“Discussions on Classical Education”

Greetings! Although i wanted to post my own thoughts, i came across this on my facebook and couldn’t resist reposting it/sharing it and since it HAS been twice already on other sites, figured there’s no copyright so it’s alright. Yes, sometimes i think in rhyme… 

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F9iHxQP&h=1b1df1c0d0df7dab74b5a56ff5f57476 

http://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/ 

The Smithsonian Institution’s recipe for genius and leadership: 

Children should spend a great deal of time with loving, educationally minded parents; 

Children should be allowed a lot of free exploration; and 

Children should have little to no association with peers outside of family and relatives. –H. McCurdy 

My husband and I have no qualms about our style of parenting, which is so tied up in home education. He grew up beside his father in a greenhouse. Our first apartment at 500 sq ft, had 31 houseplants in it. He now works as a landscape designer. So we understand this analogy: Children are like little plants. You take the seed and put it in a little cup of the best topsoil. You give it lots of light. You gently sprinkle it with drops of water so the delicate leaves aren’t broken. When it gets a decent root system, you transplant it to a bigger pot. You protect it from the wind and the hottest sun. You bring it in when there’s a freeze. You don’t put it out where the dog will trample it or a deer will eat the buds. When its well-established, and the season is right, you can transplant it finally to its place outside your home. Then it will do well on its own in the downpours and coldest winters. 

So we plan to raise our children, protecting them and ensuring they are firmly established before they go out into the world. It is our hope that they do much better at surviving their relationships and careers with such a secure beginning. Our family follows the Classical Education model. I use the book, “The Well-Trained Mind” as the base for our curriculum. The basic premise of the classical method is the breakdown of education into three sections which each build on each other. First is the Grammar stage, generally 1st-4th grades, in which a child’s curiosity is encouraged by just stuffing them full of images and facts. The next stage is the Logic stage, generally 5th- 8th grades, where an adolescent begins to find the answers to the how and why of what they learned in the Grammar stage. Last is the Rhetoric stage, in which 9th -12th graders learn how to coherently express what they have learned. In Classical Education, all learning follows history as its base and the other subjects work around it. In addition, a student goes over the same material three times in his education (cycling through the material once in each stage). 

An example of this is our reading material. Ideally, it should be exciting to entrance and interest the first grader, in-depth for the questioning fifth grader, and even more interesting and in depth for the ninth grader. In our home, I buy books on a fifth grade level to read to our first grader, and when we cycle back to the same material in the fifth grade, they read it for themselves, and in ninth grade they read source material. For example, I read The Trojan War and the 12 Labors of Hercules to my first grader. All of my children were enthralled. There were no pictures except those that streamed through their imaginations. Then, when we return to ancient history in the fifth grade, she will curl up on the couch and read about Hercules on her own. This time she’ll learn that mom edited out the reason why he was assigned the 12 tasks: he killed his wife and children in a drunken rage. Then, when she returns again to the ancients in the ninth grade, she won’t be intimidated by reading Homer’s Illiad itself in the poetic original version. What’s to be afraid of, when you’re already familiar with the times and places? Also, when she was taught astronomy in the second grade, she already knew the story behind the crab-shaped constellation, from last year when she saw Hercules toss him into the sky in her mind’s eye. 

I was looking at a book from a series aimed at second-graders, called Junie B. Jones. It is listed on reading lists for this age group- yet it has sentences starting with conjunctions and fragments on every page. It has adjectives like bestest. It frequently says me and her. On a whim I looked up classical literature for this age group. I found rough breakdowns of classical literature by grade level. One example was The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. The first five sentences in The Velveteen Rabbit had an average of 29.2 words in each sentence. The first five sentences of Junie B. Jones and her Big Fat Mouth had an average of 5.4 words per sentence. 

An example of one of the more complex sentences which I found in JBJ & her Big Fat Mouth was “Eating things that you find on the ground is very, very dangerous.” I gave it another try and found “That’s because I had tingling excitement in me about Job Day.” In addition to using more complex sentence structure, Williams does not pare down her vocabulary to meet the child reader. Look how this sentence from The Velveteen Rabbit teaches the meaning of the word superior: “The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real.” JBJ is so full of incorrect grammar and simple sentences because it is written from the point of view of a modern first-grader, who would actually speak like that (unfortunately) and have simple interactions. However, there are quite a few older books, written in a different time, from the point of view of a five-year-old (Heidi, Little House series). They are also more complex and descriptive and are much preferred to modern books written for our young people. 

Another difference found in the Classical Education model is the emphasis of the use of whole books instead of readers. In public schools today, segments of books are printed in textbooks with summary questions at the end. The publisher chops the most exciting or pertinent portions of a work out, puts it in the textbook, and asks directed questions which can be answered by that portion. Then we wonder later why kids can’t dig through a whole book and find themes when it is not spelled out to them! 

I encourage you to challenge your child’s reading level by not feeding them Goosebumps or Sweet Valley High, Babysitter’s Club, or such books. Yes, your child is reading, but she is not really being challenged when she only reads about familiar locales in familiar phrasing. Always read what is a little difficult, not playground conversation in written form. When I was in middle school I really enjoyed the Sackett series by Louis L’Amour. A few of them are written from the point of view of a young girl. They give excellent images of early backwoods Eastern America. They encourage determination, hard work, overcoming obstacles, honesty, trustworthiness, gumption, and a host of other excellent qualities. 

Those are virtues I would hope that any parent would like to see cultivated in their child. But because educating at home is solely the responsibility of the parents, these are especially crucial. As homeschoolers, we have great freedom to: 

Do our schoolwork wherever we want 

Wear whatever we want 

Go at whatever pace we choose 

Drop work we already know 

Spend extra time on topics we love 

Do our work whenever we want 

Take breaks or work through 

but these freedoms give us responsibilities that families with children in regular schools don’t carry. They aren’t held accountable for what is (or isn’t) learned. They don’t have to be personally disciplined to cover the material or lessons themselves. They have an outside authority taking care of all that, who will be held accountable in a public forum. As home educators, we have to force ourselves take care of the objectives. We meet the goals which we set for ourselves, or we don’t. No one else will come in and check on us. We have to be responsible for our own education, and that means getting the work done and then doing the playing. So traits like persistence, responsibility, determination, honesty and the ability to do hard work are instilled in each work day, as much as math, science, history or English skills are. Unlike those who defer the education of their children to others, we are able and willing to drop the spelling lesson and address the poor attitude. We can put the multiplication drills on hold until the whining is under control. We can give time to grieve a lost grandparent before expecting academic performance to continue on uninterrupted. There are many, many reasons why we have chosen to educate our children at home. These are just a few. 

　 

Teresa Dear is a homeschooling mother of four. She and her husband of eleven years are not worried about the socialization of their children. You can follow the blog exploration of classical education in general and their homeschool lifestyle in particular at 

Source: 

http://highereducation-mama4x.blogspot.com She divides her time between education, the house, the extra-curricular activities, shopping for curriculum, and stocking her http://www.mama4x.etsy.com storefront, where you can find handmade greeting cards and vintage ephemera.http://www.homeschool-articles.com/ 

Attachment Parenting Basics

When a person dies, his actions are terminated except for three; a recurring charity or knowledge that he leaves which is benefited from or a pious offspring who supplicates for him“(sahih Muslim #1631)

I have been real busy because of Eid and the holidays and as well trying to keep a very active boy busy and out of trouble but al hamdulilah I have started homeschooling my older daughter, age 9 again and well learning with, advising and guiding children never ends and although my son wasn’t technically school age, he takes just as much (of my) time as his sister! Plus, i have a teenager now,(yay) So i have been busy and although in a really good article on what could be killing your blog, you should never say, “ it’s been a long time” I feel I must apologize and say that inshaAllah i will be posting more often and relevant, beneficial information for homeschooling and teaching our children, God willing! On that note, here is a handwritten list I copied here word for word, that fell off my fridgerator today i deemed so important ended up in storage for a month and in the new place, back on the fridge!

8 Principles of  Attachment Parenting :             

1. Prepare for pregnancy, birth and parenting

2. Feed with love and respect

3. Respond with sensitivity

4. Use nurturing touch

5. Engage in nightime parenting (co-sleeping)

6. Provide consistant and loving care

7. Practice positive discipline

8. Strive for balance in personal and family life

 Tarbiyyah,    tazkiyyah,    aklaq,     adaab,    taqwa!

First of all, these are not MY personal ideas i condensed them from somewhere online I think. I tried to see if I could find the source because I thought I remembered it and i wanted to site the source but their list is not identical to mine but here is the site www.attachmentparenting.org and you may click on the right which should lead you to the eight principles. Also, i may have gotten it from a father’s blog that i subscribed to http://www.apparenting.com/ The sites I list I use and may be helpful but please keep in mind I don’t agree with everything they write and I am not responsible for what they say. Thanks!

Second, many of these parenting principles can not only be found in Islam but we have specific hadeeth from the sunnah of Prophet Muhammad, (pbuh) mercy and messenger to mankind,  that by his example or speech, embody these ideals within our actions, treatment of others and parenting. I hope to look some of these hadeeth up and list them here soon inshaAllah. Any of you are welcome to help me out in the comments section   May Allah guide us all, grant us patience, purify our intentions and reward us for seeking knowledge of how to better raise our children as contributions to society and teaching them to know Him for success in this life and the next. And to Allah (alone) is all praise.

“And I (Allah) created not the jinns and men except they should worship me (Alone).”  [Al Quran chapter 51 verse 56]

Peace and blessings to the rightly guided and may Allah guide those seeking the Truth.

My brothers and sisters and all visitors, COEXSIST and practice TOLERANCE!…..please!    Allah did not create us in nations and tribes but to know one another. (Al Quran)

Beginning Homeschooling, Classical, WTM, and Islamic

This post is an answer to questions I was asked from a Muslim mother who wanted to begin homeschooling her child using the Well Trained Mind method/ Classical education. There were a few other points I wanted to make in addition to adding some insightful quotes to elaborate on a couple things I wrote from books I have read. I will look that up, inshaAllah and edit it soon, so please come back. I feel my advice is better when I quote the source, who may word it much better than me

ANSWER  : You know, I truly feel that parents are almost always better suited to teach their children then teachers in schools. There are of course, some exceptions such as an abusive parent or one who does not at all wish to teach their child. The latter would probably not have a positive impact on their child’s education and may even damage or stunt that child’s ability to learn or love learning. However for the capable and willing parent, homeschooling is certainly a wonderful and viable option than being taught in public school.

 Teacher’s training is not really about knowledge and wisdom they acquire and pass on to their students; but time, lesson management and how to handle many children at once. I had also joined some teacher groups online and if you read what really goes on in schools and what they say you would never want to subject your child to that! Also, it’s always a “one size fits all” approach to educating school children. To illustrate that point I recommend you watch this very short, excellent film called “Animal school” I liked it so much I even ordered the book and gave it to my local Islamic school -

www.raisingsmallsouls.com and click on the little box for the film in the middle.

I am going to go look at my bookshelf and write you back on some recommended articles or books on homeschooling but what really got me thinking is what you said about can you really give your child a good education and do better than the “best” schools. That is the first subject Jessie Wise covers in her book, The Well Trained Mind.

I pulled my daughter out of kindergarten after a few months and taught her to read in two weeks while by the end of the school year, most of her class could not read yet. I started the day in the morning, structured and intending as many hours as “real” school. It didnt take long to realize that 1) my daughter wouldn’t stand for that much instruction, nor cooperate and 2) she could learn in less than four hours a day what took eight hours to days of “real” school instruction.

