My daughter Samira has recently been reviewing nouns, adjectives and verbs, so I put together this table poster to help her remember how to distinguish between the three.
I printed off a set of word cards, in this case, all relating to weather and she used sticky tack on the back of cards to put them into their correct groups on the poster.
I had the idea to design this wall chart while my daughter, Samira was learning about Animal Classification. She made her Animal Classification Lapbook a couple of months ago and I thought this wall chart would be useful for all the kids to refer to anytime we need to look into Animal Classification.
The chart can be used to look up various animals from the different groups. And we can also practise identifying animals and putting them into their correct groups.
Under each sub group are a set of cards that can be removed and re-attached using sticky tack (although felt and velcro would work better, something I may re-do at a later date insha’Allah).
The Animal Kingdom is divided into two Phylum, the vertebrates and the invertebrates and the Phylum are then sub-divided into classes. There are 5 main classes of vertebrates and 4 classes of invertebrates.
I made a heading for each class. You can see in this picture below. Each heading includes details of the identifying features that are present in that class, i.e. Mammals are warm-blooded, give birth to live young, have hair or fur, etc.
The individual animal cards are then attached under the correct class heading on the wall chart. You can see that humans are classified as mammals but we have placed the picture of the human above the animals because of the unique position that Allah gave us when He favoured Mankind above all Creation.
Similarly, you can see under the Phylum invertebrates that there are various classes. Invertebrates are the most numerous of all the creation in the Animal Kingdom and some classes are sub-divided again into smaller groups. Such as the Arthropods who are sub-divided into crustaceans, insects and arachnids, each group having its own identify features that sets it apart from other arthropods.
Again, the cards are placed under the group headings. The group headings list the identify features so that the children can easily identify to which group the various animals belong.
If you would like to make your own wall chart you can find the printable files to download free from my File Share Widget which you will find as you scroll down the right of the screen.
This is my son Yusef’s lapbook on Surah Al Kahf (The Cave), chapter 18 of the Quran. I was inspired to make this lapbook with him after seeing Umm Rashid’s fantastic Surah Al Kahf Lapbook here. I have made templates available for anyone who would like to make this lapbook. You can download them from my File Share widget as you scroll down the right of the screen.
This Surah contains many wonderful and miraculous stories, and we chose four stories to include in this lapbook.
We started by reading the small stories individually from the ‘Quran Stories for Little Hearts’ collection by Saniyasnain Khan, published by GoodWordKidz.
[Note: I have only taken what is authentic from the stories that correspond with Quran and authentic ahadith].
Having understood the stories, we then read from the Quran itself before looking at the Tafsir (commentary) for each story and discussing it.
When closed the lapbook is A4 size. We made the lapbook by taping 2 sheets of A3 card together. When the lapbook opens out at the first fold it reveals two pages, one on the story of the Two Men and Two Gardens and one on the story of the Sleepers of the Cave.
This is the close up of the page on the story of the Two Men and Two Gardens.
At the top of the page is an ayah that we felt introduced the story, ayah 18:32. Below that is a four door flap book that shows the ayat of what the men said to one another regarding their gardens.
Yusef wrote out each ayah under the relevant flaps.
At the bottom of the page is a piece of artwork showing a split scene showing the grateful man’s garden and the ungrateful man’s garden after it had been destroyed.
Yusef used felt and crepe paper to make the images.
The second page is the story of the Sleepers of the Cave.
At the top of the page is the ayah 18:10 which introduces the story and below that are 3 flaps. Two of the flaps pose questions while the third flap has some silver foil stuck to it to represent the silver coin mentioned in the story.
Under the flaps Yusef answered the questions with ayat from the Qur’an and under the silver coin flap he wrote the ayah in which the coin was mentioned.
At the bottom of the page is a large flap on the front of which is an image of a cave which Yusef decorated with scrunched up pieces of tissue paper to make it look realistic.
