Name Bracelet

I've been seeing several activities which involve beads lately, so when I saw some alphabets beads at Mr. D.I.Y., I just had to grab them and bring them home. The beads are really, really tiny though, so if you have a mouther at home, you've got to be extra careful.

So the first activity to utilise those beads are naturally to make a name bracelet using just the beads and pipe cleaners. I handed Maryam the alphabets of her name and let her practice putting the pipe cleaner into the holes of the beads. A great fine motor skill activity! Alhamdulillah she could do it all by herself. We however had to spell 'MARIAM' instead of 'MARYAM' as there were no 'Y' in the pack ;(

For Aishah, on the other hand, I just told her which alphabets to take to form her name, let her look for them by herself, and arrange them through the pipe cleaner. She did it with a breeze. Aishah had to make 'MUSLIHAH' as her name though, because there weren't enough 'A' to make up Aishah (better buy another pack later).

After they finish putting in the beads, time to put them on! Just wrap the pipe cleaner around their wrist, and twist the ends of the pipe cleaners around itself, carefully making sure there are no sharp ends jutting out. Voila! They've got themselves bracelets with their names on it :)

They proudly wore the bracelets for the rest of the day and some days after that. You know how excited children get with even the simplest things :)

The day after we made the girls' name bracelet, they decided that their favourite teddy bears wanted a name bracelet too :P

So there we go, making them for our dearest Pooh (Aishah's favourite) and Sam (Maryam's favourite).

Notice the words written on the paper? I was trying to ask Aishah to arrange the letters to form the words that I've written. That will involve an uppercase-lowercase matching activity, as I wrote entirely in lowercase letters, and all the alphabets on the beads are uppercase letters. She did from 'REST' to 'SAM', but by the time we arrive to 'BEAR', she has lost interest and wanted to do something else.

We'll keep that for next time insha Allah :)

Love Language

I am presently reading 'Adakah Surga Di Rumahmu?' by Amru Khalid. I bought this book way back when Aishah was still a baby (or was it even before Aishah was born?). When I read it at the time, I found it to be a bit boring so after reading 2 or 3 chapters, I stopped and put it away.

Now, after a few years, in the midst of raising two daughters and having a household to take care of, I find this book very interesting. As usual, Amru Khalid's writing method seems so dear to the heart. There are some interesting parenting tips shared in the book, which I've decided to document here in the blog.

ASDR Parenting Tip 1 - Love Language

Theory

Parents, or anyone for that matter, should try to express their love to their children first before giving advice or asking them to do something. The expression of love will soften the children's heart and make them more receptive of the advice/request.

Amru Khalid suggested to verbally express our love before giving advice. But I personally believe that this method can be strengthened with Dr. Gary Chapman's Five Love Languages theory, in which you express your love towards your child based on her love language, not just limited to verbal expression. I think this is what Rasulullah SAW did too, as you can see from the dalils below.

Dalil

• Ketika Nabi SAW sedang berjalan, beliau pernah melihat Muadz bin Jabal yang waktu itu berumur 19 tahun. Beliau memegang tangan Muadz dan berjalan bersama-sama. Beberapa saat kemudian, Nabi berkata kepada Muadz, "Wahai Muadz," lalu Muadz menjawab, "Ya, wahai Rasulullah." Nabi bersabda, "Wahai Muadz, saya menyukaimu, maka setiap habis solat, jangan lupa membaca doa: Allahumma a'inni 'alaa zikrika wasyukrika wahusni 'ibadatik (Ya Allah, bimbinglah aku untuk mengingatiMu, syukur kepadaMu, dan beribadah kepadaMu dengan sebaik-baiknya)." (HR Abu Daud dan Ahmad)
• Nabi SAW pernah bertemu Abu Umamah, seorang sahabat yang umurnya sekitar 16 tahun. Beliau berkata, "Wahai Abu Umamah, ada di antara manusia yang kalau saya melihatnya hati saya menjadi sejuk dan engkau termasuk di anatara mereka. Wahai Abu Umamah, jika engkau masuk rumah, berilah salam kepada penghuni rumah agar menjadi barakah bagimu dan bagi penghuni rumah." Abu Umamah berkata, "Demi Allah, saya tidak melupakan (nasihat itu) sejak saat itu."
• Ibnu Mas'ud bercerita, "Rasulullah SAW mengajarku tasyahhud seperti beliau mengajariku satu surah Al-Quran (ertinya, beliau menuturkan dan mengulang-ulanginya). Beliau melakukan hal itu sementara tangan beliau diletakkan di atas tanganku dan telapak tangan beliau di atas telapak tanganku."
• Ibnu Abbas, ketika Nabi SAW wafat baru berusia 13 tahun. Ketika berumur 11 tahun, Nabi telah melihat bakat dan kepandaian Ibnu Abbas. Ketika Nabi melihat Ibnu Abbas datang, beliau membuka kedua tangannya, merangkul, dan membenamkannya dalam cinta kasih. Kemudian, beliau membisikkan doa dan nasihat di telinganya: "Ya Allah, jadikanlah ia orang yang faham dalam agama." Benarlah akhirnya, Ibnu Abbas menjadi orang yang paling faqih di antara umat ini.
• Sekiranya kamu bersikap keras lagi berhati kasar, tentulah mereka menjauhkan diri dari sekelilingmu..." (Ali Imran: 159)

Look at the way Rasulullah treats his sahabahs. Love first, then advice! How can someone forget or even ignore the advice given AFTER feeling the love of Rasulullah? Never! I've read before that Rasulullah SAW always gave special treatment, care and kindness to each of his sahabahs until all of them thought that Rasulullah liked them the most! Masha Allah... 

