What to teach at Home? This wonderful theme on Saudi Arabia! (Part 1)

Tired of wondering what to teach your little ones at home? Why don’t you follow this wonderful theme all about “Saudi Arabia?”

This post give you a thorough outline on what to teach each week in all areas of learning!

Whilst many of the homeschoolers around the world may be focusing on the beautiful season of Autumn (something we don’t get to see in the desert of Saudi Arabia) we focused all our energy on where we live. So our second theme in our homeschooling year was all about Saudi Arabia. As we decided to cover this over a whole month, we divided the theme content into 4 separate weeks, allowing us to focus in on a particular area a week. You could do the same if you plan to follow this theme OR you could do the same for any country you plan to cover in this way. So for ease, I will lay out this theme in our weekly format. First up, here’s our monthly overview plan:

Week 1: Where in the world is Saudi Arabia?

We began this week by looking at the geographical location of Saudi Arabia. We wanted to find out where it is in comparison to the countries we were born in. So we looked a little at the map of the world, talked about the country and then the city we are in. Below we made this flip book, starting with a world map. If you lift the flap you see the country of Saudi Arabia map on the second page and if you lift the flap again you see the map of Makkah which is where we are – Alhamdulillah!

We had to follow this up with a little look at the country’s flag (especially as it also boasts to have the world’s largest flagpole in Jeddah!) The children saw the real flag I bought and they made their own by colouring in their template green and sellotaping it to a straw!

Literacy:

This week for our 4 – 5 yr olds our learning consisted of the letters g, o, c, k. We used the twinkl booklet to summarise our learning at the end of the week.

Our 3 – 4 year olds focused on letters i and n using creative ways to remember the letter sounds.

Maths:

We looked into directions to tie in with our geography work. We introduced children to forward, backwards, left and right as well as North, South, East and West and played movement games. We combined our maths with p.e. sessions and also tied in listening skills.

Arabic & Islamic Studies:

Our younger children began with the letter alif today, we used the awesome puzzle by Gambian Mommy to aid their learning. In Islamic Studies we spoke about why Makkah is so important to Muslims. We discussed how many many people come and visit especially in Hajj time. We sang our song about Makkah.

Week 2: All about Makkah

We looked at Makkah and more of its importance this week especially as we wanted to focus in on the history of Makkah and the Hajj ritual. So we started by talking about our beloved Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) who was born in Makkah. We wrote out the following questions, and folded them up and put into a basket. Children picked out the questions and we helped them read them and try to answer them. We then looked at the sunnahs of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

We also read through the lovely book by Naima B. Roberts ‘Going to Mecca’ and played with our small world Hajj model. It was lovely learning more about hajj through play lego characters going on Hajj.

We made a hajj journey map too using the the stained paper we did the day before (always best to plan this one in advance)

Literacy:

This week for our 4 – 5 yr olds our learning consisted of the letters ck, e, u, r. We used the twinkl booklet to summarise our learning at the end of the week. We continued with our weekly reading.

Our 3-4 year olds recapped over the first 6 sounds s, a, t, p, i, n by making a sound wheel and checking phonics understanding by using varied activities. We also looked at the letter m.

Maths:

We looked at a little adding and number counting with the children this week. We mainly use practical ways of counting using stars, cubes and objects around the room. We brought the maths learning into our theme by counting how many people would be in the mina tent and adding more.

Arabic & Islamic Studies:

We continued reviewing Arabic letters with our 4-5 yr olds before they move on to letter forms. Our younger learners enjoy using play dough so we incorporated it into our Arabic session. In Islamic Studies, we looked at the 5 pillars of Islam 🙂 Alhamdulillah we were also able to visit the Kabah that weekend to really put our learning into action.

Click here for part 2!