This is because most of the time in school is spent in line, switching classes, going to the bathroom, lunch, break, recess and “busy time” where the teacher just gives the class “busy work” to keep them occupied so she can grade papers or plan the next lesson.

I really believe that a child will be most successful in learning by following what interests them and having some encouragement, guidance and structure from the parent in that area. (This is sometimes called “child led” or Unschooling.)

I was so rigid in the beginning, trying to make “school” at home. Sakina is very strong willed and always has been and she knows what she wants and doesn’t like. We fell into a pattern of learning 2 or 3 hours in the morning and a few in the afternoon or evening. That worked best for her. Now that she is older and her attention span longer we would definitely do most of the work during the day before four.

Honestly, if you feel the regular stuff you are doing with her now, like people have suggested is not enough, start her on memorizing Quran. That is what the WTM talks about in the elementary years, they are in the “parrot” stage and will copy and memorize everything and the time to memorize grammar and math rules and poems at it’s best. The book says even if they don’t understand what they are memorizing, they will draw upon it later and understand it more.

Does she know daily du’a? The ones for going in the bathroom, leaving and entering the house and beginning to eat? Those are short, easy things for her to learn that are not only important but invaluable. Allah and his prophet, salla lahu alahi wa salam told us the many rewards and protection from sin and shaytaan by remembering Him. We do this by saying the du’a in all situations and learning the du’a of the prophets, in the Quran.

I would start her with the story of the Creation. Read her stories on it and you said your daughter could read and write some, I would have her practice her writing at least 5 to 15 minutes a day. If you want to get her started more than what you’re doing now, she should be able to write because the WTM by grade 2 and especially 3 starts them copying passages. I had my Sakina copy passages on Creation and then the prophets, in order and other persons in history. There is a series called the Story of Civilization at the library and subhannaAllah one day I found a used one The Age of Faith for sale at the local used bookstore and I had her copy short passages from there.  

Asking me about starting to homeschool made me think of another important first step to homeschooling your child: deciding what your goal is and what you hope to accomplish by educating your child at home.  I read that when you set out to homeschool, the first thing you should do is decide what you want your child to gain and learn and what are your goals and your focus? Islamically, this is called “intention” and we know “actions are by intention”

For instance, some people actually take their kids out of school because they don’t want then saying the pledge of allegiance or be taught about God in any way because they are atheists and want their children to have no other influence but this belief. We, on the other hand, do want our children to know their Lord and want to arm them with the correct knowledge and belief so that they cannot just make a life on earth or earn a living but prepare themselves for the day of judgment and the afterlife.

So, think to yourself: What are your goals for your child? what do you hope to accomplish in homeschooling your daughter? Some parents simply want their child to memorize the whole Quran. Even though you may want her to have an “excellent” education you also need to consider your child’s interests, temperment and character. Study the sunnah of our Prophet and how he treated and related to children. There is a lot of psychology in Islam! After you yourself have learned more of the Prophet’s (saws) behavior, action, and advice towards children you implement that in raising your child.

Lastly i want to say i am not perfect, I have made mistakes and I’m no expert on teaching children. I do have and have read many book and do have experience teaching others and my own children. I do not nearly have the patience I used to, may Allah forgive me. I had so much energy when I was younger! But I try to remember that there are few things that will benefit my scale after I die and one of them is having righteous children that will pray for me after i die. Even though I know that I have failed in many things, I try to improve my own self and give my children the correct aqeedah and love of learning. This is a trust that Allah has given me and my responsibility to raise them as Muslims. All else and other “ilm” (knowledge) besides that is secondary.

I will look up helpful articles I have saved and my favorite books. Off the top of my head two REALLY helpful and insightful were by the teacher Ron Clark. One book was The Essential 55 and the other had an eleven in it. Read the “11″ one first and it’s much shorter. I will add more books to this list of beneficial books on teaching and parenting later, inshaAllah.  Oh, and everything I read said not to go out and buy too many books but that’s what i did. I really had too many and went overboard especially when i was homeschooling my friend’s three boys. Research, research and choose carefully what you buy and plan or you’ll be overwhelmed! END

To everyone who reads this : O my brother and sisters, may Allah guide us and be with us and may we give our children the correct aqeedah and the tools to succeed in this life and the akhirah! I hope some of what I said has helped. May Allah forgive me if I said anything wrong.

Scientific Proofs Against TV

InshaAllah I will be writing more often, I had so many things happen and that’s why i haven’t posted in a long time. I was in the middle of a  divorce, I moved twice and I got custody of my oldest daughter who was age fifteen. Al hamdulilah. Then she turned sixteen. I haven’t had custody of her since she was fourteen months old even though I had visitation. Recently, I had not gotten to see her in over a year even though I tried many times. It is a miracle I have her now but anyway, I wanted to post this article; it is the best article I have ever read about the negative impact of television on our children.  My next posts will be links, articles and arts and crafts to do for Ramadan, inshaAllah. I also will go more into detail how to substitute and blend Islamic learning with some of the beginning assignments from books recommended in The Well Trained Mind. Eventually I want to have a complete plan starting from pre-kindergarten with everything listed here: a guide including links with printable worksheets, articles, and advice being so comprehensive the homeschooler/ home educator will not have to spend hours planning and preparing but simply be able to teach their child as long as they have a computer and access to a printer. Oh, and you must have books…lots of them! If you cannot, get either a library card, go to used bookstores, thrift stores, or library sales or even join a local homeschooling group where they are sure to have swaps, freebies, and used books for sale. If you live in the country, (desert or Alaska, lol) and books are hard to find or order and ship there are also online libraries that you can download books or articles, basically “electronically” checking it out. There are also sites you can subscribe to for a fee and can downoad books to your computer or electronic device such as an I Pod, but there are many ways to get books and educational products and tools free. I have myself read mnay books online from classics to modern bestsellers.

Back to the subject, here is one of the best articles I have ever read about the negative aspects of television. I am including what i saved from the yahoo group and the sister who posted it. This article was different than any other article I had read against TV. It IS long, but  I feel it is VERY important parents, caregivers, and educators read this.

as salaam aliakum wa rahmatu Allahi wa barakatuh All,

When reading the article below, it provides evidence as to why and strategies for how parents and educators are able to shift a child’s learning environment to something more beneficial (i.e., Qur’an, ‘Arabic, and Islamic Studies) in order to become true leaders in our communities, insha’Allah.

ASA,

Ayesha

forwarded from:   

http://www.groups. yahoo.com/ group/seekingthe pathtojannah/

 

 

 

Strangers in Our Homes:
TV and Our Children’s Minds

 

 

 

Susan R. Johnson, M.D.

 

 

 

© Susan R. Johnson, M.D., 1999.

 

 

Duplication and redistribution of unbound paper copies permitted.

 

 

TV rots the senses in the head!
It kills the imagination dead!
It clogs and clutters up the mind!
It makes a child so dull and blind.
He can no longer understand a fantasy,
A fairyland!
His brain becomes as soft as cheese!
His powers of thinking rust and freeze!

 

An excerpt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,
By Roald Dahl, 1964

 

 

As a mother and a pediatrician who completed both a three-year residency in Pediatrics and a three-year subspecialty fellowship in Behavioral and Developmental Pediatrics, I started to wonder: “What are we doing to our children’s growth and learning potential by allowing them to watch television and videos as well as spend endless hours playing computer games?”

I practiced seven years as the Physician Consultant at the School Health Center in San Francisco, performing comprehensive assessments on children, ages 4-12, who were having learning and behavioral difficulties in school. I saw hundreds of children who were having difficulties paying attention, focusing on their work, and performing fine and gross motor tasks. Many of these children had a poor self-image and problems relating to adults and peers. As a pediatrician, I had always discouraged television viewing, because of the often violent nature of its content (especially cartoons) and because of all the commercials aimed at children. However, it wasn’t until the birth of my own child, 6 years ago, that I came face to face with the real impact of television. It wasn’t just the content, for I had carefully screened the programs my child watched. It was the change in my child’s behavior (his mood, his motor movements, his play) before, during and after watching TV that truly frightened me.

Before watching TV, he would be outside in nature, content to look at bugs, make things with sticks and rocks, and play in the water and sand. He seemed at peace with himself, his body, and his environment. When watching TV, he was so unresponsive to me and to what was happening around him, that he seemed glued to the television set. When I turned off the TV he became anxious, nervous, and irritable and usually cried (or screamed) for the TV to be turned back on. His play was erratic, his movements impulsive and uncoordinated. His play lacked his own imaginative input. Instead of creating his own play themes, he was simply re-enacting what he had just seen on TV in a very repetitive, uncreative and stilted way.

At age 3 1/2 years, our son went on a plane trip to visit his cousins near Boston, and on the plane, was shown the movie “Mission Impossible.” The movie was right above our son’s head making it difficult to block out. Earphones had not been purchased, so the impact was only visual, but what an impact it had on our son. He had nightmares and fears about fires, explosions, and bloody hands for the next 6 months, and his play was profoundly changed. One of my colleagues told me I just had an overly sensitive child, and because I had not taken him to see a movie or let him watch much TV, he was not “used to it” and that was why he was so disturbed by the pictures he saw. All I could think was thank heaven he was not “used to it”.

Later that year, I assessed six different children from ages 8 – 11 years at the School Health Center who all had similar difficulties with reading. They couldn’t make a mental picture of letters or words. If I showed them a series of letters and asked them to identify one particular letter, they could do it. If I gave them no visual input and just asked them to write a particular letter by memory, they couldn’t do it. All of these children watched a lot of television and videos and played computer games. I wondered what happens to a developing child placed in front of a TV set if they are presented with visual and auditory stimuli at the same time. What is left for the brain to do? At least with reading a story or having a story read to them, the mind can create its own imaginative pictures.

A question arose and I immediately called up my colleague and asked: “Could television itself be causing attention problems and learning difficulties in children?” My colleague laughed and said just about everyone watches TV – even my child does – and she doesn’t have Attention Deficit Disorder or a learning disability. I thought to myself: “Are we spending enough time with our children and looking deeply enough into their development and soul to notice the often subtle changes that occur from spending hours in front of the TV set”? Maybe some children are more vulnerable to the effects of television because of a genetic predisposition or poor nutrition or a more chaotic home environment. I wondered about the loss of potential in all our children, because they are exposed to so much television and so many videos and computers games. What are the capacities we are losing or not even developing because of this TV habit? I then started to read, attend lectures, and ask a lot more questions.

Television has been in existence for the past 80 years, though the broadcasting of entertainment shows didn’t begin until the 1940’s. In 1950, 10% of American households owned a TV set. By 1954, this percentage had increased to 50%, and by 1960, 80% of American households owned a television. Since 1970, more than 98% of American households own a TV and currently 66% of households own three or more TVs. Television is on almost 7 hours per day in an average American home. Children of all ages, from preschool through adolescence, watch an average of 4 hours of TV per day (excluding time spent watching videos or playing computer games). A child spends more time watching TV than any other activity except sleeping, and by age 18 a child has spent more time in front of a TV than at school.

There have been numerous articles looking at the content of television and how commercials influence children’s (and adults’) desires for certain foods or material goods (e.g., toys), and how violence seen on television (even in cartoons) leads to more aggressive behavior in children (Fischer et. al. 1991, Singer 1989, Zuckerman 1985). Concerns have been raised about who is teaching our children and the developmental appropriateness of what is presented on TV to toddlers, children, and even adolescents. Miles Everett, Ph.D., in his book, How Television Poisons Children’s Minds, points out that we don’t allow our child to talk to strangers, yet through television we allow strangers into the minds and souls of our children everyday. These “strangers” (advertising agencies), whose motivations are often monetary, are creating the standards for what is “good” or developmentally appropriate for the developing brains of our children.