Application

One afternoon Aishah had a fight with Maryam, in which Aishah hurt her sister until she cried. I took a deep breath, took Aishah's hand and led her to sit on my lap. I hugged her and said, 

"Aishah sayang, Aishah marah sebab Maryam ambik toy Aishah ke tadi? Aishah suka sangat toy tu ye. Adik pun suka toy tu, sbb tu adik ambik toy tu. Dia kecik lagi... 

Aishah ingat tak macam mana ummi ajar kalau Aishah nak mintak something from adik?"

Aishah nodded. I reminded her,

"First, kita minta dari dia elok-elok. Kalau dia tak nak bagi juga, kita cari something yang adik suka dan bagi dia, untuk exchange dengan barang tu. Tapi kalau adik tak nak bagi juga, Aishah panggil ummi minta tolong."

Aishah nodded again, and straight away asked nicely from her sister. After having a fight, the first method (asking nicely) will usually work. Aishah seldom had to resort to the second method.

It worked! Alhamdulillah. If I responded to the conflict with anger, Aishah will usually shout at me back. Being calm and firm usually works, but to remain calm is indeed the greatest challenge!

May Allah give us all the strength. Love first, then advice!

Homemade Playdough

Aishah was down with chicken pox, so I wanted to do an activity that can involve her right from its preparation, and the end result can be used again and again. Playdough seemed to fit the picture nicely.

Previously, I always get frustrated when the girls leave our shop-bought playdough lying around uncovered after playing, resulting in them becoming hardened and had to be thrown-away. I've always been thinking about making a homemade playdough, but what hindered me was the 'cream of tartar' ingredient that I always saw as one of the ingredient for playdough making. One day I finally spotted it at the local baking shop, and excitedly bought it for my playdough mission :)

Here's the (alleged) fail proof playdough recipe that I used, found at the www.learnplayimagine.com website:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 cup salt
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup boiling water
• some food colouring

Mr. Hubby was at home at the time, so I let him spend some quality time with the girls by making the first batch of playdough. His was blue.

Once it was done, the girls wanted to play with it immediately. Aishah made 'ummi, baba, aishah & maryam', as you can see in the picture below.

Ummi made the second batch, pink playdough (it's hard to make a real red although you're using red food colouring. It will still turn out pink!). But no picture this time, too busy working!

The girls spent quite a significant amount of time playing with the playdough until they were tired of it. Ummi kept the playdoughs securely in zip-lock bags, making sure they were airtight.

The next morning, Aishah again demanded to play with the playdoughs. I took them out, and found the textures to be even better than the day before! I had previously bought some alphabet cookie cutters from Mr. D.I.Y., so I took them out and let Aishah form the letters of her name by herself.

Some letters were tricky though, as the openings to push the dough out were too narrow. Even I myself was struggling to do it.

Day-3 came, and the playdough was still good to play. This time, I took out all the cookie cutters and playdough moulds that I have and let the girls use them. Aishah used all of them, and proudly lined up her collection:

Unfortunately, by day-4, I took out the playdoughs only to find that they were already sticky and no longer fit for playing. Although a bit disappointed (I had hoped the playdough to last at least for a month!), I was also a bit relieved as I was starting to get tired of cleaning up the mess after each playdough playing sessions :P

I will definitely be making more batches of playdough in the future, but using another recipe that I can find in the internet. Hope they will last longer next time, insha Allah! :)

House Decorating

Another activity involving tapes. Inspired by a 'christmas tree decorating' activity that I saw on the internet, I changed it to 'house decorating' instead, as I didn't want to introduce Aishah to a 'christmas tree' and be bombarded with questions like 'what is christmas?' just yet. 

So the idea is just to make the shape of a house, or anything you like, using some tapes on the floor, and you have an 'activity centre' ready to be utilised. I did an uppercase-lowercase letters matching activity by writing some lowercase letters on the house-shaped tapes on the floor, and wrote the corresponding uppercase letters on some post-its. I passed those to Aishah and asked her to stick them onto their matching lowercase letters on the tapes on the floor. 

This activity can be changed to many other types of learning activities like:

1. Matching numbers with the dots on the tapes
2. Patterning
3. Matching pictures with their initial letters

Or any other activities that you can think of. That's why I called it an 'activity centre' just now. 

