Book Review - Letters, the alphabet in the natural world

Letters is a wonderful book with amazing really illustrations that chidlren of all ages (including parents) find very fascinating. We've had many different alphabet books for both our children but this eyelike book is just so unique in many ways.

Some amazing things you will find in all their books are:

1. Colorful yet very subtle and cooling color choice.
2. Photos and graphics are very natural and eye catching that even we enjoy the illustration. 
3. Picture selection is very unique and rarely seen in other books. It so simple and the pages are not overcrowded or confusing for a child tiny mind.
4. Helps increase your and your children's vocabulary and knowledge.
5. The verses have a touch of humor and relates the pictures to each other in a very creative manner...it make the child think outside the box. 

Take a peek into this wonderful book. 

Check out more of their books here.

DIY reusable workbook sheets

I cut opened the kids workbook to laminate it for reuse. It's hard to find nice letter tracing workbooks. We found a really nice Arabic workbook as well and I had been looking for something like this for so long. Alhumdulillah Allah SWT guided us to it.

Although I prefer writing with pencil for kids but I found that AR has been able to practice his curves and straight lines on these sheets without getting too stressed from writing. I never forced or force him to write, we have to help him sharpen his fine motor skills, it gets a bit challenging for all of us due to his strabismus (lazy eye).

It's an eye condition, where the brain sends less single to one eye and it starts to drift in wards or outwards. The other thing it does is, it makes it a bit challenging for him to make hand and eye coordination. He also has weak eyes sight, which has improved and inshaAllah will improve more. MashaAllah we are still proud of him because he has come a long way with making good hand and eye coordination. He sometimes feels frustrate when he can't get to fit one piece of puzzle into the other because he misses it due to the drifting of his left eye ball. 


A lot of time people expect a lot from him, even me and my husband, but sometimes I feel, we should think of him more gently, think of him as a child with a weakness in his body...which is not something small. We take these things (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands, and feet) for granted, we us them as if we had the right to have them. 


InshaAllah I will be starting him on Homeopathic remedy course and also a natural eye support supplement. I am currently giving him sunflower seeds and homemade carrot juice almost everyday.

sorry about the tangent :)

I even took a set of these with me to Canada and we would practice them there, whenever he was ready to sit with me for a bit.

While AR practices H wants to imitate him so we give one to her as well to scribble on.

May Allah grant him complete shifa (cure), and teach us the proper manner to deal with his situation. Ameen.

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!

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.

 

Cool Spelling Book

Last week I made this little three word spelling book for Abdur-Rahman to help him spell words and recognize them but also have fun InshaAllah.

I saw these Flap cards on brillskids.com... So I thought if I could make it myself so I googled it and came across a blog and saw this great idea.

 I cut a sprial index card 3' x 5' notebook with carpet cutter and then wrote three sets of abc...

You can make endless 3 letter words out of it. I might make a 4 or 5 letter letter one when AR's a bit older.