How are things going?
Asalaam ‘Alaikum Everyone:
We just recently finished our first Langauge Arts Lesson for First Grade (K12 Program). My daughter is hooked! I know they stated in the materials, if you need to explain some words, do so. However, things are not usually that simple in our house. I am inundated with questions all day long (probably payback from my curious childhood!) Actually, I am thankful.
Just thought I’d share a nice little thing we found online. While learning about the “Tongue-cut sparrow” – a Japanese Folktale – as part of our lesson – my daughter started interrupting with questions like “what is a sparrow” and the book’s explanation did not satisfy her (a small bird that likes to sing).
Questions kept coming – like:
What does their song sound like?
What does a sparrow look like?
Well, part of this is my fault (I use this term loosely) – previously we were home schooling on our own but decided to be more regimented and to take away the huge amount of time making my own lesson plans, research, etc. So, we joined a virtual academy.
When my daughter was 4 she was full of strange and wonderful questions. One day out of the blue she asked what glass was made of. I remembered it was made from sand – but that was not enough, she wanted to know more. I found a nice video online produced by some glass manufacturer’s organization that gave a tour of a glass factory detailing each step in the process. Needless to say, she was hooked. After viewing the video, she pipes in “Well that’s great, but now I want to know how central heating works.” No, I’m not kidding. Of course, we found information for that too.
Anyway – for those of you with a curious child and with not much free time to search the vast ocean of information available on the internet today, I thought I’d share what we’ve found. While searching for sparrow in google, we were fortunate that one of the first listings was to wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
I know the information provided can be updated by anyone – so I don’t know if it is accurate for everything – however, while looking for sparrow – there were links to pictures – and to video – and to media files that shared sounds of the sparrow. All this in one place! Instead of doing an exhaustive search online and still coming up empty handed – we actually found what we were looking for in less than a few minutes!
I actually bookmarked the site – and it will be my first place to look for tidbits of information like this. Since I have spent way too much time on the web looking for materials and information for the girls previously in our home schooling adventure – it was so nice to have what we needed all in one place.
Anyway, just thought I’d share!
Asalaam ‘Alaikum,
Sumayyah Umm SAA