More importantly, several investigators (Healy 1990, Pearce 1992, Buzzell 1998, Winn 1985) have drawn attention to the actual act of viewing television as even more insidious and potentially damaging to the brain of the developing child than the actual content of what’s on TV. So what are we doing to our children’s potential by allowing them to watch television?

Question: How does a child’s brain develop and how does a child learn?

Joseph Chilton Pearce in his book, Evolution’s End, sees a child’s potential as a seed that needs to be nurtured and nourished in order to grow properly. If the environment doesn’t provide the necessary nurturing (and protections from over-stimulation) , then certain potentials and abilities cannot be realized. The infant is born with 10 billion nerve cells or neurons and spends the first three years of life adding billions of glial cells to support and nourish these neurons (Everett 1992). These neurons are then capable of forming thousands of interconnections with each other via spider-like projections called dendrites and longer projections called axons that extend to other regions of the brain.

 

It is important to realize that a six-year-old’ s brain is 2/3 the size of an adult’s though it has 5 – 7 times more connections between neurons than does the brain of an 18-month-old or an adult (Pearce 1992). The brain of a 6 – 7 year old child appears to have a tremendous capacity for making thousands and thousands of dendrite connections among neurons. This potential for development ends around age 10 – 11 when the child loses 80% of these neural connections (Pearce 1992, Buzzell 1998). It appears that what we don’t develop or use, we lose as a capacity. An enzyme is released within the brain and literally dissolves all poorly myelinated pathways (Pearce 1992, Buzzell 1998).

In the developing child, there is a progression of brain development from the most primitive core (action) brain, to the limbic (feeling) brain, and finally to the most advanced neocortex, or thought brain. There are critical periods for brain development when the stimulus must be present for the capacity to evolve (for example, language). There is also plasticity in brain development so that even adults can make new dendritic connections, but they have to work harder to establish pathways which were more easily made in childhood.

[Figure (Pearce 1992) shows a brain cross-section with labels. 1. Thought: New Mammalian "Human" Brain 2. Feeling: Old Mammalian Limbic System 3. Action: Reptillian R-System]

The core (action) brain is dedicated to our physical survival and manages reflexes, controls our motor movements, monitors body functions, and processes information from our senses. Along with the limbic (feeling) brain, it is involved in the “flight or fight” response that our body has to a dangerous or threatening situation.

Humans react physically and emotionally before the thought brain has had time to process the information (Buzzell 1998).

Our limbic (feeling) brain wraps around our core (action) brain and processes emotional information (e.g., our likes – dislikes, love – hate polarities). Our feeling brain gives meaning and value to our memories and what we learn. It influences behavior based on emotional feelings and has an intimate relationship to our immune system and capacity to heal. It is involved in the forming of our intimate relationships and emotional bonds (e.g., between mother and child) and is connected with our dreaming, subtle intuitive experiences and the daydreams and fantasies that originate from the thought brain (Healy 1990). This feeling brain connects the more highly evolved thought brain to the more primitive action brain. Our lower action brain can be made to follow the will of our thought brain or our higher thought brain can be “locked into” the service of the lower action-feeling brain during an emergency that is real or imagined (Pearce 1992). The action and feeling brains can’t distinguish real from imaginary sensory input. It is a survival advantage to react first and think later.

Finally our thought brain, the neocortex, represents our highest and newest form of intellect. It receives extensive input from the core (action) brain and limbic (feeling) brain and has the potential of separating itself and being the most objective part of the brain. It connects us to our higher self. However, the neocortex needs more time to process the images from the action and feeling brains. It is also the part of the brain that has the most potential for the future, and it is the place where our perceptions (experiences) , recollections, feelings, and thinking skills all combine to shape our ideas and actions (Everett 1997). The thinking brain is “5 times larger than the other brains combined and provides intellect, creative thinking, computing and, if developed, sympathy, empathy, compassion and love” (Pearce 1992).

There is a sequential development (a progressive myelination of nerve pathways) of the child’s brain from the most primitive (action) brain to the limbic (feeling) brain and finally to the most highly evolved thought brain, or neocortex. Myelination involves covering the nerve axons and dendrites with a protective fatty-protein sheath. The more a pathway is used, the more myelin is added. The thicker the myelin sheath, the faster the nerve impulse or signal travels along the pathway.

For these reasons, it is imperative that the growing child receives developmentally appropriate input from their environment in order to nourish each part of the brain’s development and promote the myelination of new nerve pathways. For example, young children who are in the process of forming their motor-sensory pathways and sense organs (the action brain) need repetitive and rhythmical experiences in movement.

Children also need experiences that stimulate and integrate their senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. Their senses need to be protected from over-stimulation, since young children are literally sponges. Children absorb all they see, hear, smell, taste and touch from their environment since they haven’t developed the brain capacity to discriminate or filter out unpleasant or noxious sense experiences. The sense of touch is especially crucial since our culture and its hospital birth practices (including the high rate of C-sections) and, until recently, its discouragement of breast-feeding, deprive infants of critical multi-sensory experiences.

The stimulation and development of our sense organs is the precursor to the development of part of our lower brain, called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). The RAS is the gateway through which our sense impressions coordinate with each other and then travel to the higher thought brain. The RAS is the area of the brain that allows us to attend and focus our attention.

Impairments in motor-sensory pathways lead to impairments in children’s attention span and ability to concentrate (Buzzell 1998). Over-stimulation and under-stimulation of our senses and poorly developed fine and gross motor movements may lead to impairments in attention.

By age 4, both the core (action) and limbic (feeling) brains are 80% myelinated. After age 6-7, the brain’s attention is shifted to the neocortex (thought brain) with myelination beginning first on the right side or hemisphere and later joined by the left hemisphere. The right hemisphere is the more intuitive side of the brain, and it particularly responds to visual images. It grasps wholes, shapes and patterns and focuses on the big picture rather than the details. It directs drawing and painting and monitors melodies and harmonies of music. It is especially responsive to novelty and color and is the dominant hemisphere when watching TV (Healy, 1990, Everett 1997).

The left hemisphere dominates when a child reads, writes and speaks. It specializes in analytical and sequential thinking and step-by-step logical reasoning. It analyzes the sound and meaning of language (e.g., phonic skills of matching sound to letters of the alphabet). It manages fine muscle skills and is concerned with order, routine and details. The ability to comprehend science, religion, math (especially geometry) and philosophy relies on abstract thinking characteristic of the left hemisphere.

Even though we emphasize which functions of learning are performed by which hemisphere, there is a crucial connection between the two hemispheres called the corpus callosum. It consists of a large bundle of nerve pathways that form a bridge between the left and right hemispheres. It is one of the brain’s latest-maturing parts. The left and right sides of the body learn to coordinate with each other by this pathway. Gross motor activities like jumping rope, climbing, running, and circle games and fine motor activities like form drawing, knitting, pottery, origami, woodworking, embroidery, and bread-making are crucial to myelinating this pathway and lead to more flexible manipulation of ideas and a creative imagination. This pathway provides the interplay between analytic and intuitive thinking, and several neuropsychologists believe that poor development of this pathway affects the right and left hemispheres’ effective communication with each other and may be a cause of attention and learning difficulties (Healy 1990).

We myelinate our pathways by using them. Movements of our bodies combine with experiences of our senses to build strong neural pathways and connections. For example, when a toddler listens to the sound of a ball bouncing on the floor, tastes and smells the ball or pushes, rolls and throws the ball, neurons are making dendritic connections with each other. When a toddler examines balls of varying sizes, shapes, weights and textures, a field of thousands (and possibly millions) of interconnecting neurons can be created around the “word” ball (Pearce 1992).

Repetition, movement, and multisensory stimulation are the foundations of the language development and higher level thinking. The toddler’s repetitive experiences, with an object like a ball, create images or pictures in his/her brain. “The images of the core limbic brain form much of the elemental “food” for the remarkable and progressive abstracting abilities of the associative high cortex [neocortex]” (Buzzell 1998).

Question: What is so harmful to the mind about watching television?

Watching television has been characterized as multi-leveled sensory deprivation that may be stunting the growth of our children’s brains. Brain size has been shown to decrease 20-30% if a child is not touched, played with or talked to (Healy 1990). In addition when young animals were placed in an enclosed area where they could only watch other animals play, their brain growth decreased in proportion to the time spent inactively watching (Healy 1990). Television really only presents information to two senses: hearing and sight. In addition, the poor quality of reproduced sound presented to our hearing and the flashing, colored, fluorescent over-stimulating images presented to our eyes cause problems in the development and proper function of these two critical sense organs (Poplawski 1998).

 

To begin with, a child’s visual acuity and full binocular (three-dimensional) vision are not fully developed until 4 years of age, and the picture produced on the television screen is an unfocused (made up of dots of light), two-dimensional image that restricts our field of vision to the TV screen itself. Images on TV are produced by a cathode ray gun that shoots electrons at phosphors (fluorescent substances) on the TV screen. The phosphors glow and this artificially produced pulsed light projects directly into our eyes and beyond affecting the secretions of our neuro-endocrine system (Mander 1978). The actual image produced by dots of light is fuzzy and unfocused so that our eyes, and the eyes of our children, have to strain to make the image clear. Television, like any electrical appliance and like power lines, produces invisible waves of electromagnetism. Last June, a panel convened by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences decided there was enough evidence to consider these invisible waves (called electromagnetic fields or EMFs) as possible human carcinogens. In the article it was recommended that children sit at least 4 feet from TV and 18 inches from the computer screen (Gross 1999).

Our visual system, “the ability to search out, scan, focus, and identify whatever comes in the visual field” (Buzzell 1998), is impaired by watching TV. These visual skills are also the ones that need to be developed for effective reading. Children watching TV do not dilate their pupils, show little to no movement of their eyes (i.e., stare at the screen), and lack the normal saccadic movements of the eyes (a jumping from one point to the next) that is critical for reading. The lack of eye movement when watching television is a problem because reading requires the eyes to continually move from left to right across the page. The weakening of eye muscles from lack of use can’t help but negatively impact the ability and effort required to read. In addition, our ability to focus and pay attention relies on this visual system. Pupil dilation, tracking and following are all part of the reticular activating system. The RAS is the gateway to the right and left hemispheres. It determines what we pay attention to and is related to the child’s ability to concentrate and focus. The RAS is not operating well when a child watches television. A poorly integrated lower brain can’t properly access the higher brain.

In addition, the rapid-fire change of television images, which occurs every 5 to 6 seconds in many programs and 2 to 3 seconds in commercials (even less on MTV), does not give the higher thought brain a chance to even process the image. It reportedly takes the neocortex anywhere from 5 to 10 seconds to engage after a stimulus (Scheidler 1994). The neocortex is our higher brain, but also needs a greater processing time to become involved.

All the color combinations produced on the television screen result from the activation of only three types of phosphors: red, blue and green. The wavelengths of visible light produced by the activation of these phosphors represents an extremely limited spectrum compared to the wavelengths of light we receive when viewing objects outdoors in the full spectrum of reflected rays from the sun. Another problem with color television is that the color from it is almost exclusively processed by the right hemisphere so that left hemisphere functioning is diminished and the corpus callosum (the pathway of communication between the brain’s hemispheres) is poorly utilized (i.e., poorly myelinated).

Reading a book, walking in nature, or having a conversation with another human being, where one takes the time to ponder and think, are far more educational than watching TV. The television — and computer games — are replacing these invaluable experiences of human conversations, storytelling, reading books, playing “pretend” (using internal images created by the child rather than the fixed external images copied from television), and exploring nature. Viewing television represents an endless, purposeless, physically unfulfilling activity for a child. Unlike eating until one is full or sleeping until one is no longer tired, watching television has no built-in endpoint. It makes a child want more and more without ever being satisfied (Buzzell 1998).