Inside the cave flap he wrote the story of the Sleepers of the Cave as he had understood it from reading the short story book and ayat and tafsir (commentary).
Then the first two pages open out to reveal the centre of the book which contain the stories of Prohet Musa (as) and Khidr and the story of Dhul Qarnain.
Two and a half pages inside the lapbook are devoted to the story of the Journey of Musa and Khidr and Khidr’s explanation to Musa.
The first part of the story focuses on the journey when Musa and Khidr boarded a ship. Yusef used card and felt to make the base of the ship, a pipe cleaner to make the mast and card and crepe paper to make the sails.
The base of the ship is a flap that folds down and Yusef wrote ayah 18:71 inside and we made one of the sails as a flap underneath which Yusef wrote ayah 18:72.
The next part of the journey focuses on the story of when Khidr killed a boy.
We didn’t want to depict anything in terms of physical violence so I thought it best that we use a brightly coloured, jagged speech bubble to express ayah 18:74 which Yusef pasted underneath.
Below that is a figure of a boy made from card, white crepe paper and felt. There is also a cloud shaped speech bubble containing ayah 18:75.
The final part of the journey leads Musa and Khidr to a town where Khidr rebuilds a crumbling wall.
Yusef covered a split flap with light brown card and then cut some block shaped pieces of brown felt to glue down to look like the bricks of a wall.
Under each of the flaps Yusef wrote ayah 18:77 and 18:78 which tells the story.
On the bottom of the third page is a flap book under the title ‘Khidr Explains To Musa’.
On the front of each flap is a question asking why Khidr did the things he did on his journey with Musa and under the flap Yusef wrote the explanations based on the ayat from Qur’an.
Above the Musa and Khidr section is a small flap which I decided to include as an additional lesson from Surah Al Kahf all about the importance of saying ‘Insha’Allah (God Willing)’.
The front of the flap depicts the Arabic script reading ‘Insha’Allah’, decorated with a gold glitter-glue pen.
Underneath the flap Yusef wrote the ayat 18:23-24 plus an explanation of it’s meaning.
The final page is all about the story of Dhul Qarnain and the Iron Wall.
The page shows the two mountains mentioned in the story with the wall being built between.
The two mountains are actually flaps that contain the ayat which tell the story.
There is also a flap which shows a smelting pot, underneath which is written ayat 18:97-98.
The wall itself is made of a piece of card covered in silver foil and then the brickwork has been drawn using a permanent marker. This slots in place between the two mountain flaps. On the reverse of the wall is ayah 18: 97 which explains that the armies of Ya’juj and Ma’juj (Gog and Magog) cannot dig through it nor scale it.
And when the wall is slides out of place, behind it is revealed the ayah 18:98 in which Dhul Qarnain warns that the time will come when Allah will permit the armies of Ya’juj and Ma’juj to break through the wall.
We had so much fun making this interactive lapbook and Yusef really learned the stories from the Surah thoroughly, masha’Allah by breaking it down in this way, and we quite often refer back to it when reading Surah Al Kahf on Fridays.
Well, here we are at week 5, and we have our first froglets, masha’Allah. Many of the tadpoles started developing their back legs as early as 2 weeks ago, but for some reason many of them have died.
There are a few tadpoles who still haven’t grown any legs yet, so I thought it would be best if we separated the ones with backlegs and put them into a container with shallow water because they develop lungs and start breathing from the air around the same time that they start growing legs.
After separating them the tadpoles began to develop very quickly and their front legs appeared almost overnight! We now had our first froglets.
Sadly we also seem to have lost a few of the developing tadpoles in the tank with the froglets. It’s not clear but it seems the froglets have become cannibalistic and started feasting on the remaining developing tadpoles as well as eachother!
I’ve been out in the garden with the girls this afternoon to catch a range of insects for our one remaining froglet, who we have put on his/her own into a large plastic container. He/she is just over 1cm in length.
