Your Duas Requested: Mrs. Biabani and Family in Hospital

We ask that you please continue to make dua for the full recovery of MCCFTS Staffer Mrs. Syeda Biabani, her husband and their son Faseeh. All were hit by a hit-and-run driver while walking near Devon Avenue over the winter break. Mrs. Biabani is still in in-tensive care. They all have a long road ahead toward recovery. Please kindly continue to make dua for them. InshAllah, may Allah swt give them a full recov-ery.

Your Duas Requested: Mrs. Biabani and Family in Hospital

M C C F U L L T I M E S C H O O L 8 6 0 1 N . M E N A R D S T . M O R T O N G R O V E , I L 6 0 0 5 3 8 4 7 - 4 7 0 - 8 8 0 1 W W W . M C C F T S . O R G N E W S L E T T E R E D I T O R : J I L L A L A L I J I L L _ A L A L I @ Y A H O O . C O M MCCFTS News

J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 4 V O L U M E 6 , I S S U E 5 K E Y D A T E S :

Jan. 6 - School Com-mences after Winter Break

Jan. 20 - NO SCHOOL - Teacher In-service

Jan. 23, 5pm - Islamic Scientists Plays at Mor-ton Grove Public Li-brary - Open to Public - Our 8th grade class will perform a series of short acts about the world's most famous Muslim scientists of all time!

Jan. 31 - 2nd Quarter ends

"O Lord, grant me

your love, grant me

that I love those who

love you; grant me,

that I might do the

deeds that win your

love. Make your love

dearer to me than

the love of myself,

my family and

wealth." (Tirmidhi)

MCCFTS is thrilled to announce that Wajeeha Malik, a first-grader, is one of this year's Morton Grove Fire Department fire prevention poster contest winners. Winners were selected from submissions from all public and private middle and ele-mentary schools in Morton Grove. Wajeeha was the overall winner in her grade level in the entire Village of Morton Grove, mashAllah! She was the only winner from MCC Full Time School. Wajeeha participated in the award ceremony for the 10 overall winners from each grade level (KG to 8th grade) held in the Village Hall of Morton Grove. Each winner re-ceived a plaque and had their poster on display.

MCCFTS 1st-grader Wins Morton Grove Fire Dept. Art Contest

MCCFTS Hosts Interfaith Poetry Pals Poetry Pals is an interfaith pro-gram for fourth grade students. The purpose of this interactive experience is for students to learn to respect one another's different faiths. Last month, MCC Full Time School hosted students from Sacred Heart Catholic School and Solomon Schechter, a Jewish parochial school. The kids enjoyed learn-ing more about each other's religions through fun games and writing poems together. MCCFTS students were very excited to meet and make new friends. Next, we will visit Sacred Heart and Solomon Schechter as we continue this journey. Many

thanks to fourth grade teachers Ms. Humayoun and Mrs. Pathan for organizing our school's par-ticipation.

P A G E 2

1st Grade—Miss Malik

Penguins, Secrets and Number Patterns...Oh, My!

It's freezing outside but that won't stop us from learning!!! We've been "Pondering about Penguins" in Science. We re-searched on the internet and found interesting facts about penguins to include in our penguin art project. Please visit the first grade hallway to learn something new about pen-guins. Continuing with our winter art theme, we made snowmen and wrote about what we would do if we were snowmen at night.

In reading groups we read a story called "The Secret Code" about a boy named Oscar who was blind. After reading the story we discussed Oscar's secret code, which was braille.

pillar of the NEIU community as one of the select-few stu-dents chosen to be an NEIU Peer Mentor. Nominated by her Sociology professor a few years ago, Ebaa has been able to affect the lives of many NEIU students. In her role as Peer Mentor, she guides stu-dents adjusting to college life as well as offers them advice to help them succeed and over-come obstacles in their per-sonal lives. Sometimes she gets special emails from students she's helped in which she shares that, "It's good to feel like you've touched someone's life."

Ebaa hopes to someday be-come a clinical psychologist. She feels this is a profession

We caught up with one of our alumni recently on the heals of her most recent accomplish-ment. It wasn't too difficult to track down Ebaa Wahdan because when she isn't busy at Northeastern Illinois Universi-ty, she can often be found helping out in classrooms throughout MCCFTS.