Question: Well, what about watching Sesame Street, isn’t it educational for our children? Doesn’t it teach them how to read?

Jane Healy, Ph.D., in her book, Endangered Minds, wrote an entire chapter entitled “Sesame Street and the Death of Reading”. In addition to the concerns already mentioned about watching television, Sesame Street and the majority of children’s programming seems to put the left hemisphere and parts of the right hemisphere into slow waves of inactivity (alpha waves). Television anesthetizes our higher brain functions and disrupts the balance and interaction between the left and right hemispheres.

 

Brain waves can be measured by an EEG, and variations in recorded brain waves correspond to different states of activity in the brain. In general, reading produces active, fast beta waves while television watching leads to an increase in slow alpha waves in the left hemisphere and at times even in the right hemisphere (Buzzell 1998). Once again, the left hemisphere is the critical center for reading, writing and speaking. It is the place where abstract symbols (e.g., the letters of the alphabet) are connected to sounds (phonic skills). The pulsating fluorescent light source of television may have something to do with promoting slow wave activity. Our brain “wakes up” to novelty and falls asleep or habituates to repetitive, “boring” stimuli. Advertising agencies and many children’s shows (including Sesame Street) have had to counter children’s tendency to habituate to television by increasing the frequency of new images, using flashing colors, close-ups, and startling, often loud, sounds. These distracters get our attention momentarily but keep us operating in our lower core and limbic brains.

The lower brain can’t discern between images that are real or created on TV, because discernment is the function of the neocortex. Therefore, when the TV presents sudden close-ups, flashing lights, etc. as stimuli, the core-limbic brain immediately goes into a “fight or flight” response with the release of hormones and chemicals throughout the body. Heart rate and blood pressure are increased and blood flow to limb muscles is increased to prepare for this apparent emergency. Because this all happens in our body without the corresponding movement of our limbs, certain TV programs actually put us in a state of chronic stress or anxiety. Studies have shown atrophy of the left hemisphere in adults who are chronically stressed and only functioning from their core-limbic brain. Even as adults, what we don’t use, we lose.

Finally, when our brain is simultaneously presented with visual (images on the screen) and auditory (sound) stimuli, we preferentially attend to the visual. A dramatic example of this phenomenon was illustrated when a group of young children (6-7 years old) were shown a video show where the sound track did not match the visual action and the children, when questioned, did not appear to notice the discrepancy. Therefore, even in Sesame Street, studies have shown that children are not absorbing the content of the show (Healy 1990).

Maybe the most critical argument against watching television is that it affects the three characteristics that distinguish us as human beings. In the first 3 years of life, a child learns to walk, to talk and to think. Television keeps us sitting, leaves little room for meaningful conversations and seriously impairs our ability to think.

Question: What’s wrong with using television as just entertainment? I enjoyed watching Disney films like Snow White.

Television seems to have a profound effect on our feeling life and therefore, one could argue, on our soul. As human beings, we become detached from the real world by watching television. We sit in a comfortable chair, in a warm room, with plenty to eat and watch a show about people who are homeless, cold and hungry. Our hearts go out to them, but we do nothing. One could argue that reading a book could promote the same sense of unreality without action. The phrases “turn off the TV” or “get your nose out of your book” and “go do something” have meaning. Nevertheless, while reading a book (that doesn’t have a lot of pictures) the child’s mind creates its own pictures and has time to think about them. These thoughts could actually lead to ideas that inspire a child or adult to action. TV does not give time for this higher level of thinking that inspires deeds.

 

Television projects images that go directly into our emotional brain. It is said that the words we hear go into knowledge while the images we see go into our soul. Pictures that elicit emotion are processed by the limbic system and the right hemisphere of the neocortex. If no time is given to think about these emotional pictures, then the left hemisphere is not involved. Once again, watching television often eliminates the part of our brain that can make sense of, analyze and rationalize what we are seeing.

We don’t forget what we see. The limbic brain is connected to our memory, and the pictures we see on TV are remembered — either consciously, unconsciously or subconsciously. For example, it is almost impossible to create your own pictures of Snow White from reading a story if you have seen the movie. It is also true that often one is disappointed when one sees a movie after reading the book. Our imagination is so much richer than what can be shown on a screen.

The problem with television is that children get used to not using their imaginative thinking at all, and they don’t exercise that part of the brain (the neocortex) that creates the pictures. Children are not reading enough, and we aren’t reading or telling them enough stories to help their minds create pictures. Creating pictures is not just entertaining, but the foundation of our dreams and higher thoughts (intuitions, inspirations and imaginations) . We dream, think and imagine possibilities of the future in pictures.

Finally, the heart is now seen as an organ of perception that can respond to a stimulus and release a hormone-like substance that influences brain activity. This phenomenon is referred to as our heart intelligence (Pearce 1992).

Interacting with human beings is essential for the development of this intelligence. When we stand face to face and look into another person’s eyes, we meet soul to soul and we get a sense of who they really are (Soesman). We get a sense of whether they mean what they say – in other words, whether they are enthusiastic and passionate about their subject. We experience their non-verbal language such as how they move, the tone of their voice, and whether their gaze shifts around when they talk. This is how we learn to discern consistency between verbal and non-verbal cues and, therefore, truth.

Television can’t give us this intelligence of the heart. It can shock our emotions and we can cry, laugh or get angry, but these emotions are just reactions. When human beings speak on TV, children are often doing homework, playing games, and talking to friends while watching TV. These activities help save their visual system from the effects of TV, but the underlying message is that you don’t need to listen when another person speaks or comfort anyone if you hear crying. If the heart, like the brain and probably the rest of our body, gives off electromagnetic waves (Pearce 1992, Tiller 1999), then there is a form of subtle energy that only can be experienced between human beings by relating to each other in the same physical space. This subtle energy can’t be experienced by watching human beings on television. Just as we must use all our senses to construct higher level thoughts or pictures of an object, empathy and love for others does not develop from seeing human beings as objects on TV, but by actively relating, face to face, with each other.

Question: What can we do to help our children’s brain develop?

Keep the television turned off as much as possible.

When the television is on, then try to neutralize its damage. Select the programs carefully and watch TV with your child so you can talk about what you see. Keep a light on when the TV is going since that will minimize the effects of the reduced field of vision and provide a different light source for the eyes. Try to sit at least 4 feet from the television and 18 inches from the computer screen. Plan to go outside (to the park, woods, or beach) after viewing television.

Read a lot of books to your children (especially ones without lots of pictures) and tell your children lots of stories.

 

Nature! Nature! Nature!

 

Pay close attention to your senses and those of your child.

 

Have children use their hands, feet and whole body performing purposeful activities.

All the outdoor activities of running, jumping, climbing, and playing jump-rope help develop our children’s gross motor skills and myelinate pathways in the higher brain. Performing household chores, cooking, baking bread, knitting, woodworking, origami, string games, finger games, circle games, painting, drawing, and coloring help develop fine motor skills and also myelinate pathways in the higher brain. Our environment is noisy and over-stimulating to the sense organs. What a child sees, hears, smells, tastes, and touches is extremely important to his or her development. We need to surround our children with what is beautiful, what is good and what is true. How a child experiences the world has a tremendous influence on how the child perceives the world as a teenager and adult. Nature is the greatest teacher of patience, delayed gratification, reverence, awe and observation. The colors are spectacular and all the senses are stimulated. Many children today think being out in nature is boring, because they are so used to the fast-paced, action-packed images from TV (Poplawski 1998). We only truly learn when all our senses are involved, and when the information is presented to us in such a way that our higher brain can absorb it. Nature is reality while television is a pseudo-reality. Children love to hear stories about our lives when we were little or you can make them up. Bedtime and riding in the car provide good opportunities for telling stories. Telling our children stories helps to stimulate their internal picture making capabilities.Finally, the future of our children and our society is in the protection and development of our children’s minds, hearts and limbs. What we are aiming for in the thoughts of our children is best summarized in this fine verse from William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence:

 

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the Palm of your Hand

And Eternity in an Hour.

 

Susan R. Johnson, M.D., Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Behavioral and Developmental Pediatrics, UCSF /Stanford Health Care and Graduate of San Francisco Waldorf Teacher Training Program of Rudolf Steiner College.

This paper was presented at the Waldorf School of San Francisco on 5/1/99 as part of a senior project.

It may be freely xeroxed and distributed!

 

Bibliography

Buzzell, Keith. The Children of Cyclops: The Influence of Television Viewing on the Developing Human Brain. 1998 California: AWSNA.

Everett, Miles. How Television Poisons Children’s Minds. 1997 California: Miles Publishing.

Fischer, Paul. “Brand Logo Recognition by Children Aged 3 to 6 Years: Mickey Mouse and Old Joe the Camel”. JAMA Vol. 266, No. 22, December 11, 1991.

Gross, Liza. “Current Risks: Experts finally link Electromagnetic Fields and Cancer,” SIERRA, May/June 1999, p.30.

Healy, Jane. Endangered Minds: Why Children Don’t Think and What We Can Do About It. 1990 New York: Simon and Schuster.

Large, Martin. Who’s Bringing Them Up? How to Break the TV Habit. 1997, 3rd ed. England: Hawthorn Press.

Mander, Jerry. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. 1978 New York: William Morrow and Co.

Pearce, Joseph Chilton. Evolution’s End: Claiming the Potential of Our Intelligence. 1992 California: Harper San Francisco.

Poplawski, Thomas. “Losing Our Senses”. Renewal: A Journal for Waldorf Education, Vol. 7, No. 2, Fall 1998.

Scheidler, Thomas. “Television, Video Games and the LD Child”. 1995 Pamphlet: Greenwood Institute.

Singer, Dorothy. “Caution: Television May Be Hazardous to a Child’s Mental Health”. Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, Vol. 10, No. 5, October 1989.

Soesman, Albert. The Twelve Senses: Wellsprings of the Soul. 1998 England: Hawthorn Press.

Tiller, William. “Robust Manifestations of Subtle Energies in Physical Reality and Its Implications for Future Medicine”. Lecture, Stanford University, April 28th, 1999.

Winn, Marie. The Plug-in Drug. 1985 New York: Penguin Books.

Zuckerman, Diana M. and Barry S. Zuckerman. “Television’ s Impact on Children”. Pediatrics, Vol. 75, No. 2, February 1985.

SOURCE:http://sooth.com/a/johnson.html

 

For further reading:

Family Rules about TV

 

http://parents. berkeley. edu/advice/ parents/tv. html

 

 

One author recommended avoiding television as much as possible for the first 12 years of your child’s life and then encourage your child to always read the book first before seeing the movie. It helps to cover the TV with a cloth or store it away in a closed cabinet or closet. Out of sight really helps the child keep the TV out of mind (Large 1997). Remember that what we do serves as a role model for our children. We can’t really ask our children to stop watching TV if we keep doing it – that will eventually lead to power struggles.

