Educating our Children

[asalamualaykum]

Assalamu alaykum

forgot to mention above that all new words should be defined for the child first.

here's a video which better illustrates how dication should be done:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9fXrQVOOo8

If you are also teaching arabic to the child then you can follow the same steps. We use ahadith for Arabic and hence end up hitting two birds with one stone as they end up memorising the hadith by the end of the activity.

the next teaching practice i want to outline is narration, but i'm currently working on finding online texts free for download for this as i figure more parents will try it if there is an available free resource.

[littleMother]

I have suspected my son was behind because he may have hearing problems. we waited for a while to get an appointment with the Audiologist which was yesterday. turns out he has Moderate hearing loss. the Dr asked if he is having any learning difficulties, I said yes in reading, she nodded her head and said shes not surprised at all. so a few more appointments with specialists to see if its his tonsils or adenoids or if he needs grommets. either way, its fixable insha'Allah.

alhamdulillah I can stop feeling so guilty

[asalamualaykum]

Assalamu alaykum,

Narration (these are so easy and take up very little time and effort on the parent's part)

Narration involves reading a selection of text or a short story to a child and asking him to retell it back including as much detail as he can remember.

The main goal of narration is to teach children to become articulate speakers and writers.

It teaches children to think on their feet and speak formally (which in turn translates to better/formal writing). All throughout their day children use informal slang language but narration compels them to try and use formal language for at least the 10 minutes or so a day that they take part in this activity.

The child will remember a lot of the vocab and phrases from the chosen selections and will try to use these in his/her narration. The advantage of this is that the vocab and expressions will be better consolidated (more so than when he merely comes in contact with them through reading and listening) and will be readily available when he has to reproduce them at a later time.

At first the child may not be able to remember much of the details, and will use his own informal speech patterns to do the narrations but with practice children learn to focus more on detail and produce these in a language style that is in keeping with that of the original text. They will also start to remember and use more of the vocabulary and expressions used in the original text.

I remember when I first started doing these with my daughter she could hardly remember much from the readings. Then with time she was able to focus on detail more and reproduce these in her narrations. Now (some 4 years later) she tries to narrate the selection using the exact words of the author and does a pretty good job of it if the selection is not too long.

These narrations eventually lead to teaching summarisation and paraphrasing in later levels but I will talk about those later. Now i just want to convince you that narration is a valuable teaching tool if you want your child to be an articulate speaker/writer. I will go into more detail about how to carry out narration throughout the different age levels in a later post and I will also provide links to some sites/texts that you can use for these activities.

[asalamualaykum]

Age 5
Use mainly picture study for the narration activity. Show the child a picture and ask him to describe what he sees. Tell him to give you as much detail as he can. Demonstrate for him first so he knows how to do the activity. You can tell him to speak in complete sentences but he may not understand what a complete sentence is yet. Alternate between these and reading a short story. You only want him to focus on remembering detail at this point in time and he will be speaking informally the way he always does. It is not a problem at this stage. And he will be benfitting more where langauge is concerned also as he will focus much more on the story to gather details to retell and will hence “notice” vocab and other aspecs of language more. You may need to ask questions to elicit information from him if you find he is leaving out a lot of information. After some time he will recognise what is important and will be able to give you the required detail.

Age 6
At this age (grade 1) if you are implementing the whole classical education approach then the first thing that you will cover with the child is sentences and what makes a complete sentence. In the first grammar set of books I posted in this thread you will find there are tasks and activities teaching what a sentence is etc. After he has a thorough understanding of what consittutes a sentence and can produce these, you will ask the child to speak in full sentences when retelling the story/giving details about the pictures/stories. Encourage him to avoid using umm and too many ands and then. So you are guiding him to speak in a more formal way. If you find that he is missing out on important information you need to ask questions that will elicit this information. This will in turn sharpen his focus on important detail and he will be able to filter through what is important and what is not. Make sure you ask specific questions to make the child attend to small details also (e.g. what colour dress was the character wearing, list the foods that were laid out on the table etc).

Age 7
Start using texts from across the curriculum (no need for picture study at this piont). So science texts, history as well as literature. For all of these the reading should not be any longer than two pages. The science and history no longer than one page. So for example if you are covering the different layers of the earth and read out an excerpt for him naming and describing these, in his narration the child should be able to capture what the layers are and give a bit of a description of each one. Narrations actually help the child consolidate the new facts they have learnt also. Continue to ask questions if you find that he is not providing important detail in his retelling.