MashAllah, Ebaa Wahdan was recently accepted into the International Honors Society for Psychology. As an NEIU undergraduate only one year away from graduation, Ebaa has worked incredibly hard to earn this honor. She's not only maintained a nearly 4.0 GPA while hard at work on her double-major in Psychology and Sociology, but she is a

M C C F T S N E W S

Alumni Profile—Ebaa Wahdan, Class of 2006 lacking in Muslim representa-tion. "It's ok to get help," says Ebaa, who hopes to help de-stigmatize the notion of seek-ing counseling among the Muslim community. We asked Ebaa how growing up in the MCCFTS environment helped shape who she's become to-day. She shared, "MCCFTS helped me become an advo-cate for others and to find myself in my faith. I learned to stand up for what is right. It is where I built my values and principles." We certainly hope Allah swt makes Ebaa's dreams come true so she can continue to be a great benefit to our community, as she already is today, mashAllah!

We created our own "I Can Read Braille" signs in class. One of the skills we have been working on in reading is comparing and con-trasting. Miss Brenda from the Morton Grove Library brought several different versions of the book "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" for us to use as students split up into groups to prepare to teach the class about the version they read. We talked about how the stories were similar and differ-ent. We also started our "Reading Buddies" program with Miss Gomaa's 5th grade class. For our fist meeting we interviewed our buddies and

got to know them a little bet-ter. We're looking forward to sharing stories and learning from each other.

In math we are learning about addition and subtraction. We use play-dough to create our own number patterns. Our class would like to thank the Fattah, Ibrahim and Pehlari families for purchasing items for the classroom off of our wish list.

P A G E 3 V O L U M E 6 , I S S U E 5

ed a dramatic performance of their work in front of the group. Open Books is compiling these short stories into a book that will be mailed back to us very soon. Each student will receive a copy of all the stories as a small mem-oir of their great accomplish-

ments.

Our Mobile Library is Zooming Along!

AlhumdilAllah, our mobile li-brary program is going well this year. Our annual Book Fair was a great success. Children en-joyed the desert theme titled "Reading Oasis" which included a contest where students could win either an animal or car poster, or a bookmark. Ma-shAllah, the fair always results in a nice profit for the school

"About Me" poster, read aloud from a favorite book, and bring something special to share for show-and-tell. Students also get a chance to "tweet" Hajera on the class Twitter board by putting up post-it messages. These messages are positives about Hajera that they can post throughout the week. The class likes to call these "warm fuzz-ies" since they make that person feel great! We are so excited to have Hajera as our first Einstein-of-

the-Week! As Albert Einstein says, "Education is not the learn-ing of facts, but the training of the mind to think."

Einsteins in the Making!

Presenting Ms. Barkat's first official Einstein-of-the-Week, Hajera Sid-diqui! In Ms. Barkat's fifth grade class, each week a student that is respectful, hard-working, and dedi-cated to learning is chosen for this honor. We do many different activ-ities throughout the week to make this student feel special and to learn more about him or her, including having the student present an

5th Grade—Ms. Barkat

Library Update: Mrs. Saiduzzaman

Mrs. Hassan and Ms. Khan's 7th & 8th grade students visited Open Books in Chicago, a creative writing workshop designed to enhance thinking and writing skills. Students worked in groups and created their own short story. When our stu-dents finished writing, they present-

and lots of new books donated to classrooms from our gener-ous parents. JazakAllahkhair to all of you who purchased items for your children's classrooms. We are working on encouraging reading with students in Kg-6th grade by asking them to spend up to 360 minutes of recreation-al reading over the next few months. Students are inspired to continue with the program

Middle School Students Attend Writing Workshop

each month as they work to earn a free Six Flags Theme Park ticket by completing the reading log sent home with your children. Please help to encour-age your kids in this process.

P A G E 4

Preschool—Mrs. Malik

2nd Grade—Mrs. Sheikh My second-graders are getting ready for winter break. They worked hard this month learn-ing new concepts. In science, we learned about natural re-sources and how they are used. My mathematicians measured the volume of differ-ent liquids and now they are learning to round numbers to the nearest 10.

My reading group made beauti-ful plaques to reinforce con-cepts they learned in reading.

These are displayed on the bulletin board outside the classroom. Parent volun-teers did art projects with the class. I appreciate Mrs. Saleem and Mrs. Ab-deljabari for volunteering their time. My class enjoyed their visit.

M C C F T S N E W S

that was organized by our librari-an, Mrs. Saiduzzaman. The three winners of the contest were Nadia Nadeem, Aleeza Hussain, and Dan-ya Al-Junaidi. We've also been working on a "Home Sweet Home" theme. As part of this theme, our class constructed three houses inspired by the book "The

This is my fourth year doing Star-of-the-Week. Each week I select a child at random for this special honor. The child talks about his or herself to the class and shares pic-tures that get placed on a special board outside the classroom. Also, we recently had a coloring contest

Three Little Pigs" which we read in class.

