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Many people find the prospect of home educating daunting or overwhelming. It is enough, understandably, to put many off even attempting it, but for those willing to take the plunge then it can be helpful to know what others have found useful (if not essential) either to have in their store cupboard or else as reading material with good practical ideas & teaching methods. It can also seem impossible at first to find that one site that sells exactly what you need. So, this is what this section is all about - an attempt to give just a few answers to the questions 'What do I need?', 'How do I do this?' and 'Where can I find it?' Everything listed here is something that has come recommended by a fellow Muslim home educator. Please note: this list is by no means comprehensive and in reality you will have to make your own choices as to what you find is useful and helpful - every child is different, and every teacher too! It is useful to know what is available, however, should you need some inspiration and/or guidance. Please do look through the 'useful links' section as well.
Click any of the these links to get the relevent section of this page: Books Manipulatives, games, etc Where to find stuff
BOOKS [please note: some titles listed may be out of print, but cheap second hand copies are often easily found via Amazon or eBay]
Literacy
You Can Be Your Child's Best Teacher [author: Ken Adams; pub:World International Ltd, 2006]
How To Teach Your Child To Read from 2 Years [author: Bill Graham; pub: Ward Lock, 2000] - full of excellent activities, lesson ideas, games, etc
Montessori Read & Write - A Parents' Guide to Literacy for Children [ author: Lynne Lawrence; pub: Ebury Press, 1998] - Montessori is a well established method of teaching in a kinesthetic way using plenty of manipulatives. Montessori resources can be VERY expensive, but you can get plenty of ideas that are easily adapted with home-made alternatives.
Reading Through Play - The easy way to teach your child [author: Carol Baker; pub: Macdonald Educational Ltd, 1981] - Lots of ideas and activities to encourage reading games as part of natural play of even the youngest child so they can be reading even at the age of 2 or 3. The ideas in this book are easily applied to any language or alphabet, not just English.
Arabic
For any child for whom Arabic is not their first language, then the 'Gateway to Arabic' series is excellent. Just Book One alone should be enough for them to be able to then read any Arabic put in front of them, masha'Allah tabarak Allah. There are also flashcards and supplemental bits and pieces available (easily found via Amazon or eBay) too.
Numeracy
The Trouble with Maths: A Practical Guide to Helping Learners with Numeracy Difficulties [author: Steve Chinn; pub: Routledge, 2004] - an excellent resource if you are aiming to teach a child who struggles with maths, either due to having been badly taught at school or due to learning differences such as dyscalculia. It offers alternative ways of teaching basic and essential numeracy skills and includes an excellent guide to testing a pupil's ability and level of understanding.
Mathematics Explained for Primary Teachers [author: Derek Haylock; pub: Sage Publications Ltd, 2010] - less of a teaching manual and more aimed at explaining to teachers what sorts of mathematical ideas primary school children should be learning and should leave school at 11 thoroughly understanding. As such it is a very useful book, especially since it gives various different methods to explain basic ideas and also tests you on your own understanding of mathematical concepts so that you can then feel confident to teach and explain them to others.
Mathematics Activities for Homeschooling with Unifix Cubes [author: Don Balka; pub: DIDAX Educational Resources, 1994] - a superb resource. Pages are perforated so they can be easily removed for photocopying because every page is an activity and provides templates (spinners, grids, flashcards, forms for games, etc) which can be copied and then laminated for easy use in lessons. Each lesson/activity will have alternate suggestions as to how to adapt it as the child develops their numeracy skills. A superb resource especially for teaching and reinforcing tens & units, fractions, addition and subtraction and so much more. Unfortunately it can be hard to source at a reasonable price, but if you keep hunting then insha'Allah you will find a copy!
Science
The Usborne science experiments books are very good and well worth investing in if you have a child who enjoys science:- 100 Science Experiments and The Usborne Big Book of Science Things to Make and Do
Learning Differences
How to Detect and Manage Dyslexia - A reference and resource manual [author: Philomena Off; pub: Heinemann] - a very useful book for any parent facing the daunting prospect of dealing with a child they suspect of having dyslexia or diagnosed with it. Comes highly recommended by a home educating mother of several dyslexic children.