[asalamualaykum]

Age 8
You may now teach summation by asking the child to focus on specific details rather than give a full narration. To get the general storyline ask the student to give you the beginning, middle and end. If the selection is more descriptive and doesn’t have a normal storyline ask the student who or what it is about and ask him to give you two or three supporting facts. It is a good idea to indtoduce summation by asking specific questions (3 or so) about the selection whose answers will constitute the summary for the student. This will make it easy for the child to recognise what information needs to be included in a summary so he can do these indepently later on. These summations should not exceed 5 or 6 sentences. As the child gets older his ability to express himself in formal language will also be a lot more developed. Make sure to correct his sentence or if you find that he uses a word/term/phrase too many times resulting in a redundant sounding piece of writing ask how else could he express that differently and if he finds it difficult, reword it for him. Through this you are providing him with the support he requires and modelling correct language.

At the same time continue to do full narrations. Alternate between these. At this stage the student will be so confident and his ability to pick out important details sharpened, you will find that he will use a lot of the vocab the text uses and will attempt to recite much of it from memory. Don’t worry too much if he can’t do this though as every child’s ability is different. My second daughter is 7 and still finds it difficult to focus and give me all the important details- very unlike her older sister. Everyone is different.

Ages 9-11
The student can now read the selections for himself (instead of having you read them to him) and write out a summary without guiding questions. He will know by now that with stories it is a matter of focusing and mentioning the who,what and when followed by the complication and then the resolution (i.e. beginning, middle and end). And for more factual texts he will be able to write about the phenomena at hand and add a few discriptions/ facts. Make sure that he does the summary orally first and that you correct his utterances/sentence if need be and add any important information that he may have missed out on. Then he is to go and write these down. If he can do this well at this early age then he should have no problems in his school career later on when it comes to summarising and paraphrasing.

[asalamualaykum]

Three things I forgot to mention:
1) Make sure to instruct the child to retell the story following the correct order of events as they occur in the reading.
2) Continue to do full narrations after you have started summation (so all the way through to age 11- alternate between full and summation).
3) Read the selection only once to the child.

In order for the child to do these narrations the information/language needs to be comprehensible and at his level. The following are graded readers with many short stories that you can use. If you find that some of the stories are too long you can select just one page and use that. These are classics and so use higher quality language than your usual readers.

To those parents who are not interested in doing narration activities, your child can still benefit hugely from these and you may use them as normal readers.
I have not had a thorough look through all of them, just merely skimmed through them so make sure you check them out before handing them over to your children to insure there isn’t any unislamic material etc.


Reading Literature- Primer (prep)
https://ia600508.us.archive.org/5/it...atu00freegoog/

Reading Literature 1
https://ia700300.us.archive.org/12/i...eratur00trea2/

Reading Literature 2
https://ia600305.us.archive.org/24/i...atu04freegoog/

Reading Literature 3
https://ia700300.us.archive.org/30/i...atu00briggoog/

With this fourth reader many of the stories are based on Greek mythological Gods etc. I have included it anyway in case you want to white out the inappropriate material and still use them. Otherwise use the Sheldon Reader included at the bottom which is also level 4.
There are a links to a few more of these Sheldon’s readers. If you want them let me know. Or if you prefer to buy them these are still in print and they do sell them on Amazon for $25 per reader the last time i checked. No copyright rules are breached by printing and making use of all the material I have posted. They are vintage books and provided free for everyone to benefit from.

Reading Literature 4
https://ia700308.us.archive.org/35/i...atu02shrygoog/

Sheldon’s Reader 4
https://ia600304.us.archive.org/28/i...rns00unkngoog/

Reading Literature 5
https://ia600200.us.archive.org/5/it...atu01freegoog/

Reading Literature 6
https://ia600304.us.archive.org/30/i...atu03freegoog/

Reading Literature 7
https://ia600303.us.archive.org/17/i...atu01briggoog/

Reading Literature 8
https://ia700308.us.archive.org/33/i...atu00shrygoog/


more resource for narration coming up insha'Allah

[asalamualaykum]

Assalamu alaykum,

The following books are a real treasure chest. They are still used by many parents using the classical approach. And they all report great success with them. It is clear that the classical books (the ones I have used anyway) more recently produced for homeschooling parents have all borrowed heavily from these. They are pretty straight forward and easy to use and full of great language activities.

If you’re going to use a classical education why not use an authentic source and not an imitation?

For the narration you will find oral activities, picture studies etc in these that you can print out and file away into a folder titled “narration activities.” Go through all the books and form a collection- it will take you no more than a weekend. You will not be able to rely on these alone though and you will need to do your own thing also at times. Make sure you categorise according to grade levels. The grade levels in those days differed a little.

