Hiifz Tree

I have been wanting to keep a log for AR's Hifz and Dua memorizing. So here is what we decided to do for his Quran hifz. This idea popped in my mind after I saw a Juz Amma hifz tree on Muslim Stickers. I would love to have it but I don't have any ways of getting it until the summer. So I decided to make our own hifz tree!!

We made a tree out of construction paper and stuck it on his wall in his room.

We will write the names of the surahs on these little foam clouds InshaAllah

Still thinking of some creative way to log his duas. Please share how you keep a log of your children's memorization.

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.

 

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.

Balloon CAR!

We also made a balloon car!! which he enjoyed a lot because of his love for cars. We got this idea from this website...ours didn't work at first but second time it worked great. Both the kids enjoyed it a lot.

It was a great boyish activity!!

The website has many other science projects. Click here to check it out

Little man's little help!

So recently I have been getting some Help from our little man in the household chores! Alhumdulillah he loves helping out. For the past two months he has been helping me wash dishes! Initially I would wash all the big, sharp and glass things and then he would do all their plastic dishes and the silverware (we have the ikea children set).

For him I put water in a bowl and added a few drops of dish-washing soap with lemon and orange wedges in it (to make it less strong someone had told my mom this). I will be looking up on a homemade dish-washing soap for him inshaAllah

Just recently he has been saying mama I don't want to wash small things (meaning the silverware). So I decided to make a small chore chart for him, which I will be posting soon, the reason why I chose to do this was because I was feeling that he was losing interest in helping out. I don't want that to happen inshaAllah, I want to give him some responsibility so he learns that in life we have to do things sometimes even if we don't feel like doing them. Be'edhnillah. His chores are very simple and age appropriate but they will be consistent rather than being whenever he feels like it he helps out!

Since our little man is still under training, he takes his time washing the dishes. Meanwhile I either clean the rest of the kitchen or just take a break! I don't leave him alone however.

Give it a try with your children, children love playing with water so why not get them to help with water!!

Transportation Theme

Another all time favorite of AR...transportation. We were not able to take that many pictures but here is a list of things we did.

• We have a really nice Discovery Children's Encyclopedia that we used to learn different ways we go from one place to another.
• learned about different vehicles
• we divided his transportation toys in the 4 categories  
• In the Air    
• on the road
• on the track
• on the water
• his all time favorite...... CAR Painting!! 
• we used his cars and made tire tracks on play dough
  

origami airplane

We made a wooden boat toy his dadi had given him when he was a toddler. I had saved it to use it when he was a bit older and now was the perfect time.

We made a origami boat

He made a pretend neighborhood on a carpet his phoopoo(aunt) had given him, using different vehicles he had in the right places.

This was something really new for him that Hospitals have helicopters of emergency...he was amazed to learn that.

Food Theme

For our food theme these are some of the things we did.

We did the Montessori lacing activity with wooden fruits

Next day we learned about Patterns

We had bought these for our little Chief (H)

So when we were opening them I saved the container and thought I could use it as puzzle for AR for his food theme.

I got these cards from Samko and miko before I moved here to Saudi....this was a fun activity although Alhumdulillah he knows his colors very well but he really enjoyed it. I love the way he has them all soo nicely lined-up!!

We did a lot of fun baking and cooking!

We learned in detail about the food groups. We did an activity for the food groups... I wrote the food groups on a piece of paper and put it on a tile and then he had too put the food of that category in the tile. e.g fruits---> so he picked up all the fruits and put them in the fruit tile.

We also learned about different food people eat around the world. I made dinner from different cuisines around the world during the week, Chinese, Italian, Pakistani, Mexican, American and Arab to go with the theme.

Ocean and Sea Animals

 AR loves sea creatures, especially whales, dolphins and sharks! This weeks theme was lots of fun Alhumdulillah

• We learned about the 5 oceans
• Many different animals that Allah has put in the ocean
• Nani Amma had given him a really nice sea creatures book set...we read that.(I'll try to post a picture of it...its a great buy!)
• We made a matching sheet for the names and the animals

Since there is dessert around Tabuk we can get clean sand very easily. I just let him have fun with the sand and his sea creatures.
We had bought him these sea animals for eid last year from Marine Land we took those out and learned there names

We added sand in the jar and some leaves, some shells and his scuba diver.

then added water and a blue bath coloring tablet I had bought from Winners in Summer. We added salt to it as well... and our ocean was ready. (I emptied it after 2 days because I was scared it would break and i didn't have a clear plastic container)

Then we used a BIG bowl to make a bigger ocean

We added some red and blue to our orange, yellow and white play-dough we had and it gave a us big green play-dough. we made sea animal prints and foot prints on it.

His set had 4 different species of turtles. We looked on the Internet and SubhanAllah they were all different colours and shell shapes of turtles.

some of his favorite sea creatures from play dough. AR loves dolphins because they don't bite!! like sharks and whales do!

He called this "My wild animal Jungle" I love the way the sea horse is standing....(notice our animals heads are chopped off...we still have to figure something out for the sea animals since they are too small!)

We played on the kitchen floor with the sand, Alhumdulillah from the many uncountable bounties that Allaah has given us... our big house is one of them...This is Alhumdulillah such a great blessing for me when it comes to play space for both the kids and their HSing.

Origami Frog