100 Ideas for Supporting Pupils with Dyslexia [authors: Gavin Reid & Shannon Green; pub: Continuum, 2009] - recommended by the British Dyslexic Association, this is a mine of useful tips & ideas to help dyslexics become better learners and parents and teachers help them in that: how to present information, how to help their self-study/homework and study preparation, etc, etc. Really very useful.
Alpha to Omega - a well known book/teaching system for spelling which is published by Heinemann [6th edition, 2006]. Private lessons for this system can be costly (though they are often very effective and helpful), but with some extra worksheets (such as those you can find online, or such as a set of Schofield & Simms spelling workbooks, for example; there is a CD-ROM of Alpha to Omega Activity sheets produced by Heinemann, but it is very expensive) this can easily be used by the home educator or a parent who thinks their child needs direct, explicit teaching of phonic spelling patterns. A very useful assessment test is also in the Teacher's Book (you don't really need to get both the Teacher's and Student's book - the Student one simply replicates the exercises in the Teacher's Book) which helps to show up where they may be gaps in the pupil's spelling and, therefore, where you need to start in the system. Useful too for any pupil without dyslexia who might need some reinforcement of spelling patterns thanks to poor literacy teaching at school.
The Trouble with Maths (see above in the 'Numeracy' section for more details about this book)
MANIPULATIVES, GAMES, etc
Unifix blocks - at the time of writing (2011) these are not easily available to the individual, private buyer but you can find them on eBay, often for quite cheap (100 for £4 or so). They are incredibly useful as maths manipulatives and can be used for a number of things: counting, measuring, tens & units (especially if you designate one colour as 'tens', another as 'units' and even a third as 'hundreds'), area, addition/subtraction/number bonds, fractions... the list is endless! It is particularly helpful for many children to not only be able to see in front of them what can otherwise sometimes seem as obscurely abstract, but also to be able to physically manipulate it with their hands. Anything you can find like this for maths (check out the 'useful links' section' for websites with useful downloads of exactly this sort), or that you can make yourself from card and so on, will stand you in good stead insha'Allah. You can also find some books with activities for unifix blocks. They are US publications and so are not easy to get hold of - you have to keep checking back on Amazon & eBay - but they are well worth getting if you can. They have photocopiable pages for every activity and suggest alternative variations for many of them as well. I would consider these, with the blocks, essential if you can get them and are committed to teaching maths at primary level (5 to 11 years) at home be it as a home educator or private tutor. [Google: "Mathematics Activities for Homeschooling with Unifix Cubes" by Don Balka; and there are also one or two other titles, also by Don Balka and also published by Didax]
A set of plastic drinking cups - the cheapest sort (a pack of 50 for a £1 kind) is ideal. Cups, like unifix blocks, make a very useful manipulative resource for teaching maths, especially multiplication, division and fractions. Cut the cups into halves and quarters and then, when adding basic fractions, the pupil can easily see how three halves make one and a half cups and so on. Cups are used as part of the excellent 'Maths Makes Sense' ideas about teaching numeracy. Channel 4 still has on its website the programme about maths in primary schools with Richard Dunne (the man behind MMS). Resources are very expensive and geared towards a school's budget, not the private tutor or home educator, however there were a series of excellent videos available on Teachers TV that explained a lot of the essential basics which can be easily understood and used in the home teaching/tutoring setting. The UK government has allowed the Teachers TV videos to be placed on other websites (Teachers TV closed in April 2011). The list of websites hosting the videos is here [CLICK LINK], but the individual videos, as currently hosted on the TES site are as follows:
PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL THE ABOVE VIDEOS HAVE MUSIC FOR THE FIRST 20 SECONDS OR SO! TURN DOWN YOUR VOLUME BEFORE CLICKING THE LINKS. Barak Allahu feekum.