Here’s a little key:
Elementary/primary = The first three years of school (prep, grade 1, and grade 2)
Primary grammar = grade 3 and 4
Intermediate grammar = 5 and 6
And advanced grammar = 7 and 8

The Mary Hyde are excellent (I love these and plan to use them instead of Susan Wise’s books with my second daughter insha’Allah). They are to be used starting at grade 3 and each book covers 2 years:
Book 1
https://ia700805.us.archive.org/19/i...allesso00hyde/
Book 2
https://ia600807.us.archive.org/26/i...icalles00hyde/
Book 3
https://ia600307.us.archive.org/14/i...ons00hydegoog/

There are also composition books by the same author which are also great. I will post them later when I get a chance. I will also post up many more of these types of books by other authors but from around the same era for those who want to go through them and select oral activities/narration to form a resource folder.

I realise I’m overloading here. But I will take time later to clean up and explain which books to use at what stages and how to make up a good and effective language arts program.

[El Muslima]

Assalamu alaykum,

I realise I’m overloading here. But I will take time later to clean up and explain which books to use at what stages and how to make up a good and effective language arts program.

That would be great . Jazakallahul khair

[asalamualaykum]

Excellent 3 book series (spanning 6 years of school starting at grade 3) for teaching writing and composition. Plenty of narration and picture study activities to give you an idea of how to carry these out (though these narrations are tackled differently by different authors the aim is to give the child content to speak about in his retelling using formal speech).

Progressive composition Book 1
https://ia600303.us.archive.org/23/i...omp01braugoog/
Progressive composition Book 2
https://ia600302.us.archive.org/17/i...omp00braugoog/
Progressive composition Book 3
https://ia600307.us.archive.org/4/it...omp00kiddgoog/


wa iyakum el muslima. I'll start on that in my next post insha'Allah. I was just so excited with the above find I had to share them first.

Oh and my apology if I made it sound like you had to do all the above. A friend read through the thread and her response was: "you're such a nerd... why not just simplify it and tell us exactly what we need to use instead of overloading us with all this stuff?"

But every child learns differently and you may find that you start using a particular set of books and 2 years down the track it is not at all successful and you have to switch. For example I had used Susan Wises "First Language Lessons" from The Well Trained Mind curriculum with my 7 year old for two years and it just wasn't doing it for her, though it was a huge success for my eldest as it suits her learning style. Then I switched to KISS grammar (which is a totally different approach to teaching the same things) for my second daughter and in a few lessons she mastered what she couldn't get a handle on all this time.

'your sister' off this forum has done a great job creating an "educating our children" face book page which is a lot more organised, and has transferred all the links in this thread over (may Allah reward her effort). There are other members posting and contributing links and new things etc so any sisters who wish to follow that, contact her or myself insha'Allah.

[asalamualaykum]

Assalamu alaykum

Grades Prep, 1 and 2
In these grades make reading, handwriting and spelling your main focus. Classical education advocates a phonics approach to both reading and spelling. The Don Potter links I provided some time ago are no longer working but there is another URL which hosts the spelling books, readers, flashcards, wall charts and a whole lot of other phonics spelling and reading resources if you wanted to take that pathway.

http://www.donpotter.net/education_pages/

Remember to do narrations here too (please see above for how to carry out narrations at each of these levels).
Classical Education also requires that children do copy work at this stage. Very basic activity (which they do in school for handwriting) where you copy out a well written sentence or two into the child’s book and point out the features (including capital letters, punctuation -and explain why they are there, define new words etc) and ask them to copy it out 3 times or more. The following is a great site for producing copywork/handwriting pages. It’s new so make sure you check it out!

http://www.worksheetworks.com/englis...ndwriting.html

Grade 3
For Language: Use first the part of Hydes’ series in English (book 1) https://ia700805.us.archive.org/19/i...allesso00hyde/
For composition: Use first part of: The progressive composition series (book 1) https://ia600303.us.archive.org/23/i...omp01braugoog/
Narration activities (though you will find the above cover these where picture studies and literature are concerned) you may want to do narration using science and history texts and integrate these into those subjects- they will help the child remember content much better.

Dictation- this will be the first year you will introduce dictation (the above books cover some dictation too so this is just to supplement that). The following book covers 2 years of dictation so you can select from the first half of the book. https://ia600508.us.archive.org/22/i...lli00millgoog/
One way to ease into dictation is to first give the child the selection as a copywork activity and get him to write it out a few times instructing him to give special attention to spelling etc. and then dictate it to him the next day. It is much easier for them this way so if you find it is difficult for them; you can follow these steps in the first year that you introduce dictation.