 

Funny Reminders

Yesterday my son recently turned four, and he was sitting on the couch. I came to him, imploring him to change his shirt-knowing it would take a lot of convincing since he was wearing his Spiderman shirt. I swore to myself since I was a child I would not bring up my daughters to love pink and play with barbies and my sons to play with guns or love trucks and sports. Well thats the way they turned out! Allah is the controller of our affairs. NOt to say ALL children end up like mine but I digress. So I try to be upbeat as I come to him because we need to leave and I want him to change his pants and he didn’t want to and as we were both struggling to switch his pants as he was halfway laying/slouched on the couch, he stops, looks me right in the eye and says, “Are you SURE about this?” I just about died he sounded so grown up. I KNOW i have never said that around him……That reminds me of how important it is the way we speak to our children. I do believe in a child not being disrespecful of all adults and towards his/her parents and family- i loathe to use the word obediant, but I believe in it (mine DO get choices and have a say) BUT if we order our kids around instead of just being FIRM they will copy us. To illustrate this fact, the other day i responded to something my son asked my daughter and he goes, “MAMA. I was talking to Sakina not you.” I sucked my breath in a turned around to face him. Then I stopped. Whose fault was THAT one? I told him don’t ever say that to an adult (or me or parent i cant remember) that it is disrespecful and not appropriatte. And then i said to myself I NEED TO WATCH HOW I SPEAK TO THEM! This also reminds me of why children usually behave so well for grandparents which was talked about by the nanny of L. Ron Hubbard. No I am not a Scientologist at all. I will post about that later. But in parenting i agree with a lot of their ideas. In fact not only do they largely agree with psychology and emotional/physical health in children in raising them, a lot of their idea agree with Islam. More on that later. People treat their kids like dogs or like they are a different species. Common, everyday parenting applied to another adult would result in jailtime. I have to pray I will write more later inshaAllah.

Our Ramadhan Lapbook

Ok, I admit we didnt finish this till after Ramadhan, lol/. Will write all about the process soon and details and give credit to the sister’s sites who contibuted to our muse. (Ok , I found it! Thanks to the sister at raising muslims blog :http://raisingmuslims.wordpress.com/2008/08/12/ramadhan-lapbook-pics-printouts/. She has a great site mashaAllah and with her links, tips, and files we were able to make our lapbook, al hamdulilah  

Hadeeth on eating

We are really moving along now…..!

 

Our two days: Our History studies breakthrough and a neat article we found disproving modern man came from neanderthal.

 

 

 

 

 

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/green-sahara/hettwer-photography 

 We used this link with its great explanatory pictures to continue what we started last night. I have a lesson plan but now I want to paln out the next month and beyond so we can “catch up” with the grade level in the Well Trained Mind. I wont be doing Science exactly the way it is broken up grades 1 through 4 more later on that. We have been doing science these last two weeks, after getting started with Langage Arts and assessing and reviewing her Math skills. More detail later about Science and more lessons from First Language Lessons and our take on it.

I am kindof dizzy but I wanted to post this please check back becuase I will add more of what we used for History with pics and links, inshaAllah. First, am intent on teaching Sakina from creation to the prehistoric days, including the prophets when about they were known by date, and in order! All this till I get to first civilizations in Iraq, Egypt, and India to the Ancients, Rome and whatnot.

So the biggest breakthrough was I found a great site where you can download or view online The Prophets by Ibn Kathir. I already re-covered Adam and it was really good. I found a hadeeth I have been looking for I had heard somewhere and didnt know if it was just a story. It was about how Adam was created from different parts of the earth, hence our different colors. I didn’t know if it was a story or authentic hadeeth with a verifiable chain of narrators. It was a hadeeth! Here it is: Abi Musa al Sha’arai narrated that the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: “Allah created Adam from a handful of dust taken from different lands, so the children of Adam have been created according to the composition of the land. Therefore from mankind we have white, red, black and yellow ones; we have good and evil, ease and sorrow, and what comes in between them.” (Sahih al Bukhari).

So the link for The Prophets book is HYPERLINK http://muslimkids.multiply.com/journal/item/56     

or directly at http://images.muslimkids.multiply.com/attachment/0/SI7NEwoKCDUAAHBiGuk1/Stories%20Of%20The%20Prophets%20By%20Ibn%20Kathir.pdf?nmid=107904288       

And late last night I was looking at the history encyclopedia bought and had already started to use and found lots of lessons and activities to suppliment and blend together like those videos from scientific frontiers on PBS I posted before. I had an epiphany and of how to teach this whoe era best. I’ll get into it later when I feel better. Here’s another link we used to visualize prehistory and archeaology. HYPERLINK http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/green-sahara/hettwer-photography     http://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/  amazing videos and pics for kids

Neanderthals Didn’t Mate With Modern Humans, Study Says 

(note: after this article inshaAllah I will repost the verse in the Quran where it tells a group or tribes were turned into apes because of their extreme wickedness. Also only a group was here or there that explains the scientific evididence below in the article, that they had a small gene pool.)

Ker Than for National Geographic News HYPERLINK http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/080812-neandertal-dna.html

August 12, 2008

Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans likely did not interbreed, according to a new DNA study.

The research further suggests that small population numbers helped do in our closest relatives.

Researchers sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome—genetic information passed down from mothers—of a 38,000-year-old Neanderthal thighbone found in a cave in Croatia. (Get the basics on genetics.)

The new sequence contains 16,565 DNA bases, or “letters,” representing 13 genes, making it the longest stretch of Neanderthal DNA ever examined.

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is easier to isolate from ancient bones than conventional or “nuclear” DNA—which is contained in cell nuclei—because there are many mitochondria per cell.

“Also, the mtDNA genome is much smaller than the nuclear genome,” said study author Richard Green of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany.

“That’s what let us finish this genome well before we finish the nuclear genome,” he said.

The new findings are detailed in the August 8 issue of the journal Cell.

 

A Small Population

 

The new analysis suggests the last common ancestor of modern humans (Homo sapiens) and Neanderthals lived between 800,000 and 520,000 years ago. This is consistent with previous work on shorter stretches of Neanderthal DNA.

Contrasted with modern humans, Neanderthals exhibited a greater number of letter substitutions due to mutations in their mitochondrial DNA, although they seem to have undergone fewer evolutionary changes overall.

The fact that so many mutations—some of which may have been harmful—persisted in the Neanderthal genome could indicate the species suffered from a limited gene pool. This might be because the Neanderthal population was smaller than that of Homo sapiens living in Europe at the time.

A small population size can “diminish the power of natural selection to remove slightly deleterious evolutionary changes,” Green said.

The researchers estimate the Neanderthal population living in Europe 38,000 years ago never reached more than 10,000 at any one time.

This could have been a factor in their demise, Green said.

Homo neanderthalis first appeared in Europe about 300,000 years ago but mysteriously vanished about 35,000 years ago, shortly after the arrival of modern humans—Homo sapiens—in Europe.

“If there were only a few, small bands of Neanderthals, barely hanging on, then any change to their way of life could have been enough to drive them to extinction,” Green said.

“One obvious change would have been the introduction of another large hominid—modern humans.”

Stepping Forward

Stephen Schuster, a molecular biologist at Pennsylvania State University, said the new study should silence a lot of theories about interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans.

The study shows that “at least for the maternal lineage, there are no traceable genetic markers that suggest admixture of Neanderthals and modern humans,” he said.

Schuster added that the researchers were exceptionally careful to isolate the Neanderthal DNA.

“Many more precautions were taken to ensure that no contamination with human DNA has flawed the analysis,” he said, noting that researchers sequenced each letter about 35 times to be sure of their work.

“This was the weak point of previous reports,” said Schuster, who was not involved with the study.

Thomas Gilbert, an ancient DNA expert at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark who also was not involved in the study, called the research a “step forward” and a taste of what might come when the Neanderthal nuclear DNA is finished.

The team’s argument that the Neanderthal population was small 38,000 years ago is speculative, Green said, but “it’s better than what we could have said before.”

Ayat from Quran coming soon, God willing.

 

 

We also found :http://prophetsofallah.tripod.com/prophets/id4.html

Timeline of the prophets perfect for what we are plannng for History. More detail on my recent lesson planning. Yesterday, I had Sakina copy the What is History? introduction in our book. It was two paragraphs. Then we filled it in her binder under Social Studies, not in “copying” under the writing section. I reorganized her binder last night, filed more schoolwork that had been completed, added new assignments and added the reading section. I needed that for the “memory work” subsection where we would keep the last three poems she has written down and memorized from or substituted from lessons in First Language Lessons, by Jessie Wise the same co-author of The Well Trained Mind.  Last night, I outlined this school year and History. I made more folders in my computer, divided our study of History into segments from an earlier date to a later. I came up with a total of seven but we’ll see how it plays out because a lot of the first and last prophets or notable people of war, advancement, religious or social change overlap with other important people or civilizations. I am definately going to start a timeline on the wall soon. For this purpose I had gotten “deli paper” a seven foot long, huge wide roll of paper from the “teacher store” but eventually it got crumpled, cut, torn and then obliterated when we moved across town! So far we have covered Creation, Adam, Cain and Abel from the Quran and then the first humans, making tools, archaeology and artifacts. http://prophetsofallah.tripod.com/prophets/id4.html   In addition to having her write a short beginning of the introduction to World History, she copied the term artifact and wrote a definition. We labeled the top “Pre History Terms and definitions” or something like that. I also wrote “excavate” and archaeology but let her take a break and write the definitions tomorrow. It will be filed under History. Even though in the History book we are following, I already checked out the book recommended in WTM which is meant for primary school use (1-5) and the first page had a diagram and explanation on digging. (As in excavation) Our book doesnt have that so that’s why we looked at videos online yesterday of exciting new discoveries being made recently all over the world in archaeology and spent time learning about how we know about the past. We have a lot of flint around here and she loves finding rocks and “crystals” and have been for a walk at the nearby stream and park so I plan on taking them again soon, inshaAllah so we can bring some rocks home and experience hands-on shaping and of course, the sparks! The funny thing is, nature walks behind our old wooded area apartment was very common and we always took interesting rocks or those I though were fossils. We actually moved them when we moved, too. I have always loved Earth Science and had a passion for different rocks and semi-prescious stones. Just the other day I told Sakina  got very excited when I told her I would take her to this hall in a building where they have hundreds of rocks lining up the walls and on display. She asked me where it was and I said here in the city, not far, explaining the amazing rocks and fossils were in a building at a big, famous university. I reminded her about before when I was teaching _____’s boys and that’s when I saw this neat, free place, when I went with my homeschooling group on a “class” for the kids. I told her all about it: the professor gave tested our knowledge, gave a speech, then the children asked questions and after we were allowed to bring rocks for the teacher to identify and view all the different minerals, crystlals, and all the different rocks in the hallway. When we used to take nature walks and collect rocks I used to tell her I was keeping some of them not because they were pretty, but I thought they belonged to something like an animal or other living thing or that it meant something like I found a tool or something. I could keep it and take her to that place I went and have the professor tell me what kind of rock it was, where it came from and if it was a fossil or some kind of artifact. I know she doesn;t remember that it was almost two years ago, so when I told her recently of taking her to the rock hall and her excitment and wonder over the idea I asked her didnt she remember and she told me no, with surety. I knew she never rembered me telling her about it. Anyway, I hope to take her soon and lug or box of rocks and gather some of the ones we even use around the house for decoration. If we have a true fossil or artifact that will really make learning about archaeology fun and interesting. She wasn’t really that inspired about the first humans lesson, tools and cave art until she saw videos online and saw perfectly preserved, fully clothed bodies dug up, studied and displayed that were over 1,000 to 3,000 years old. Collecting more rocks and flint, taking another walk and going to that science hall will really bring it together for her; make it fun and memorable. inshaAllah. 