Arabic Dept.—Mrs. Susan

PreK—Mrs. Shariff Kids Working Together

Mrs. Shariff's Pre-K students had a wonderful time working in small groups to create a colorful collage art project. They did a remarkable job sharing and helping one anoth-er as they made lovely spar-

kling snow scenes each featuring every child's very own home. Come see our artists' work hanging just outside the classroom!

Come check out the cubic mobile hanging in our 2nd floor lobby outside of the Arabic department office. This fun, tactile project helped students build their Arabic vocabulary and increase their knowledge of the geography of Arabic-speaking countries.

4th Grade—Mrs. Pathan Learning about Life Cycle

Alhamdulillah, this has been a great month! In science, stu-dents are learning about ani-mal growth and adaptations. We learned about the process of metamorphosis. The stu-dents did a phenomenal job on

creating a life cycle of a but-terfly demon-strating meta-morphosis. Great job 4th grade!

5th Grade—Mrs. Gomaa P A G E 5 V O L U M E 6 , I S S U E 5

Pen Pals with President Obama!

Last month, Ms. Gomaa's 5th graders wrote professionally written letters to their role models all around the world. Students wrote to NBA play-ers, famous authors, artists, and even President Barack Obama. Last month, President Obama wrote back to 5th grader Zahrah Ahmed while addressing all of the students and encouraging them all to "dream big and work hard." The kids were ecstatic to

Hosted at Orbit Skate Center in Palatine, we welcome all families including extended families of FTS as well as community members to enjoy a fun skating evening. Zabiha halal food will be available for pur-chase, Islamic music will be played in the rink and prayer arrangements will be made. Plan to purchase your tickets early.

PSG Book Club Announce-ment - “Boys Adrift” by Dr. Leon-ard Sax - Our next selection is a fascinating book about the five fac-tors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and undera-

Following are updates on PSG's latest activities:

Hospitality Committee - PSG launched this new committee in conjunction with school staff mem-bers and the community to help families and individuals in times of need. Our dear Mrs. Biabani, her husband and son were hit by a car very recently. All are in various serious stages of recovery. If you are interested in helping the Biabani family by cooking meals for them, contact rubesmed@hotmail.com.

Family Skating Night - January 11, 2014 (Led by Belinda Tibayan)

chieving young men. This is a serious problem in our west-ern culture and this book provides specific, concrete identifiers of what is contrib-uting to this problem and how we, as parents, can help steer clear of these drivers. Book club date will be announced shortly.

Upcoming events:

Art workshop - Feb 8, 2014

Fashion Show - April 2014

Please share your comments and/or feedback at kfahmed93@gmail.com

join The Clue Club too! Each stu-dent has been taking turns wearing different costumes, gears, tools and equipment as part of their disguise. We also made inferences on our chapter book study of "Peter Pan". While reading the story we also took a magical flight to Neverland and joined the characters. We even made our very own green Peter Pan hats and watched the movie to compare it with the book!

Making Inferences

Students in Mrs. Baig's class are learning how to make inferences in reading. They were taught to find clues from the stories they read to answer questions. We read "The Clue Club" where kids in the story were in a club and had to come to school in disguise. Other students had to make inferences or use clues to guess what the child's disguise was. So, Mrs. Baig's class decided to

2nd Grade—Mrs. Baig

PSG Update—Attend Weekly Meetings Weds. 8:30 a.m.

Kg—Mrs. Baig Children Recreate their Favorite Community

In social studies we are learning about the different types of communities -rural, urban, suburban. Earlier in the quarter, we made a flip book about the three com-munities and wrote about a community the children would like to live in. Most of the children chose suburban so we decided it would be fun for them to make a subur-ban diorama.

receive the President's letter along with personal photos of him, his family and the White House. The kids look forward to receiving more letters back from their role models!

Middle school students are busy as always in Mrs. Saleh's science class. Here are snapshots of some of the latest activities taking place: students building a helicopter, preparing for an egg-drop contraption, learning about sound by making instruments.

Middle School Science—Mrs. Saleh

Assalamulaikum, The staff at For Eyes Optical thanks MCCFTS and especially the parents who brought students for an eye exam during September-October. 10% of exam fees were promised back to the school. A total of $157 (approximately $1570 was generat-ed) was donated to MCCFTS to spe-cifically go towards the purchase of the new facility, inshAllah. We look forward to running this promotion with MCCFTS again next year. Thanks again and Wassalam, For Eyes Optical 7107 W. Dempster Niles, IL 60714