Me and my kids love play doughs. I used to make porcelain flowers with air-dry clay and it was one of the most satisfying feelings! I just bought a store-bought dough once and it was great but I still wanted to try to make something myself.
I had once made a fruit wreath using a flour & salt dough and I know a similar dough could be made and used as a play dough – which is kids safe and well Home made. So we tried one:
Its been one year since I started the weekly letter crafting activity (we took many breaks in between though) with my two toddlers. In the beginning it was more of an hassle and since I was doing most of the work (cutting and arranging for my kids to glue the stuff together) I wondered if it is ever going to benefit us in anyway?Kept the kids involved
But my kids were interested in crafting so we pushed and kept moving forward.
By the end of the year we had this hefty messy notebook filled with letter crafts oozing out of it. Also, when my kids would sit down to read it all the way till end, I found myself constantly worrying of it being torn. Because it was paper. and we had put so much effort to gather it. (since I hope we can benefit from it in a long run too). I wanted something sturdier and found a binder in Pakistan. So i Just shifted all the crafts to that binder, its so much more safe and organize now. I love it and so does my kids. Continue reading
We are slowly moving towards the end of our English letter crafts. FOr O week we did the following crafts: Continue reading
Last week we did letter N crafts, Kids loved the night, abi made a separate Night craft as well. Ib (of course) loved the hammer the most (N for Nail craft)!
What I have begun loving about these craft series is that kids love to go back to all the crafts and read them, since we are doing phonics these days Abi is practicing phonics with our Letter-craft-book that we made ourselves. She even loves to teach it to her younger sib pretending that she is the teacher, and he loves it all already too 🙂
I can’t wait to put up my energies and do rest of the letter crafts and also begin our Arabic letter Crafts too. Continue reading
One of my favorite Montessori pre-writing activities were sand letters, or for that matter, any touch & feel letters. These are incredible tools because they guide the child’s finger onto themselves enabling the child to grasp the shape of a letter which will help him/her recognize letters and then write them.
But they were expensive! so I thought of trying few methods of making my own touch and feel letters. Here are the first type of Arabic Touch and feel Letters:
This week we finally finished our Letter M crafts, abi had been insisting we do a Masjid craft, since “Masjid” starts with ‘mmm’ it means “M’ is for Masjid – so we did a M for masjid too – the mosaic one was their favorite and Ib liked Moose too because ‘Duck Duck Moose’ (their fav ipad games are by DDM) the rest of the crafts? well, here they are:
An article I wrote in collaboration with Team Ayeina:
A calendar, as Wikipedia explains, is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial or administrative purposes. Wherein the time period is divided in days, weeks, months and years. These periods are usually synchronized with the cycle of moon or sun.
Islam, being the complete guidance of life, also takes into account the importance of having a time & calendar system. Allah SWT mentions in the Holy Quran:
It is He who made the sun a shining light and the moon a derived light and determined for it phases – that you may know the number of years and account [of time]. Allah has not created this except in truth. He details the signs for a people who know.” [Quran, 10:5]
It is interesting to note that Allah SWT has mentioned the phases of both the sun & the moon in respect of formation of calendars as both are used by mankind to mark their days, however speaking specifically of Islamic calendar, Allah SWT mentions:
“Indeed, the number of months with Allah is twelve [lunar] months in the register of Allah [from] the day He created the heavens and the earth; of these, four are sacred. That is the correct religion, so do not wrong yourselves during them. And fight against the disbelievers collectively as they fight against you collectively. And know that Allah is with the righteous (who fear Him).” [Quran, 9: 36]
The frequency of our letter crafting has reduced to one letter a month from one letter a week. Hopefully in the upcoming weeks we regain our older frequency and finish up fast.
Also, It is now that I have begun seeing the fruit of all this effort, my 3 yo is picking up phonics by recalling the craft we did. her steps are:
This enough had motivated me to resume doing our letter crafts and here are the crafts for letter L.
4 weeks of inactivity and rather procrastination, later – we finally did :
Last week we Did our usual Letter J crafts. We made: Continue reading
AMuslimMama 