In the last 2-3 days his tail has shrunk right down to nothing more than a stump and he/she is leaping and bouncing around all over the place.
Insha’Allah we will be taking him home to Nanny and Grandad’s pond tomorrow, while we wait for the remaining few tadpoles to develop.
My daughter Samira has finished her Frog Lapbook, check it out insha’Allah, with links to lapbook templates and resources included.
I mentioned recently how we had done a Raising Frogs Project back in Spring 2009 but that, unfortunately we had lost most of our pictures and video clips from our week by week diaries.
I decided we would do this project again, especially since Amina and Basma are that little bit older and understand more, masha’Allah.
A little later than planned, we collected our tadpoles from nanny and grandad’s pond today. It turns out that there were three huge clumps of spawn on the pond this year so the pond is filled to the brim with little wriggly tadpoles.
When we last did this project we took home a small clump of spawn as well as a few loose tadpoles, but since we have had such lovely warm, sunny weather the past few days, the tadpoles have eaten their way out of the spawn already, and at only 10 days old they are at least twice the size that they were in our first project!
Grandad collected up some tadpoles for us – about 40 altogether. I decided it would be best not to add gravel to the tank this time because last time it made it extremely difficult to clean the tank, trying to separate the tiny tadpoles from the tiny gravel! Instead I added in just 6 large rocks from the garden and as the tadpoles begin to develop legs and lungs, I will reduce the water level and they will serve nicely as little resting places above the water level.
Last time we fed our tadpoles on goldfish flakes and they grew very quickly, much quicker than they would have done in the wild and we are doing the same this time.
Samira is currently completing a larger lapbook project on Frogs, which you can view here and we shall be keeping a week by week project diary as well as completing worksheets and activities, so be sure to follow along with us insha’Allah.
We’ve only had our caterpillars for 10 days and already they’ve doubled, tripled and quadrupled in size! Masha’Allah!
When we first collected the caterpillars we were putting loose leaves from the comfrey plant into the tank for them to feed on, but they didn’t last much more than a day before wilting. So I decided instead to uproot one of the comfrey plants from the garden and pot it before putting it into the tank for the caterpillars.
They seemed quite impressed and in less than a week they had literally decimated it! And as they stuffed themselves we found many remains of molted skins all over the tank.
Molted skin on a twig
Here is a picture of a leaf that one caterpillar munched through in less than 20 minutes.
It was quite amazing to watch them munching away and see the leaf slowly disappearing. And as a result of all this munching, there was also alot of pooing! It never even came to mind that caterpillars poo, but I guess like all creatures: what goes in must come out.
We started to notice a lot of very tiny pellets at the bottom of the tank and at first we wondered if they were eggs, but it soon became apparent, after witnessing a caterpillar in action, that these were caterpillar droppings. And as the caterpillars grow, their droppings get extremely large. In fact this caterpillar pellet is bigger than the caterpillar’s head!
Anyway, today I decided to get rid of the shrivelled up comfrey plant and replace it with a new one. I had to remove it leaf by leaf, separating the caterpillars and putting them into a plastic tuppaware box so that I could clean out the tank and put in the new pot of comfrey without squashing the little things.
We really got a close look and saw the difference in sizes, and we had an official count up and found we had 15 caterpillars altogether, so I’m guessing a few more sneaked in on the uprooted comfrey plant.
Our largest caterpillar, fondly referred to by the kids as ‘The Abi’ is now 4 cms long and more than 5mm wide. All of the caterpillars are now settled back into the tank to munch their way through another comfrey plant. I am going to look for some suitable branches in the next few days ready for when the first caterpillars decide to start making their cocoons insha’Allah.
'The Abi' close up
We got some fantastic close up shots and managed to do a more detailed anatomy diagram.
We are looking into how long it takes before our caterpillars enter the pupa stage and how long the pupa stage lasts.
