Holistic Learning

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

I have been working recently on developing my own "mini" curriculum that I can do with my children (age five and three) at home and after school. Why am I doing so?

• Although My son is enrolled in one of the best schools alhamdulilah, which is an international one. They still are missing some aspects that every human being requires to be better ones
• I am afraid that I might miss my children's strengths/weaknesses.
• Pointing out/improving/consolidating their strengths and talents
• improve my parenting skills (of course :))
• I have studied in an education system that unfortunately did only focus on memory skills (memorise, MEMorise, MEMORISE), with no creativity, no encouragement of it, and it KILLED talents

So why am I sharing my thoughts here?

• Maybe someone can tell me where I am going wrong/what can I add/modify?
• someone might find it a good idea/sharing is caring
• so I can arrange my thoughts

I didn't know what to call it, is it a continuum of home schooling? I just called it holistic learning. I am looking at the following aspects, and designing activities in relation to that:

• taffakur/tadabur (I did not know how to translate it, but it means fathoming/deep thinking) which will be on Quran, Islamic literature, fathoming on how/why we were created, be independent thinkers and deeply thinking about what has been created/why and so on (I got one site which focuses on this, it is actually a school curriculum but it has some products for parents. http://www.tafakkur.com
• emotional intelligence, I've a book that you do it together with your child in Arabic and it enhances this aspect of intelligence in a fun way 

• Home project: crafts, baking, handmade stuff
• an outing that is to somewhere for a purpose/objectives that will be discussed prior to the outing.
• and a story time/reading time

What are you doing with your children, any suggestion please :)

..

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

This month has been overwhelming for myself and the whole family by different incidents, but the one that affected us all and still does is the sudden death of my uncle (My mother's brother). He died less than a month ago, and our life didn't return to normal yet. He was in the masjid, reading Quran and he died at that moment.

This left the family devastated although very patient as well. He was a second father to all of us.

It made me think a lot about death and how short this life can be. It made me realise you should not think that everything will remain the same for us. We'll leave, others will come, nations will change and so on.

My Uncle had Hypertension, my mother might be suffering from it as well. I've been having some medical checkups to investigate why I feel fatigue and muscle ache most of the last two years. I finally decided to investigate on this :). The doctor told me I've iron deficiency anemia, waiting for the other results, inshalla all good.

I am sorry I feel my post is depressing, I needed to write down something...

love, moon