Sakina did some other school things but I will post that later. Here is the History plan I wrote last night:    

 

This years Plan of study for History

•   Using our History Book, make a timeline. Start with BC, segments of time and dates with appropraitte spaces. (BC is much longer) Fill in start and finish dates for eras, civilizations and dynasties we are covering. Use pencil until all areas around each finshed studying. Then fill in, using colors to visualize the timespan and understand the overlapping times; i.e. what’s going on in different parts of the world at the same time. (note2 self go on disk and groups and find those 2 printable timelines I liked)                                  
•   In each segment/ page of our book, World History Encyclopedia read to Sakina and have her dictate back to me, or reread if she chooses to, write a summary of her own, illustrate the subject, then file in her binder. We will do this for each page/segment covered in the History book we are following. When finished, Sakina reads supplemetary books we already own. (yes I actually have most from dinosaurs to prehistory to creation and Iblis, to Abraham, then many story books on Roman and Greek mythology all even up till African Americans and the civil rights movement. I bought books from every major theme in history and folklore of all periods and cultures. So she can read them, but in ORDER along with History we are studying. I have many other supplimental ideas for each history segment, but I will list tthem once we go through it and prepare it by planning at another time. Also there are additional “enrichment” ideas I have and MANY recources available to me, audio visual, etc available to Sakina is she is particulary interested in something we are covering. ( I either alread has a lot of these book having collected them over time or from the last fewe years of homeschooling groups and teaching my friend;s kids and homeschooling them as well as bookstores, used bookstores, thrift stores, and the library bookstore where all childrens hardcover storybooks and non fiction are 50 cents al hamdulilah. So yes, I actually have everything she needs. If there is a movie not too vulgar of that period we are studying I will watch that with her too.inshaAllah
• Upload asmuch as I can to my blog, pictures, activities, also documents scanned that either she or I did. Photograph all projects so they dont pile up, then throw them away within a couple weeks, depending on my child’s pride of it or attatchment! Document and photograph main school binder, books and schoolwork. Ok well I don;t have to photograph her schoolwork! I keep everything anyway. I rarely throw anything out.
• Continue ORGANIZING and throw some stuff out! Need to make more shelving or hanging bins for school stuff, materials, kid bins, and teacher planning.

 ok, thats it for now, whew! been bloggin half the day and night! P.S. I have to reset the time somehow on this page it’s complelty off. It says its 4:33 pm and its really 11:34 am. Maybe that’s a good thing, it’s off. Other ppl wont know I usually blog between 10 pm and 7 in the morning!

 
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Time Flies

 

The spelling of my title doesn’t look right, but isn’t the rule drop the y and add ie?

 SubhannaAllah I haven’t written in a while! I had starting  taking care of four children their father didn’t just want me to take care of them but homeschoolthem as well. I started individual shelves for them, started teaching them and had all sorts of lesson plans and workbooks, but they are no longer coming but al hamdulilah because I had little time for my own children! We are back on track with our school what I have called for years Iman wa ilm Seminary. (Faith and Knowledge) I used to think about naming it something else and I found out the other day it’s been thought of before. The famous school-library called Bait ul Hikmah (House of wisdom) in Bahgdad, Iraq established by the calipha in 800 CE where works where translated from all over the world from Plato to Indian scholars and iy was the best house of knowledge of it’s time.

I have been working on more Science and History with Sakina and finally found a suitable history book. I own the Well Trained Mind’s recommendation for history middle school level, The Kingfisher History of the World but I needed something in simpler language and not as in depth for primary grades. The Well Trained Mind recommends The Usborne History Encyclopedia and al hamdulilah Barnes and Noble had one copy out of four locations here and I wanted to get a look at it as my local library didn’t have a copy. I always check something out before I buy it, especially if I am ordering it online from Amazon or e bay. Even though I decided to buy First Language Lessons for English from B and N locally, I didn’t purchase the Usborne book for History. The diagrams and illustrations had way too much detail and color was everywhere. It was too crammed together. Even though I have lots of textbooks and online history links I wanted a good basis covering Ancient history to the Roman period in easy to read language for Sakina that she could either read or write summaries from. I finally found a good History base at a used bookstore when we went out of town for a lecture. I begged and cajoled my husband as soon as we entered the city to go to the used bookstore two miles from the masjid. He gave in, deciding to go with me instead of let me drop him off. I know he did this because he knew he could get me to leave within a reasonble amount of time and not spend all my money! They had an astounding educationalselection, much better than what was in my city. I was happy with the book I chose; the format, the pictures, the language and content. Before I had gone to the Barnes and Noble, picked up the Usborne History I had on hold, sat down at the little people’s table in the children’s section and copied the table of contents. I knew I was not going to buy the book after I thumbed through it and I don’t know why I wrote down the table of contents but I’m glad I did. I knew the author of TWTM chose Usborne for a reason and I wanted my daughter to learn basically the same features and subjects, in order. Even though I didn’t have the list with me when we went out of town, upon reading the table of contents and looking through the history books at Half Price Books I had something to review and compare to. I spent a lot compared to the bargains I usually find-< $10 with my “educators discount” card. The only thing I dislike about the book I bought is it shows how we humans evolved from apes. This is STILL a theory but they state it like fact and no other ideas. I guess the only other “idea’ for years was creation and people for years used the Bible and with modern scientific evidence, it just doesn’t hold up. If they only used the Quran to compare it to, there would be no incompatibilities or contradictions with science but agreement! The book I have been using is World History Encylopedia by Parragon Publishing.

I feel a sense of urgency in trying to catch up Sakina with the Well Trained Mind’s grade order. I know there are many things listed she has not covered in school. That is one of the reasons why I was homeschooling her over the summer. I gave her a second grade spelling test and in over a hundred she did not get one wrong! We drilled in Aritmetic a lot this week and I compiled and copied several practice sheets for her covering all aritmetic from second grade made from online math worksheet generators like www.themathworksheetsite.com to test her knowledge and proficiency. She completed them all but needed help with subtration and borrowing. She did a total of five practice reviews and only didn’t finish hundreds numbers with zeros and borrowing. Everything we did this week was to further equip me to know exactly what she knows in each subject and what she doesn’t. To help with this I referred to  TAKS grade requirements from kindergarten to third grade I had downloaded before.

Today for Math I found the coolest free downloadable game online for learning multipication. The graphics are like PS2 or X Box.  http://www.bigbrainz.com/ it has many testemonies on the site and I didn’t believe them but my daughter loves this game and she was begging to play it again!

Weeks ago in History, I started first with creation, then Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. If I didn’t say so before I had Sakina copy from excerpts from the Quran I wrote myself, choosing higher vocabulary at times and easier ones for understanding. Most of the time I didn’t have her copy directly because I prefered a blend from different translations and one translation which in particular given to me from an old ovredue libray book is at times innappropriate for chidlren. The WTM advises copying from the Bible and other books, well, I use the Quran and combine history and her writing and narration. When we cover science as well, I use ayat. I come across an ayat I can use from Quran every day. My biggest hurdle this week was trying to figure out the order of the prophets. I wanted to teach her in order and the only “mainstream” time (date) agreement is Abraham, perhaps Solomon, John “the Baptist” (Yahya in Arabic) and Jesus, peace be upon them. The problem I have is that there are more prophets and peoples I learned about in the Quran that I didn’t know from the Bible such as Thumud and Prophets Shuhaib and Saleh. EUREKA! I found a great site that as well you could view or download the pdf file of The Prophets by Ibn Kathir. They are all in order, referenced and explained well. http://muslimkids.multiply.com/journal/item/56 I can’t wait to read and look at the rest of the articles, crafts and things she has planned.

In the process of looking for a document the other day I had to go through all my disks and found amazing educational resources I forgot I had back when I was tutoring a couple years ago or when I pulled my daughter out of kindergarten and homeschooled her. I had several different docs with good teacher, educational, homeschooling, or kids sites so I started compiling them unto one document. I am almost done. I have been adding more great links especially online testing or educational games and I will upload it or post it when I have time/figure it out. More detail later on substitutions and islamic poems with First Language Lesons, and detail on Science and History. These are SOME of the educational games and sites we visited today. http://www.spellingcity.com/

http://www.tldsb.on.ca/Schools/GrandviewPS/Room_108/alphacatch/verb1.swf 

 www.bigbrainz.com Math multipication game(on our computer now) And I tested her spelling level at

http://www.netrover.com/~jjrose/testspell/spell12js/index.html She is suppossed to be entering thrid grade and she placed over fourth grade.

www.mrdowling.com pre History (ancient)

We watched fascinating videos on archeaology on frontline PBS, I dont remember how I got there I did a search and then clicked on teaching but I can’t follow the same way I finally found one link: http://www.pbs.org/saf/1203/video/watchonline.htm  We watched one on mummies found in China and an area with five thousand intact sites to excavate http://www.pbs.org/saf/1508/video/watchonline.htm 

She really loved them and got her more interested in how we learn about the past and excavation than anything we have read or seen.

 

 

 

 

InshaAllah later! May you be in the best of faith and health and may Allah guide you.

http://www.pbs.org/saf/educators.htm  Scientific American Frontiers awesome!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Balance and Discipline

My title is actually very deep, more than I have time to say. At least, what’s on my mind. Our prophet, salla lahu alahi wa salam told us about being moderate. He (saws) told us that Islam is the moderate way and that we should continue on the middle course and that if we go to extremes we find we cannot continue upon that.

Nowadays, spirituality and new age teachings are widespread, instead of “religion”. There are many reasons for this. One is that, in general people tend to want to either do what is easiest, enjoyable, or pick and choose what they like to do in order to feel good about themselves but this is an illusion. Another reason and a very understandable one, is that people are tired of their religious leaders or other persons of standing that they follow being found out to be hypocrites, guilty themselves of going against the ideals that they preached for and against. Perhaps the last group is aware of the inevitability of the fact that we are becoming a global community and that cultures and races are mixing and in so, they fell the desire to know about each other and get along. Lastly, I think another reason (besides Iblees and his followers trying to mislead us) for the “new age” spirituality is that we are all connected. I always used to say that there are hardly any true atheists that most atheists are just mad at God. I really believe this. If you research deeply about science and especially Astronomy, you will find that there are plenty of scientists that gave up atheism or the original theory that the universe “always existed” and will have no end. They were right about the second. We were taught this theory in school about the universe having always been in existence but this has been disproved by science. The big bang theory became popular and with that, many hardcore scientists had to rethink their beliefs-especially man’s superior knowledge and reasoning!

We are all connected. Allah gathered all souls that wold ever come into being and asked us, “Am I your Lord?” and we all said yes. This underlying truth is one of the reasons man seeks to understand.

With “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” we have become a people absorbed with making money and acquiring possessions, thinking this will bring us happiness.  Usually, more “things” only provide momentary comfort. We are stressed trying to make ends meet and working overtime just so we can have two weeks vacation every year! This is where balance plays a part and I believe, has gotten popular. Though, it has missed the mark with most. Islam is all about balance. It not only has an answer for every question of the human being, but it addresses all societal issues and problems, while respecting the rights of everyone. In Islam, it is not the individual whose rights come before society but the opposite. Put simply, man cannot run around and sin and transgress without there being consequences to his own self and those around him and in a broader sense, society in large. Who supports the children a man may make with many women if the women do not or are unable? All of us do. This is just one example.

Getting back to my original thought of balance, I have not only learned this in my life but more importantly, for my children. I have read many parenting books among my favorite where “Children are from heaven” “Parenthood by Proxy,” “Raising a thinking child,”  “Loving your child is not enough, positive discipline that works,” “Child Potential,” and the 2 bestselling ‘teaching’ books by Ron Clark.  I have been to classes, lectures and websites. MOST of the parenting advice is in my deen (way of life) Islam.