My daughter Samira recently completed her Butterfly Lapbook and was so keen to see the butterfly life cycle first hand. I promised that as soon as Spring comes we would try to collect some caterpillars for a project on Raising Butterflies.
Every year we always find lots of caterpillars in our garden around March time, so today I decided to go and collect the fish tank from the bottom of the garden to clean it up before we go on a caterpillar hunt. The tank had been sitting out since last summer and was covered in baby snails, so we collected a few baby snails to add to the tank too. We also spotted quite a few ladybirds which my 3 year old Basma also wanted to add to the tank! I have no idea about the ladybird life cycle but after reading this wonderful project about Raising Lady Bugs on Umm Abdul Basir’s blog I think it’s something we would love to try in the future insha’Allah
Our baby snails are smaller than a fingernail at the moment, masha'Allah!
Close up - this snails shell is only about 4-5mm tall
Once the tank was clean, the kids and I went out into the garden to where we usually spot the caterpillars. Straight away we found plenty of leaves with holes in them and a closer look revealed around 20 caterpillars perched on the leaves of a comfrey plant.
I cut off a few stems of the plant along with the leaves that we found the caterpillars on and put them into the tank. We collected around 12 caterpillars altogether.
We added in some small twigs for the caterpillars to crawl along.
Some of the caterpillars are slightly larger that the others. And we hope to have the opportunity to witness close up the caterpillars molting their skin.
Smallest Caterpillar 17mm long, 3mm wide / Largest Caterpillar 20mm long, 4mm wide
After the caterpillars were settled into their new home we went online to identify our caterpillars and find out what they will turn into. It was then that we found out, we aren’t actually raising butterflies, we are raising MOTHS.
We visited a website called UK Safari, where we was able to identify our caterpillars through the photo gallery. Our caterpillars will, insha’Allah, turn into the Scarlet Tiger Moth.
The Scarlet Tiger Moth is not like the common, duller moths that come out at night time. It is a brightly coloured, day time moth.
Caterpillar stretching up and looking around
While we wait for our caterpillars to develop we are looking back and reminding ourselves of some caterpillar and butterfly facts, and learning a little more about the differences and similarities between butterflies and moths.
We managed to get a close up photo of one of the caterpillars as it crawled up the side of the tank. Samira identified and labelled the main body parts including the true legs and false legs. Most caterpillars have 16 legs: 3 pairs of true legs (characteristic of all insects) close to the head end of the caterpillar and 5 pairs of false legs that support the rest of its body.
Insha’Allah we will be keeping a week by week photo and video diary of our caterpillars. Join us as we witness the marvels of Allah’s creation.
Back in the Spring of 2009, we started a mini project on Life Cycles, and I asked the kids to choose which life cycle they wanted to learn about. At the time Samira wanted to learn about the life cycle of the butterfly, while Yusef wanted to learn about the life cycle of the frog.
So it was rather fortunate that grandad found some frog spawn on his pond just around the same time. He collected some of the spawn for us and we were able to keep the tadpoles in a fish tank and watch them develop.
At the time, the kids completed a few activities on frogs and their life cycle while I kept a week by week photo diary of our little tadpoles and froglets. Unfortunately, all the photos seemed to have completely vanished from my hard-drive except for a few from Week 5.
We had been hoping to repeat the activities and learn more while watching another lot of tadpoles develop into froglets. But in 2010 the frogs spawned rather late and the tadpoles failed to develop.
Then this morning, we got a call from grandad to say that he and nanny have spotted some frog spawn on their pond and so, insha’Allah, we hope to collect some next weekend and start over a whole new week by week project.
The kids are very excited and can’t wait to get started, but in the meantime, we are looking back at the few photos we still have. I will share them with you below.
Week 5 - Swimming froglet. Below the water are a few tadpoles who are still developing
We put this little guy into a white bowl to get a better look at him.
Close up
Not much bigger than a thumb nail, masha'Allah
Resting on a rock in the tank
A little froglet with his long tail
