Yusuf was one of the many children highlighted in the most recent issue of the The Muslim Link for fasting during Ramadan. Look for him amongst the sweet faces below; he’s a little more than halfway down. Click the picture below to open it in a new window, then click again to enlarge.

From The Muslim Link:

Here they are … your Ramadhan Super Stars! The children listed in this issue fasted all or part of the month of Ramadhan, opting to participate before they are obligated to fast. We salute these shining lights and ask Allah to keep them on the straight path throughout their lives, Ameen!

Most math done around here is completed orally and consists of hands-on activities and games. The boys (Yusuf and Amin) occasionally have a worksheet to do, here is some of Yusuf’s recent work:

Building Numbers

Adding Tens and Ones, Adding Tens

Hundred Chart

Yusuf has just started Miquon Math as a supplement to RightStart (there’s a link in the sidebar). It’s a very different approach, workbook-based but reliant upon Cuisenaire rods. He did six pages both yesterday and today, and here I thought two pages would be plenty! Yusuf is one self-motivated, hard-working kid masha’Allah, may Allah preserve him.

Witness:

Just another worksheet?

Yes, this looks like just another page of math sums. Watching Yusuf work them out however reveals the brilliance that is RightStart. Take 4+3 for example. Instead of starting with 4 and counting up 3 like most K/1 math programs teach, RightStart has taught Yusuf to mentally take one from the 3 and move it over to the 4 to make the problem 5+2. Similarly, 6+1 also becomes 5+2 and 4+4 becomes 5+3. The more math we do the more incredible I think RightStart is! The program spends a lot of time at the beginning teaching kids how to visualize numbers without counting, using their fingers, tally sticks (popsicle sticks used as tally marks), and the abacus.

RightStart's Standard Abacus

We do a multitude of activies and play many games in which Yusuf shows 7 fingers with one full hand and two others (5+2), builds 7 in tally sticks with a group of five and two others, and sees 7 on the abacus as 5+2. While other elementary math programs emphasize the decimal or base-ten system (Montessori, Math-U-See), I have never seen a program teach the base-five model like RightStart does. So many of the students I tutor use their fingers to “count up” when solving basic addition problems, and they’re upper elementary, middle, and even high school students! One of my biggest goals for homeschooling Yusuf is to give him a solid math foundation, it is so gratifying to watch him start to really understand.

In other math news, we have been having a lot of fun working with money (just dimes, nickels, and pennies of course, to reinforce the decimal and base-five systems), playing with mirrors (exploring symmetry and reflections), and using calendars. Yusuf counts to 100 pretty well now, and can count by twos and tens also. Mansoor can always name the current month before Yusuf can remember, but surprisingly (and thankfully), this doesn’t bother Yusuf in the slightest. From Mansoor’s perspective, I imagine it’s fun to finally have something he can do faster than his big brother.

I’ve taken a rather gradual, low-key approach to Yusuf’s schooling since he finished preschool last spring. Even though Al-Huda was going to put him in kindergarten, according to Prince George’s County and the state of Maryland, Yusuf won’t be a kindergartener until this upcoming fall. It’s hard to imagine that in a public school setting Yusuf would be in preschool, but the cut-off date is September 1, and his birthday is significantly after that. Thus, I don’t have to register him as a homeschooler for quite some time. I’ve been spending past months “de-schooling” Yusuf, providing extended time for imaginative play, materials for art and projects, and encouraging independence, curiosity, obedience, and good character.

In the kitchen, in the kitchen

Experimenting with clay

Mansoor likes to play, too

All that said, Yusuf has been asking for more serious school work and showing all the signs of readiness. He’s such an avid listener of stories, he’s just itching to read. So, we’ve started the journey. After much research and trial and error, we’ve come up with a few language resources that are working really well for us: All About Spelling, Explode the Code, Handwriting without Tears, and miscellaneous readers. Insha’Allah tomorrow I’ll give a snapshot of how each program works and the work Yusuf has done in each.