DIY: Felt Bean Bags

I made these bean bags for us to play different games. They are great for outdoors and indoors. They are super simple and fun to make. It's a great feeling to see your child play with something that's especially handmade  for them. The kids love the way they feel and the little sound it makes when its moved. We used felt, but they can be made with other fabrics as well. Hope you enjoy making them for your little ones.

Here's what you'll need:

Felt in assorted colors
Scissors
Strong thread or embroidery floss
Needle
(Optional: Sewing machine if you don't want to hand stitch the pieces together.)

Once you have all the supplies cut 2 pieces of felt in the shape you would like your bean bags to be. Then start stitching the side using the blanket stitch (I really like the way it looks on the finished bean bag). Before closing the bag fill it with rice/beans/ lentils and then stitch it close.

Here are some fun things that can be done with bean bags.

1. Balancing game - walking with the bean bag on the head, we count, say our letters, Haroof and recite while playing our balancing game.
2. Bean Bag toss - in baskets or in a scoring bean bag toss we made from a cardboard box.
3. Pass the bean bag in a circle - we made up a few fun ways to do the passes
4. Played catch the bean bag
5. We passed them saying colors in English and Arabic. Its a great for color recognition.
6. Counting by 2s, 5s, 10s can be made fun too with bean bags.

Summer Nature Table

Our summer nature table. Felt Garland AR insists on putting around the table.

We have a table set in the Rawdah as our nature table. Mostly, we use it for seasons but since we don't have all season here we also use it as a general nature table where the kids put things on it from our nature walks, or anything that reminds them of Allah SWT and His creation.

Nature table's are a great way to let kids explore Allah SWT's creation and the beauty He has add in everything thing He has created. 

Some yummy sweet and juicy hand picked apricots by the kids from a farm field trip we had with a some families a few days ago.

Extra large figs, also hand picked from a farm. Felt strawberries I had made as a their Jummah special for food play.

We also have sea shells and corals that the kids have collected on their beach trips. MashaAllah we have a HUGE colletion of some amazing looking shells.

DIY: Wood Math board

A great project to do with kids at home to introduce woodwork. Its a great tool to learn Math through play. It gives children a chance to practice holding yarn and weave it around the nails, they can learn yarn tension before they actually start knitting.

AR helped me mark the wood circle and then hammered the nails in place with me. Then we made many different shapes on it using different colored yarn, I chose bright spring colors to go with our spring theme these days. Even H played with it. 

We got the idea from this video. 

Train track letters

Letter practice using train tracks. We used AR's train track set we bought him last year for Eid-ul-fitr and made letters with it. I showed him that if he connected the tracks in different ways they make things, shapes and letters. He was thinking so hard to figure how to connect the tracks to form letters, it was really nice mashaAllah. We also practiced letter tracing using the trains. We also had H trace the letters and make them/break them with us, however she was more interested in breaking then making. :)

Jumbo Alphabet puzzle

We bought the kids this jumbo wooden alphabet puzzle, its so easy for there tiny hands to handle! Its also a very durable, since the kids can not really chew them up or peel them apart!

Homemade play-dough

We made play-dough at home with AR's helping hand, he enjoyed making it a lot and also playing with it. I really like play-dough for AR because he has very delicate fingers and playing with play-dough, kneading it and making things out of it helps him strengthen his finger muscles and fine motor skills. Alhumdulillah he loves playing with play-dough!

Even our daughter H loves playing with it and sometimes EATING it! Alhumdulillah it's non-toxic so no worries... but it still has lots of germs!! She will get use to not eating it.

Play-dough recipe for those interested. Why buy those toxic play-doughs when you can do-it-yourself at home!

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 2 cups water
• 1 cup salt
• 4 tbsp cream of tartar
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• Food coloring

Instructions

Combine the flour, water, salt, cream of tartar, and oil in a saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly. When the play-dough begins to form a ball, it's cooked. Cool for five minutes and then knead in food coloring. 

I divided the dough in 4 balls and then added vanilla essence, mango essence and coco powder with the food coloring.

Learing and playing

We used  play-dough to learn letters and to learn the shapes of the letters.

we used fridge magnets to imprint the letters in play-dough.

 My letters kept getting stuck in the alphabet frame, so AR taught me how to press it in gentle and lift slowly!

We made letters out of play-dough

We also wrote letters on a ziplock which I filled up with hair gel and added a few drops of food coloring. Initially it took him some time to learn how to press on the gel to make letters or shapes. We also used the decor crystals to trace the letters we had made by pressing on the gel filled ziplock.