The end of another year...Hijri 1435

Bismillah In the name of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala, the Most Merciful, the Most Loving

Assalamu alaikum dear readers, 

I hope you are doing great, busy with family, friends. Alhamdulillah this year has been quite a busy one for us. Can't believe how quickly time flies subhanallah! It feels like just the other day we started the new year. Now in couple of days,  Hijri 1435 will leave us forever. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala put baraka in our time! So what did we achieve this year? Have we had good time with family and friends for His sake? Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala blessed us with so much, have we thanked Him enough? Have we utilised His numerous blessings to please Him, to show our Love for Him, only Him? Alhamdulillah we have witnessed another amazing Ramadan and more recently the Ten great days of Dhul Hijjah. So many of us have left this world this year and here we are, the blessed ones, who are still given another chance to return to Him, alhamdulillah. During these last couple of days before the new year 1436 starts, let us reflect on our life, on Him and on our Relation with Him. Let us repent for all the wrong deeds we did intentionally and unintentionally. Let us ask Him to accept our good deeds and purify our intentions so that we do every single deed, no matter how mundane it may seem, to please Him. We don't know which deed of us can earn us His Mercy and Ridwaan i.e Pleasure. So we should never under-estimate any deeds. 

Alhamdulillah so many wonderful memories we created with His blessing during this year...

Kids have learnt how to do wadu, wash themselves for prayer. They have learnt some chapters of the Qur'an alhamdulillah. They attended Saturday classes to learn Arabic and Islamic studies. They were learning some good stuff mashallah but the center keep changing the teachers which was quite sad. We took them out as they were not happy there. It is very important for me to see them enjoying their learning adventure. For couple of months I had to teach them but the pace was very slow. This year I realized it is very difficult to be the mum and the teacher at the same time. I needed a proper structure which I am not very good at. If I am in good mood, I can manage to get lot of work done alhamdulillah. But if I am feeling down, it is very hard to get even a single task done properly. It took time to come to this realization. As I was teacher myself, I always thought I will teach my kids myself. 

Every child is different and react in different ways. We may plan ahead and have all the dreams mapped out in front of us. But our children may not like our plans. Plans done with best of intention can still produce no result as every child is different. I have been a passionate believer of home-schooling. I have been home-schooled ( free range learning, I believe) for first ten years of my life alhamdulillah. I had an amazing childhood in Iran, in the city of Garamsar near Tehran, interestingly the home-town of former president of Iran Mr.Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 

I grew up playing, socializing, spending long ours outside of the home, most of the time with children 
of different nationalities. As a child I felt life was great alhamdulillah, being so close to 
nature. I started school around the age of 11. And I hated it. It was a big change for me. 
I never loved formal learning.

I believe in independent learning. As soon as teachers talked about exam, I used to get annoyed. I hated 
exams. I was an avid reader and I am still an avid reader. I like to read my own choice of books. I did 
managed to complete all the formal education i.e GSCE, A levels, University. But I never lose sight of 
my passion. I wanted to read a lot and write passionately about the things that mattered to me. 
School was more interested in getting us higher grades and that's all. So for me, education at a formal 
setting was always a boring place to be. I thought our children will feel the same but life is full of surprises.
Alhamdulillah it has been just more than an year that two of our kids have started full time schooling. 

First couple of months was quite hard for me. They have been enjoying their school from the beginning. But I was suffering from guilt, guilt of not able to home educate them. But seeing how happy they are and how much they are learning, I had to rethink my approach to educating our children. May be it is too early to make up my mind yet. Let us see how it goes this year. I hope in sha Allah our kids will be looked after by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and will be guided to the right path, ameen.