March Newsletter

Assalam Alaikum
Alhamdulillah spring is in the air, and hopefully some warm weather will come our way again. Enjoy!

Important Dates/Reminders:
Thurs. March 19th: Field Trip CDM for Musical Puppet Theatre
Thurs. March 26: Palo Alto Jr. Museum
(TBA)Persian cultural center
Friday March 27th: Scholastic Book Orders Due

*please sign in/out as it is a licensing requirement
*in April we will be working on environmentally friendly “recycle art” please save interesting canisters, papers, Styrofoam, light bulbs, etc.

Last Month…
Wow, there are a 180 countries in this world, and we’ve just begun by traveling to China, Japan, India, England, France, Russia, and now Italy. We probably won’t have time to get to all, but a few in each continent will be our goal. It’s been amazing to explore the different cultures through their music, food, festivals and famous landmarks. The children enjoy learning how to speak phrases and count in the various languages. In England we came across “Big Ben” and made our own clocks. The children did a great job making “observations” on the numbers, big hand and second hand. In France we made “Crepes” from the book “Crepes by Suzette”, and visited the Eiffel Tower with “Madeline”. In Russia we read a story about “Stefecha” who visits her grandparents and discovers the “Matryoshka Dolls”. We also made Russian Latkes with the eggs left over from our decorated faberge eggs, a famous art form from there. In our song we are learning called “We Speak…”, we added a new phrase, “when we “are in Russia we speak Russian, DAH, NYET (yes/no)” All the lyrics from this song will be at the end of the newsletter.

This Month…
With the beautiful spring weather coming up, (inshaAllah!) we will travel from Italy to to the Middle East, where we will be making observations on the desert regions. We will look into the Islamic art of tile mosaics, calligraphy and mosques. Specifically we will go to Iran and Egypt. Also we’ll make some middle eastern flat bread with regional spices. We will also be looking into the grasslands and jungle regions of Africa. We’ll be working on some African block printing, fried bananas, musical instruments and beading. We will incorporate the idea of opposites, navigational symbols, and regional folk tales, and triangle shapes and patterns. We look forward to our travels and can’t wait to move ahead.

Whats New?
There have been a few positive changes to our classroom. First we would like to welcome teacher Faizah who will be working with us daily from 10-1pm. She brings her warmth and experience to the children, who instantly have taken a liking to her. She will be starting full time after the spring break in april. Also, this month we welcome our new Arabic teacher, Teacher Miral. Teacher Miral will be starting March 16th and working until the end of the school year. She has her Ejaaza in the 30th part of the Quran, and will bring a new element of spoken Fusha Arabic to our class. We are very grateful to have such qualified new teachers working with us.

Arabic:
After having done review of all the Surahs for the past week, we focused on Surah Fil as the children needed a bit more practice with this one. We covered the letter “faa” for Fil, elephant. This month we will be moving onto Surah Kawther, Surah Asr, and Surah Falaq. Please remember to keep the surahs alive in the children’s hearts by singing them in the car or just listening to them. It should be a fun time, like group singing, as it will encourage them to remember Allah throughout their day and activities. Night time is also a good time, but we want don’t want them to associate “tiredness” or “going to sleep” with the surahs. I suggest at night time to have them pick their favorite surah to say, and listen to the 4 Kuls (even though we haven’t learned all of them yet) or the dua for sleeping. If you have any other suggestions or things that work for you, please let me know so we can share it with the group.

Volunteers
The classroom needs some volunteers with the following, please email me if you can help. Thanks

*cutting out flannel Arabic letters
*flannel scenic backgrounds (ocean, farm, jungle, swamp)
*snacks from Costco/Safeway
*various art supplies from Michaels/Office max/Morrison’s school supply
*primer/varnishing wood play area
*fixing damaged class books
*picture folders from National Geographics

Song Lyrics “We Speak…”
When I am in China (repeat), I speak Chinese (repeat)
“Nee how maa, Who how shei shei”
When I am in Japan, I speak Japanese
Ichi, Ni, San, (tan, tanna tun), Shi, Go, Roku, (tan, tanna, tun), Sichi, Hachi, Ku, Joo (tan, tanna, tun)
When I am in India, I speak Hindi
“Kya haal Hai? Bus teek taaak”
When I am in France, I speak French
Un, Dua, Tua, Kat, Senct, Sist, Sept, Wheat, Nuf, Due
When I am in Russia, I speak Russian
“Dah, Nyet”