When I was homeschooling my friend’s three boys I was thirsty for textbooks, manuals, and any advice or information on strategy I could get. I belonged (and still do) to several homeschooling groups, mostly local. We were invited to what was called a “parenting” class and because of how highly the lady who spoke about the method and her saying how helpful it was to her, I was intrigued. It takes a lot to get me to leave my kids, mostly just arranging child care if my husband was not available! So I was excited about going.  It turned out to be a  Scientology thing, even though I doubt some of the parents figured that out. HOwever, we watched a DVD series of an interview with L. Ron Hubbard’s nanny and boy, everything she was saying was hitting home. I ended up purchasing this book with a forward from the lady who introduced me to the “class” and i the introduction to the book summed up basically what had been talked about on the DVD. I have heard about Scientology parents being told never to say no to their children. (in essence conveying to their children that they are capable beings who, with encouragement can accomplish almost anything) I’m not sure that never saying no to your child is healthy. I mean, every parent has encountered a dangerous moment when we just could not get to our child in time. And that’s just ONE example! I am sure “spoiling” would come to a lot of peoples minds, but I have my opinion on that as well. We are becoming more “attatched” parents as a nation (I would hope actually I think this lack of atattchment is a white ting because you will find many cultures sleeping with and carrying their babies) instead of “let ‘em cry it out it’s good for their lungs” Studies have shown* that overall, children whose needs are consistently and promptly met in the first year of life are more independant and confident, not more dependant, like many popular parenting books would have us think. I don;t know how many articles I have read where a parent, esp a mother goes into parenthood before the birth of their child, then once actually raising the infant to early childhood, change many beliefs. Why is this? Because we are intune and it is important to us the needs of our child and usually are intuition outweighs and is more correct than so-called experts, nosy strangers, or well meaning family and friends. Here I will post an article I found I have saved on an old educational file disk, after my husband erased the hard drive three times in an attempt to keep us from getting viruses!

Islamic Tarbiyyah of Children     

http://www.geocities.com/mutmainaa/tafakkur/children_islam.html 

 

 

 

Abdul Wahid Hamid
from Islam: The Natural Way

      In the tarbiyyah of children, you should remember that children often learn from example. The proper conduct and example of parents are crucial in the upbringing of children.

Parents who expect their children to be disciplined and to work hard must must themselves be disciplined and work hard. Parents who expect their children to be truthful must not be in the habit of telling liew.

Also, it is important to remember that the treatment given to children in the early years of their life can have far-reaching effects on their mental and emotional state later on in life.

In the tarbiyyah of children, you should try to remember that:

o Children should be happy and cheerful. And have a zest for life and living. They should be able to feel something of the carefree joy and excitement of growing up, especially before they are mukallaf. They should not be battered and terrorised.
o They should be trained to grow up with the attitudes and habits, the adab or etiquette of Islam:
“Be generous, kind and noble to your children and make their habits and manners good and beautiful (Akrimuu awlaadakum was ahsinuu adabahum),”
said the noble Prophet (salAllahu alayhi wasalam).

Among the virtues and habits they should develop are:

-> the habit of being honest and truthful;
-> the habit of being gentle and polite – for according to the noble Prophet (salAllahu alayhi wasalam), “Gentleness adorns everything” – without being timid, afraid and cowed down;
-> the habit of being helpful and considerate without being loutish in their behaviour to others;
-> the habit of being clean and neat and tidy, of looking after their personal hygiene and appearance.

Children need to develop the adab or the etiquette of Islam: when and how to greet; how to speak, sit, eat, and how to perform natural functions like personal toilet in the clean and efficient manner as taught by the beloved Prophet (salAllahu alayhi wasalam); to do everything in the manner, time and place that is appropriate for it, for example: to be reverent in salat, attentive in class, robust and full of zeal in play.

Children need to develop physical fitness and skills, to be strong and courageous. The Prophet (salAllahu alayhi wasalam) recommended that children be taught horse-riding, swimming and archery.

One Muslim ruler once suggested that his child be taught swimming before reading or writing on the grounds that someone else may read and write for him but no one can swim for him!

From the noble Prophet (salAllahu alayhi wasalam)’s recommendations, we see that children need to lead an active outdoor life and be proficient in some of the martial arts. They should have the stamina for demanding play and demanding work. This implies at least that they should be adequately fed.

Children need to develop a thirst for knowledge, beneficial knowledge – through listening, observation, reading, interacting with others. It is recommended that children be taught from an early age to recite and read the Qur’an and develop a love for it. At an early age, they have the capacity to memorise it and it is common for many children and youths to memorise the whole or large parts of the Qur’an.
From the age of seven, the Prophet (salAllahu alayhi wasalam) recommended that children should get in the habit of performing salat and by the age of ten they should be required to do so regularly.

Children need to develop skills and to be creative and inventive. They should be trained from an early age to take on responsibilities, to organise and take initiative rather than be timid and submissive. They should be able to spend their time usefully and profitably.

They need to develop skills that would fit them for contemporary living and for the particular society in which they live. This may involve anything – from the skills of running an efficient and creative home to the skills that would enable them to earn a living and help them in the process of tarbiyyah when their turn comes. Give a person a fish and you feed just one person; teach a person to fish and he can feed hundreds, says an apt Chinese proverb.

Above all, correct tarbiyyah should ensure that children develop a love for Islam, a love for God and His Prophet (salAllahu alayhi wasalam) and that they develop a feeling of pride in being Muslim and a willingness to strive for the good of others.

They need to realise the benefits of Islam, the foundations on which it is based and their need for Islam. They need to value Islam and live by Islamic values.

 

 

*The First three years of Life, by Burton White.

I will continue more later inshaAllah of my daughter’s day and what we learned. I went ahead and gave her a three ring binder as suggested in The well Trained Mind. Instead, though  the front has a clear pocket so that one can put a paper or decoration. Al hamdulilah someone a while back had given me a dozen or so of these and I keep everything. I put my daughter’s favorite tracing/coloring with a unicorn in the pocket. This got her excited about her binder. This binder I will use for all her Language Arts. It will be divided into four parts. 2 Be continued~

update: We have used one large binder for everything until we add more of her work. The Language Arts section is divided up as instructed in the Well Trained Mind: Spelling, Grammar, Reading and Writing. Further divisions of each are as follows: Spelling is divided into three sections: “Spelling Rules” “Trouble Words” and “All about words” Grammar has two: “Exercises” and “Rules” The Reading section also two “My reading” and “Memory work”. Finally, the writing section has four subdivisions: Copying, Dicatation, Exercises, and Compositions.

For Arithmetic we are currently using worksheets generated online, found on the ”Everything U need page” I am also loosely using What your second grader needs to know for math knowledge guidelines and our state requirements TAKS by grade level. Al hamdulilah I already had many workbooks and test booklets. History and Science is covered in my post “Time Flies” and I will be posting more about that inshaAllah. I recently received dozens of text books on just about every subject on every grade level because a local Islamic school closed. I am keeping the ones I plan to use and donating much of the rest to those I know need it and the citywide homeschooling resource where at the conference recently, I took home ten times what other people took!

The beginning of our Journey

Greetings, ” IN THE BEGINNING”

Omigosh I have been so busy, mashaAllah, I wasnt able to write the very next day when I wanted to.  And Allah is the best of Planners. Even though my blog will be about following The Well Trained Mind, we are i guess i reluctantly agree, “eclectic” homeschoolers meaning we take from several different methods. I do believe that the book The Well Trained Mind is superiour* when it comes to breaking down exactly what to do in relation to the plan of study and recommendation of books till an early age when the child is ready for college courses from home through distance education or even attending classes on campus, which is less usual but does happen. It also lays the foundation and advise for day to day plans for the homeschooler as well and is written so that children whose parents still have them in public or private school can augment their education making it more well rounded, in my opinion.

InshaAllah MY course with my child(ren) will not just give them a solid foundation of ‘ilm (knowledge) through following and implementing the Well Trained Mind, but most importantly will inshaAllah (God willing) mold them into the best person they could possibly be-inside and out, while remembering their Lord at all times, making them strong, helpful, thoughtful, well rounded individuals that are a contribution to society, a light to their friends and future collegues, a benefit to their community, respectful of their elders, parents, brothers and sisters in blood and in the religion. Finally, the ideas and lessons I have laid out for my child(ren) will benfit themselves- spiritually, physically, intellectually and emotionally and enable them to know that they may be part of a community in which their actions affect others but as Muslims they will be preparing themselves for those questions that the angels will ask them as they wait in the grave and finally, when the horn is blown and they will be risen and stand on the longest day when there is no shade.  The Day of Judgment.  Munkar and Nakir are the angels who will ask those three questions and their heart will answer, not their tongue. Frightening but true. “Prove all things, hold fast to that which is true and good” The Bible Theolossians. The proof for these statements I have made are in the Quran and if there is any doubt as to their veracity, visit the links on the side of my page and you will be convinced, although it is Allah (alone) who guides. My father raised me with a love of science and proving all things. He claimed to be an athiest, but I told him he was an agnostic because he believed in a “higher power” but did not belong to any religion with a specific set of beliefs.  The reason he still believed in a higher power is because he DID know so much about religions, history, the universe and science-especially how everything in science made sense, it followed rules even though they were not seen. He was so logical in his thinking, everything had to make sense to him. He used to show me his college textbooks and by the age of ten, I had read every book in our house. Anyway, he showed me that in evolution even that had not been proven, he showed me a diagram where there was broken link, a leap of the “skeletons” found when there was a huge time period unaccounted for and not continuing on the same line. Now I know after reading the Quran, there were groups of mankind that were so sinful, that God turned them into Apes. I will provide the verse when I look it up inshaAllah.

Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Algebra, Earth Science shoot my father, come to think of it, taught me most of this stuff not school! These subjects all made sense and he knew that logically, they could not just come into being by themselves or that it had “always been” that the sun, planets in their orbits fixed, and everything had to be planned by something beyond us, an all powerful God Who never tires and is the all-knowing Omnipotent. He believed deep down. It was his arrogance and laziness that kept him from acknowledging his Lord.

And when the unbeliever’s body is being taken away, he cries, “Woe is to me! Where are they taking me?” Al Quran.

My day teaching Sakina

We had a great day. As usual, we (humans) plan things or have a set course in mind and then something else entirely occurs. Our “homeschooling” day (it’s summer and all but we’re always learning) was surprisingly child led. Another name for this type of learning is called child-directed.  HOwever, if I could use one word to describe today’s homeschooling it would be “Unschooling” This is the idea that children, if left on their own without any formal plan of study WILL still learn to read and learn about Science, Math and History in their own time and have a general knowledge of all subjects. Of course, that is if the child is “normal” or “gifted” Some children do have learning diabilities but thsi does not mean that they cannot learn or that they are less intellegent in any way. They just learn differently and I know several methods that can help such children. NOt only have I read about different disorders such as ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia and others, I have taught children with such behavioral and thought patterns. I feel it is extremely important NOT to label a child, ESPECIALLY when they can hear you! Children rise to the expectations you set. More on that later. In regars to teaching ”disabled” children (they are not, really ) the BEST spelling course I have seen HANDS DOWN is called sequential spelling. The site used to be called avco and it had a lot of freebies such as the first few lessons so you could see how it worked and it really makes sense, you can teach a child or adult to spell on middle school and above level at the same time and at an early age. HOwever, they changed it and you cannot acutally SEE the words. I am sure if an internet search is done, it can be seen before deciding to purchase. Here is the link  http://www.avko.org/sequentialspelling.html  one of the founder’s of the programs amazing site  http://donpotter.net/ed.htm . I found another program for reading at the book store thank God, called  Alpha-Phonics. This one was also co-authored by Don Potter. It is a bit tedious but if you go from from to back your child will be able to read beyond a second grade level and most likely spell well, too. And ALlah knows best.

