"I LOVE SOCCER!"

Even though we home school, doesn't mean I want to keep my children away from people. I feel they will get a better education, as well as be more polite kids. This does not in away way mean that we will keep our children sheltered from the world, like some people think homeschoolers do. :) So we decided to sign our oldest up to play soccer, and today was the first meeting. I was a little nervous, wasn't sure what to expect, and didn't know how people would react to us being Muslims, but alhudullelah everything went well. Except the coach was introducing our daughter to the rest of the kids and asked her where she lived before here. My daughter just said I am from here. We have only lived one other place, and that was a city 20 minutes from where we live now. It's just hard to get people to think that Americans, can be Muslim too!

On the way home, my daughter was so happy and saying, "I LOVE SOCCER!".

The 5 Minute Skirt

We are planning on sending our girls to an Islamic Sunday School. We want to teach the girls how to dress correctly as well as the manners of the masjid. Since they are still little we don't have them wear hijab yet, but this doesn't mean they don't play with them around the house. It's not the easiest to find long dresses for little girls, or adults for that matter, so I decided that I would make them some long skirts.

I found directions on making a 5 minute skirt, but while I was looking for material, my 5 minute skirt turned into an all-day jumper dress. How this happened, is because my mother happened to pop in at the moment. I told her what I was doing and what I wanted and one thing led to another, and the next thing I knew we were making jumpers. Now, I should say I am not this great sewer, I can do simple things and that's about it. My mother started tweaking the pattern, so I totally got lost. The thing I dreaded most was the moment my mother said, "I have to go, you can finish them." Umm.... me finish them...hence this is why when you look at the hem at the bottom you can actually see it. The girls love them, and when they are running around in them you don't really notice the bad hemming job. So as for my sewing career it is going back into hibernation, or at least until I get another crazy idea for another project, which seems to be happening more often then not.

The joys of trying to be mother and teacher!

I have been a homeschooling mother, since I guess you can say I gave birth to my oldest. I always knew I wanted to home school, so I always tried my best to get educational toys, as well as tried to read to them more than let them watch tv. I played around with school things, but never really "homeschooled", until my oldest was ready for public school. Even though in my State, as well as a lot of other States, Kindergarten is not required. Which really surprised me, as well as many other people I have told. The requirement for me is I have to send in my Intent to home school form, within 10 days of my child's 7th birthday, which actually gives so much freedom, almost all the way through 1st grade. Now everyone is different, but for me education is very important, I want to at least keep my kids up if not above their peers. It took me a lot of time almost a whole year to choose my Kindergarten curriculum, I was happy with my choice for the most part, but the second half of our Math didn't go well, I ended up buying a whole different math curriculum, and it was the best thing I did. Lesson learned, if something doesn't work, try something else. The beauty of Home Schooling!

It was so much easier choosing a 1st grade curriculum, because I already had a sense of a few of the curriculums. The hardest was trying to find a good science and social studies curriculum. So far I have been happy with my choices.

Being a mother, all you want is for you child to be healthy and happy, and there are just some days that children, even if they were loving it one day, may not want to do school. My oldest loves coloring, yet if she has to color school work, it is the worst thing I could make her have to do. LOL! Sometimes, yes I could be considered a bad mother, but I do bribe my child and say if you do so and so, I'll let you have and do so and so. It works most of the time. Like I mention before, most of the time, I would say close to 95% of the time, my daughter loves school, but she has her moments. Like the other day, when I said it school time, she was like you are the meanest mother, you never let me play with my sisters, ect... School for us takes mostly 2 hours, unless we have some projects and it could take longer. I would love to be that teacher that sends her child to the principles office, but when you home school, you don't have that luxury, so yes, my child has choices. Do school with a good attitude or go back to bed until you are ready to do school! This has so far happened only about 4 times, and her attitude changes very fast as in I am ready to do it now.

I really had no idea that I would love homeschooling as much as I do!

Sometimes the mother in me wants to just give her the answer if she doesn't know it, but the teacher in my says she need to figure it out herself.