Downloadable printables - it is amazing what is out there - from flashcards and worksheets to 3D shape layouts and just about everything else in between. Ten years ago it was hard to find much that was suitable online, but now there is almost too much to choose from! Making your own resources (and you'd be surprised by how little you really need!) is often simpler and cheaper, but finding something online that you can print off easily and perhaps even laminate so it can be used many times without too much wear and tear makes life much easier. [Please note that a chinagraph pencil writes on laminated surfaces and is easily rubbed off again without leaving a mark. You can use whiteboard pens, but depending on the colour/brand they can leave indelible marks.] Check out the 'Useful Links' section for a plethora of sites where you can find almost anything and everything you might need for printables.
Educational Games - one of the best ways of learning is through play, especially during the younger years. Anything that you can find (or make!) that is fun and/or a game which also teaches at the same time is worth its weight in gold. See the bottom of the page for a link to Mindware which is a company that specialises in such things and is highly recommended.
Some excellent games easily found on the market include:
Very Silly Sentences [Dorling Kindersley] - really good, laugh out loud silliness that also quickly teaches even the youngest child the idea of grammatical construction and the difference between an article, verb or adjective (and so on).
Fraction Action Lotto [Green Board Games] - excellent in that it teaches very simply the concept of equivalence between fractions, both as numbers and as 'shapes' (or parts of shapes). Younger ones can play it as a simple 'matching' game and still enjoy it and learn almost accidentally at the same time.
Some suggested basic essentials
You really do not need too much. There is much that you can make yourself or print off from online or find in a good set of workbooks (such as the Schofield & Sims ones for Primary school level - see the Useful Links), but experience shows that the following will be well used time and again are worth investing in:-
Blank flashcards - These can be easily made, but far quicker (and simpler) to buy a pack of blanks from a good online resource. They can be used for sight words for English, for vocab words for Arabic, for reinforcing number bonds for maths... and in many other ways.
Whiteboard. It may seem obvious, but even a small one is invaluable. It will be used time and again for all sorts of things, both by teacher and pupil.
Laminating machine. These used to be prohibitively expensive, but nowadays you can find even very good ones for as little as £20.
SOME SUGGESTED SITES TO FIND STUFF
PLEASE NOTE: Other sites and sellers are available than the few listed here - it's always worth shopping around especially on a budget - but these sellers are known to have a good selection of 'useful things' at reasonable prices.
~ Always check Amazon and eBay first for most things. Second hand does not mean bad quality, but it can mean cheap!
~ http://www.craftpacks.co.uk/ - a great little site which some really useful, essential basics. Worth noting for the CHEAP design & technology resources section (balsa wood and all the bits you'd need to make basic electric circuits!) but also much, much more.
~ For craft essentials - many of these can be sourced easily and cheaply on eBay, however sites such as Yellow Moon and Baker Ross are very good and do more than just 'paint & paper' but also have a huge range of artistic and crafty activities to keep kids occupied.
~ http://www.mindware.com/ is also a very good site to know about, especially for those home educating as well as Muslim families trying to find educational toys that don't involve faces, images or music! Worth investigating for their colouring pattern books alone, let alone the huge range of toys, games and other bits and bobs which are all chosen for their educational benefits and usefulness.
~ http://www.brightminds.co.uk/ is another site with a useful range of educational and scientific toys and kits.
~ http://www.muslimstickers.com/ has a range of reward stickers that can be helpful (though stars work just as well as a psychological encouragement!). One word of warning/advice: do not allow a child to wear a sticker with the name of Allah on it - they might then go to the toilet wearing it, perhaps, or it might fall off and be trodden on, and so on. But reward stickers for written work or in workbooks are useful tool to have up your sleeve - it encourages the child to do their best and feel a proper sense of achievement when they have done well - and it's lovely to be able to have Islamic ones to use, let alone ones in Arabic as well as English. Their 'Juz Al-Amma' reward chart is also a very good idea (though it would also be easy enough to make your own version too).
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