdulillah so much is available on the internet nowadays, we are using materials from other blogs and educational websites. We are/will be learning our Arabic letters at the same time, inshaAllah. He recognizes most of the Arabic letters. We will be using FREE printable materials for our Arabic letters from Tarbiyah Homeschool. MashaAllah our sister at Tarbiyah Homeschool compiled Arabic Letter Packs, they are FREE to download, alhamdulillah. There are many Arabic alphabet coloring pages on the internet, age 3 and above is probably the right age to do the coloring activities. 

He is good with his numbers, he knows and recognizes them in Arabic and English, alhamdulillah. Like most of the bloggers I try and make the learning process fun and not too educational. 


By listening to Qur'an and us reciting he has learned his short surahs, basic duas and adhkar. We listen to Qur'an on computer/phone and use wathakker kids for visual purposes. In the kid's section you can find Qur'an recitation (adult reciter reads an ayah and child repeats after him), nasheeds, coloring pages and much more.


Letter A activities:

For this letter we got most of our printable materials from Confessions of a Homeschooler.



We read The story of Ants (Children's Stories from the Qur'an by Goodwords Books) and did the coloring (Coloring Book by Goodwords Books). 




We watched documentaries about ants and anteaters on National Geographic.



Arabic alphabet out of playdoh:





















Letter B:

Letter B is for Bismillah, boat, balloon, ball, etc. He colored the pictures, I helped a little too.



Learning letters by using blocks, pom poms, playdoh and DIY bus foam puzzle:






Letter C

Book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle
Life cycle of Butterfly on youtube.
"The Very Hungry Caterpillar" worksheets, coloring pages from the internet - http://www.eric-carle.com/ColoringSheet.jpg
DIY life cycle of Butterfly, I really liked this idea on the internet, we didn't end up doing it only because we didn't have different varieties of pasta in our pantry.













Caterpillar craft idea from here.



Letter C is for Creation coloring page.

DIY car foam puzzle











C shaped bread