These book accompany our Islamic Empire Main Lesson Block and were gifted to me by Siraj Bookstore.

When my children were young, there were a small selection of Islamic picture books for children and a few innovative books and journals for young adults. I'm exceedingly pleased that the variety has grown tremendously in the last couple decades.

I share my top 5 books on hijab in addition to another five books that I feel relate in one way or another. While there are books I love, there are a few I'm sharing that I don't love and don't plan to read again

The book selections I am sharing with you are suitable for all faiths and ages. While they are primarily children's books, I find them to be both enjoyable to read and educational for children and adults. In fact, I think children's picture books are an overlooked genre.

Are you curious what was going on in the rest of world while Europe was deep in the Dark Ages? While it's considered the Middle Ages or Medieval Times in Europe, other parts of the world had been civilized and had been flourishing for centuries, even millennia. Let's explore other parts of the world together.

Our main lesson blocks and unit studies are book rich which means you don't need to buy a curriculum to do them, but you will need books. Many of these books can be found at the library, and if not, I share with you how you can swap out books and other resources for the materials you have.

We're kicking off our Middle Ages main lesson block with a chalk drawing that will serve for our Middle Ages and Silk Road units. I put this unit together using resources from various vendors as well as the Live Education Waldorf homeschool curriculum.

I chose to draw the Hagia Sophia for a few reasons. I wanted a scene that would work for our Ramadan lessons and provide a beautiful backdrop to our homeschool during this time, but also something that could transition into our Middle Ages and Silk Road unit that's coming up in the following school year.

Making a Ramadan Calendar for you and your kids is a great way to track this blessed month. There are so many different ways to do it, and this is just one color, crafty method.

While working through our West Africa main lesson block, we learned about Mansa Musa and his great pilgrimage to Makkah to perform Hajj. He is reportedly the wealthiest man in recorded history and carried so much gold to give as charity that he crashed the markets in Egypt with in the influx of gold.

You can assemble simple project with ingredients you can find at a local grocery store. Of course you can make it from scratch as well. I found that even with store bought graham crackers, meringues and wafers assembling and decorating took a big chunk of time.

We used this DIY Dome of the Rock foam kit as part of our Golden Age of Islam unit study for our homeschool. This kit is older and may be harder to find so if you have access to it, I recommend you get it before it's no longer available.

For this lesson, we used some additional books and resources to help us complete this design. We used the books: Islamic Geometric Patterns by Eric Broug, Islamic Geometric Patterns by Eric Broug, Islamic Design Workbook by Eric Broug and Islamic Design: A Genius For Geometry by Daud Sutton.

While we continue our work for our Waldorf Main Lesson Block for Geometry, we departed from the lessons to include some projects that are culturally significant for us and historically relevant for our upcoming history blocks.