 I later was reading some homeschooling books or publications and they recomendeed the same program for reading, that it was an excellent program. It is, but they stated the cost was about $30 and i looked on my book and that was the original cost but I had gotten it for $5.00! So one should always carouse used book stores and thrift stores. I cannot tell you how many treasures I found from an old bookstore or small vintage shop underneath the street or in a small shopping strip. The library is everyone agrees, possibly the greatest free source for homeschoolers with magazines like Time : http://www.eduhound.com/ but my library in particular sells used books something like semi-annually and has open hours in the basement where the adult books are only $2.00, the children’s books all .50 cents and the magazines and national geographics like, 20 cents! Everything is arranged according to the dewy decimal system so it’s really neat that I can look up a book on my library’s website, then check to see if it’s in the basement. Sometimes when I learn of a particular teacher;s book on theory, good bestsellers, see recommendations for literature or whatnot i check it out on Amazon and read the description as well as the customer comments. These are REALLY helpful. I eve go to barns and noble I know a lot of us hate big business companies where it’s all about the bottom line, but honestly you can order almost ANYTHING from Barnes and Noble and they will order a book for you and you can come see it you dont even have to buy it. This is helpful for me because I like to see something before I buy it and even on Amazon sometimes you can see a few pages of the book you are searched or are interested in. I get the educator’s discount at B&N and it’s twenty percent. In addition to their sales and coupons/specials they e mail out, one can make a killing with discounts.   Another awesome resource is scholastic book sales. Don;t waste your time buying from yur child’s school or a distributor. Go to their site and sign up as a teacher or homechooler and you can receive notices of sales and discount coupons but best of all, you can WORK at the warehouse during the time when they have sales up to five times a year and they will pay you ten dollars an hour towards books! I havent done this yet, but I moved over here by where thier huge warehouse is. I just realized that! Anyway, I havent done this yet, it was my goal last time but time passed but it would’ve come in habdy when my oldest wanted that new vampire bestseller! It was like, over twenty bucks!

On that note, believeit or not I got The Well Trained Mind for a mere $2.00 at my local library bookstore. I had been looking for this book for two years I am not exagerating. I lived in three different cities within the same 60-80 mile range and went to every used bookstore in each city, a total of seven bookstores AND NEVER found The Well Trained Mind. Evidentally, no one gets rid of this book once they buy it! ( I know its on e bay and amazon I am just super cheap) I used to say, “My favorite four letter word is: FREE !

Sakina’s attitude was very positive today because we just had fun. HOwever she still learned because everything she said I found a way to loop it back to science, creation (people and animals) and physical education. Im a poet and I didnt knowit! I always wanted to put my bint (daughter) in gymnastics because I was and several other reasons. My husband wants her in Karate or some other form of martial arts/defense. You would assume it is the typical reasons, girls are in gymnastics; boys and men like martial arts. That is not the case in our bayt (home). I wanted my daughter in gymnastics not just because I was but for the reason that I see the huge potential she has. I was good in gymnastics, very flexible from a young age and strong but I was afraid of the balence beam. When I had my second daughter, I realized I had not been all that strong. When she was eighteen months old, had only started walking at eleven months, she did the most horrifying thing that I didnt realize it’s significance until later. I had taken her to the park and she was climbing this half moon monkey bar thing, you know it got higher and higher, leveled off in the middle, then went down again. The structure was about six feet wide and four feet tall. I was standing next to her when suddenly, she let go! She swung her legs through the space between the bars while still holding on with her little arms. My daughter was really petite for her age and all my children were chubby as babies, then leaned out, steadily growing up on the five percent line. (My mother is 105 pounds and five foot one) Anyway, she was small so it looked even more bizarre, lol. So, she still hangs there, not uttering a cry, swinging back and forth, until she dropped. I was close enough to get her, but I think I was in shock. Later, when she was three years old, I was taking out the trash in my duplex/apartments and there was a wall made out of huge beige bricks about five feet high sorrounding the trash dumpster. She scaled that wall like spiderman, with no shoes and pulled herself on top, then proceeded to walk along the line of the wall, which was quite wide because they were not normal size bricks usually found in houses. She had NO FEAR. I was amazed. NOt only was she NOT scared, she could lift her own body weight! When I was in gymnastics, it was between the ages of seven and nine, somewhere in that time frame, I don’t remember. No, I think I WAS ten, well at least when I quit. I lived in the country and my mom would bring me, an hour drive so all the kids there didn’t attend school with me but I made friends with a few of them. Incidentally, one of the girls on my team advanced and actually made it to the olympics. Anyhow, one of my friends had fallen, not at OUR gym, but at her school down the street-while on the balance beam. She had this HUGE bluish-purple bruise on the inside of her leg. She told me how extremely painful it had been when it happened. Boys may hurt, but it hurts us too! So, I was even more terrified of the balance beam and could not overcome that even though I was great at bounce floor and coming along in uneven bars. (I was real weird about those I actually liked not wearing gloves, getting blisters, then tearing them from repetetive practice on the bars.-Explains why my 8 yr old daughter scratched her mosquito bites till they bleed!) SO, getting back to my piont, I recognized my daughter’s ability and potential. And sucess is with Allah, glory be to Him. Also, my daughter’s father had been very strong, we used to make my oldest daughter laugh when she was seven by me laying on top of him, making my body stiff while he bench pressed me! (He was in the first airborne army division) So, it made sense that my second child was so strong because her father was. Even though I held first place once and second many times for the president’s challange for the chin hold-amount of time (like four minutes al hamdulilah) I could NEVER life my own body weight like doing the pull ups (chin ups). Some years, I could do ONE !  Obviously and Allah knows best, my daughter got her skill from her father. This is why in Islaam, in our book the Quran it says not to cut off the blood ties that this is a major sin. This is because the child will not be understood as well and Allah knows best the reason. In our book it is forbidden for us to adopt and change the last name of the child.

My husband doesnt want my daughter to be in gymnastics because he doesn’t want the whole world seeing her half-naked in competitions or the Olympics. Imagine. I mean, I see his point now. I was even telling Susie today (her nickname) that the girls who do gymnastics never grow tall and start developing much later. I told her how Mary Lou Retton had never grown taller than grandma, in fact she was only about four foot eleven inches. I couldn’t believe it i remembered Keri Strug’s name and searched youtube and we watched her nail that landing on her last try on a sprained ankle, winning the gold for herself and her country at the Olympics. I teared up, it was real silly of me. I told Sakina how great God is because Keri should have never won. She should have given up after she hurt her ankle the first time, that she could’ve made it much worse, beyond repair. ( I didnt word it like that exactly, she is eight) Sakina asks if she was hurt afterword I said, sure she had to go to the hospital and everything. But she was Ok, all praise to God. I told Sakina Allah is the best of planners and only He could have made that possible, that normally in gymnastics, they cannot vault again when they are hurt, it is too painful or damaging and they ESPECIALLY dont land PERFECTLY, no hop or anything. There is usually a hop, I know. Too much power from the body force flippin in motion, you know an object in motion tends to stay in motion. Anyhow I told Sakina that in fact, it is extremely rare for a gymnist to land perfectly after the vault, the way she did. It is unheard of for one to land solid, with a perfect landing and score when injured. i looped the “life” lesson into that, bringing everything back to our Creator and how perfect everything is. We talked about the four phases of matter today as well whie we were cooking and the steam was rising. (Gas) I asked her about the water we put into the ice trays, what phase it that? (Solid) In addition to cooking and “science” we learned some fractions and following directions by following the instructions on the box. She read the words, I praised her and corrected her pronunciation when needed.

Finally we also actually did some gymnastics in the living room and decided we would be dong that from now on. She asked if we could do gymnastics every day and I could be her coach and then we could “do school” five days a week. I said that was a good idea. So we worked it out on weekends or the days she picks to be off, working it around our schedule, she will do gymnastics/stretching mornings and later, her Language Arts using First Language Lessons, in additon to all the other stuff we are doing which I will post later inshaAllah. I worked it out that she is copying/dictation from “The Creation” on…till we come to the ancients. In order, like in the Well Trained MInd.  A few days ago I wrote a special, full page printed copy from the Quran on the Creation and “The Fall” and had her copy it, then went over it and filed it in her notebook. Sometimes we just do dictation and I check it. In the first few lessons of The First Language lessons, a poem is assigned.  I substituted a poem on the spider instead of the one of the caterpillar for her to memorize. It was called “The Little Spider” and we found it by doing a search online because i remembered a site I had gone to before of Muslim children’s poetry. I didnt find the particular site I was looking for, but I DID find a very good one, a great substitution. http://www.islam4kids.com/i4k/i4k.cfm?scn=poems&pm=poems/The_Little_Spider.htm    I chose the spider because the spider is important in our religion; it is spoken of in our book(Al Quran) as well as the hadeeth. We are not allowed to kill spiders unless they are poisinous and try to harm us. In addition, we aren’t allowed to kill bees either. In general, we are not allowed to kill any animals or insects nor be cruel to them unless we are to eat them and we are only allowed to eat certain things. We don’t eat pork. We cant eat anything like roadkill (seriously) or predatory animals such as a hawk. If I am wrong and someone is reading me, please correct me! The animal must be killed in a proper manner as to ease and lessen the suffering of the animal and we are forbidden fro cutting the head complety off. We also cannot maim, shoot or shock the animal. It’s jugular on one side, the windpipe, and then the vein on the other side must be cut quickly and we are commanded to sharpen our knife so that it is quick and painless as possible. We also have to calm the animal down and cannot have it hanging upside down (as with chickens) or mooing loudly because they are all in a line and seeing the other’s killed. We must not eat veal. The conditions it is kept in is haram (forbidden) to us Muslims. To keep a baby cow (calf) in a small stall so that it cannot lay down and live in the dark almost 24 hours a day so that it’s meat is tender and not bruised, only turning on the lights for it to eat–this is prohibited for us. It is a crime against the poor creature. In Islam, everything has rights and those rights must be respected. In our day and age is is common for the attitude of an individuals right to go and do as he or she pleases without concern for the repercussions of their actions—a person;’s personal “freedom” and “Liberty comes before society. This is very selfish in nature and not, actually natural. There is altrusim in nature. Anyway, in Islam society’s rights come before the individual’s. This concept is complety opposite to the “American” way and I’m sure to anyone who read this who is not Muslim, this concept is quite “foreign” But this is God’s law and He, subhanna wa ta’ala knows what is best for us. On that note I need to go, i really have to go to sleep. The clock on here is totally wrong, it says morning but it is very late at night/early morning for me. Everyone is asleep. I will continue more when I make time, inshaAllah. This page is not the final copy so forgive the errors or lack of evidences (proofs) from The Quran, hadeeth or other sources. I will add them later, inshaAllah. Salutations and I hope you are in the best of Iman(faith) and health.

 

 

**I have used Sequential Spelling. It is best for children who read at a beginning 4th grade level or better. Some homeschoolers use it with younger children or lower-level readers, splitting up each lesson into two parts. My personal take is that it can be frustrating if the reading level is not yet beginning 4th.

In my opinion, the program works best for older children who are very poor spellers, as it seems to teach visual subskills other spelling programs take for granted. It would not be a good program for “natural” spellers because the amount of repetition would be too boring.   Nancy

Subject: Re: AVKO Sequential Spelling

I agree with Nancy and personally think SRA Spelling Mastery is better to use for younger children. I’d go through Spelling Mastery C and then Spelling Through Morphographs through 6th or 7th grade and only start AVCO after that. There is a lot to teach in spelling that is not taught in AVKO alone.  Janis

*mashaAllah (it is as Allah decreed)