Spelling and Reading (obviously)

Grade 4
For Language: Use the second part of Hydes’ series in English (book 1) https://ia700805.us.archive.org/19/i...allesso00hyde/
For composition: Use the second part of The progressive composition series (book 1) https://ia600303.us.archive.org/23/i...omp01braugoog/

Narration activities

Dictation- Use the second half of the following book for extra dictation selections https://ia600508.us.archive.org/22/i...lli00millgoog/
Spelling and Reading

Grade 5
In this grade the classical approach also introduces Vocabulary (which span 5 years of study). I am not aware of any online texts that cover this just yet but I have both the “wordly wise 3000” http://www.wordlywise3000.com/ and the “vocabulary from the classical roots” series. And I prefer the “vocabulary from the classical roots” series which you can purchase from the bookdepository. This is also the one that is recommended by the well trained mind. I think the wordly wise have an online site that you can subscribe to.
If I come across any vintage texts online for download I will post insha’Allah.

For Language: Use the first part of Hydes’ series in English (book 2) https://ia600807.us.archive.org/26/i...icalles00hyde/
For composition: Use first part of The progressive composition series (book 2) https://ia600302.us.archive.org/17/i...omp00braugoog/
Narration activities

Dictation- Use the first half of the following book for extra dictation selections https://ia700306.us.archive.org/27/i...lli01millgoog/
Spelling and Reading

Grade 6
For Language: Use the second part of Hydes’ series in English (book 2) https://ia600807.us.archive.org/26/i...icalles00hyde/
For composition: Use second part of The progressive composition series (book 2) https://ia600302.us.archive.org/17/i...omp00braugoog/
Narration activities

Dictation- Use the second half of the following book for extra dictation selections https://ia700306.us.archive.org/27/i...lli01millgoog/
Spelling and Reading

Vocabulary

Year 7 and 8
Language: Use the following book Hydes’ series in English (book 3) covering half the book each year
https://ia600307.us.archive.org/14/i...ons00hydegoog/
Composition: Use the following book The progressive composition series (book 3) covering half the book each year https://ia600307.us.archive.org/4/it...omp00kiddgoog/

Vocabulary

A lot is covered at the secondary level (known as the rhetoric stage) but I can’t comment much as I have read very little about it to date.

[khadouj]

I cannot access any of the last post's links ..keep getting "page not available" ..

[your sister]

If anyone wants to join us, we have organised a private group "educating our children"where we tried to archive everything for sisters to refer to when they need it . If you have myself or aussiemu or Umrashid on your list ask them to invite you InshALLAH SISTERS ONLY

[asalamualaykum]

Thanks sis Khadouj. They should be working now.

Also, I just realised I had added a link to the wrong book in post #127. I have fixed it up. So those of you who have downloaded book 3 in that post know that you've downloaded the wrong book and should go back and download the correct one that is up there now.

If you are downloading from post #130, there is no need to download some of the previous books (including the language, composition and dictation books- i.e. links in posts #120, 127 and 129 ) as they are the same links as those provided in post # \130, I've just categorised them into grade levels (and broke them up into parts one and two as all of the books span a two year teaching period) . So where you see part 2 of a book in post 130, there is no need to download it as it would be the same as the link for part 1. I was just trying to make it clearer what should be used when.

Confusing much?

If something is not clear let me know.

[sista_tasneem]

Your sister is that a face group page? Can I please be added.

[Husnia]

I didn't read the pages before but quick question, do you know where I can find children's books about all the prophets in Islam? I named my baby zackariah after the prophet and I want a picture bOok I can read/show him as well as the others.Also, I don't want online stuff. Thank you!

[asalamualaykum]

salam sis Husnia,

Try goodwordkidz. The author only uses ahadith and Quran for his stories of the prophets. With a lot of the others, you get a lot of israiliyat embedded into the stories as well. IBC has them.

Also, it is nice to have suwar that make mention of Zachariya radiyallahu anh playing within your little boy's earshot. He will start to attend more to the verses when he hears his name. My little boy used to love hearing his name during Quran recitation. Then when he got a little older he thought he was special because only his name was ever made mention of and never his sisters and he used to feel really proud lol. Now he knows it's not at all about him.

[asalamualaykum]

These are from the site posted by brother NRaF in this thread. Just wanted to bring attention to them as I think they are a great little resource for teaching children Arabic.

Arabic talking books. Download and save, then you should be able to get them “talking” by clicking on the text. Also include a talking picture dictionary at the end of each book.

Grade 1:
http://bookstolearnarabic.wordpress....ories-grade-1/

Grade 2:
http://bookstolearnarabic.wordpress....ories-grade-2/

Grade 3:
http://bookstolearnarabic.wordpress....ories-grade-3/

Grade 4:
http://bookstolearnarabic.wordpress....ories-grade-4/


You can find more here:
http://omarmariam.irsyad.sg/

[Lizzy]

I would use this for myself to teach myself Arabic. But I need to be able to read arabic first. Ohhhh dear....
Great idea though.