December 2019

Aslm all, 

It’s amazing how quickly this year has gone, it feels like yesterday Ebrahim was starting Grade R at Little Sparkles and Uthmaan had to go to school (Children's Garden Educare) by himself. Yes, the year is coming to a close very quickly and what a year it’s been.

Ebrahim will be repeating Grade R next year as Ahmed and I felt that he is not emotionally ready for Grade 1. Even though we as felt this way, by law we still had to apply for Grade 1 for next year. This meant we had to fill out all the application forms for the various schools of our choice. He was accepted at 1 school but with the recommendation that he needs an intervention (Occupational Therapy).

We try and find an OT that is able to assist us and suit our schedule, omg they are expensive, but nevertheless, I find one and…. she is amazing. Shaaziya is able to assist us and most importantly after the first meet, Ebrahim loves her. To us, it is very important for our children to have a good bond/feeling with an individual. She assesses him and we have a few areas to work on and she wants to see him in 2 months to check his progress. She’s asked us to do simple things or try and incorporate easy things in our lives. That week we start playing cards with him when we get home, mainly we play snap (match the number or shape of the cards, when you have to of the same cards you say “snap”). I start putting up letters of the alphabet on the walls at home, I also make some flashcards which we use to make 3 letter words. This works brilliantly, Alhamdulilah and Ebrahim’s June report from school shows he has improved greatly (we all do a little dance) but, his attention span is still not great and he is not finishing his work on time. He is still getting confused with some instructions and often his mind drifts to something else. We have to work a little harder on these aspects.

Ahmed had to collect his report this week and was able to speak to his teacher. The feedback received is that he has improved (he is great at math’s) but can still do better, we need to concentrate on is fine motor skills. 😟 Feels like we just get something right and then something else needs to be worked on, feels like a never-ending story. 

Side note: Ebrahim is a dominate left-handed child. He prefers to do things with his left hand. Because we allow our child the time to figure it out, he eventually started writing with both hands. It was recommended that we start letting him use his right hand to write at school and everything else can be done with his left hand. Fine, so we do this, and it works or him but something is off, about 3 months ago we playing outside. Ebrahim is writing with chalk on the walls in the yard (using his right hand) and then starts to draw with his left hand. Ahmed and I are watching this unfold and he is drawing neater with his left hand and writing better with his right hand. 😊

We choose not to correct him.

After that day we realized that no matter how much it was recommended that he choose a distinct hand to write or draw with he will choose the hand when he is ready.

The teacher also mentioned to Ahmed that Ebrahim is excelling in his Islamic studies. So how is it that he is excelling in Islamic studies but struggling with everything else.

My theory is that he is recognizing and reading the Arabic letters easier because he is left-handed (reading the Quran you read from right to left and not left to right). 

For now, we allow him to figure it out by himself and we are there to guide him when he needs help.

Aslm Ayesha. 

p.s. we receive Uthmaan’s report this week …. Should be interesting.