I only wished I was more creative in making a more interesting shape rather than a house to be decorated, and it would interest the kids more if we used coloured papers as the 'decoration' instead of just plain post-its. I used those because I was such in a hurry at the time - Aishah was begging for me to start the activity right away, so I didn't have time to prepare the decorations using coloured papers! Maybe another time insha Allah :)

Watering Plants

Aishah loves watering plants. It's the easiest way to occupy her when we're playing outdoors. Since we have a large garden at home, she can spend a significant amount of time watering the plants there.

I bought the watering can at Giant for less than RM10 (can't remember the exact price). The size is just nice, perfect for a preschooler to carry around. A great activity as it not only entertains her, she's also helping me doing a house chore along the way! What a win-win situation :)

Of course, don't forget to put in learning elements in the activity. Other than teaching her how to water plants correctly i.e. pour the water on the ground, not on the leaves (they have the tendency to do that), it's a great opportunity to educate her about the concept of living things and Allah as the Creator. I discussed with Aishah about how every living things need water to live, just like us, and how Allah has made a built-in watering system in the earth through rain and the water cycle.

I have a book entitled 'Terima Kasih Allah' published by Ana Muslim, which I highly recommend for you to share with your kids. It's one of the favourite bedtime story for the girls. The book describes about the wind, sun, rain and land, created by Allah for the benefit of mankind. Aishah has already been introduced to the concept of water cycle through the book before, so this activity is the real life practical implementation of the concept for her to see.

Magic Alphabets

Aishah always loves painting. And this time, the painting is combined with learning alphabets! Yeay!

It's been a while since I actually did an activity involving arabic alphabets. Aishah is still confused with some alphabets, so I chose those that she's frequently confused with, to be involved in this activity. Here's what we did:

1. Get some white papers, preferably thicker ones (100 gsm and above).
2. Write an alphabet in each paper using a white crayon.
3. Prepare some watery paint and ask your child to use it to paint on the papers.
4. The alphabets will 'magically' appear on the papers! As you should know, crayons resist water.

Here's our work:

Sorry it's upside down. You'll have to look really carefully to notice the alphabets. On hindsight, I should have written the alphabets thicker. Notice the 'kaf' on the upper left? You can actually see 'dzal' there too. That's because I used both sides of the paper, and that didn't turn out really nice. So better not do that.

Aishah was too excited to get to paint that evening, she didn't even notice the alphabets at first! I had to point it out to her :P

7 Ways to Play With Balloons

This is one activity that I wanted to document straight away as I was worried that I would forget it since I didn't have pictures of all the 'sub-activities' - ummi was busy playing together with the girls!

We played this on one fine afternoon after tv time. I wanted to do a physical activity that will get the girls moving. Inspired by a popping balloon activity which I saw online, I decided to stretch the activity even more. How long can a balloon popping activity last anyway? I didn't want to waste too much balloon by popping lots of them to make the activity longer. So here's 7 ways to play balloons with kids:

1. The good ol' balloon volleyball game, passing the balloon to each other while trying to keep the balloon on air as long as possible. My girls, and I believe any child for that matter, will love to play this, as I think it gives them a sense of achievement - catching a normal ball, especially for toddlers, can be quite a daunting task!
2. Draw on the balloons. I handed both Aishah and Maryam a marker pen each to draw whatever they like. Here's our work of art:

   

   Aishah wrote her name (MUSLIHAH), and drew a picture of her baba at the side :)

   

   This was ummi's balloon. I decided to draw a picture of myself ;)

   

   And on the other side of ummi's balloon, of course I had to draw baba. Pardon the moustache, Aishah drew that one :P

   

   Maryam, hmmm.... drew 'angin' again I suppose? That's what she usually says when I ask her what is she drawing :P
   

3. Keep your balloon off the ground as long as possible. Similar to the balloon volleyball game, only that now you do it all by yourself. 
4. Have a balloon race, by blowing the balloon forward using your mouth. This was even harder than I thought, Aishah was better than me in this! It's actually all about the angle that you blow the balloon from, you need to blow it from the side. Blowing it from the top will get the balloon nowhere! That was what I did, haha, Aishah got it right from the first time. Well, I am much taller than Aishah, hence the tendency to blow from the top (excuses... hah!)
5. Another way to play the balloon race, is by blowing the balloon forward using a paper plate. Aishah won again this time! She's a natural in these things I suppose ;)
6. Dance  the 'hula dance' with the balloon. This one totally came from Aishah. I was trying to think of another way to play with the balloons when she suddenly came up with the idea and demonstrated it to me straight away. I think she learned that dance at school. I was forced to dance with her! A great workout, nevertheless :P. 
7. Hop with the balloon in between your legs. This one was tiring. Aishah won again, huhu T.T

After we finally finished all the activities, we took our bath and then Maryam asked to be nursed - and fell asleep soon enough! Aishah was no exception - she asked to go downstairs, and when I finished my maghrib prayers and went downstairs, Aishah was already asleep! Both fell asleep at record time of before 8pm!

Maybe ummi overdid the activity this time :P

Number Maze

This activity is more on fine motor skills development plus a pinch of number recognition.

Just get a hold of a mahjong paper, choose one number and write a trail of that number on the paper like a maze. Then fill the paper up with other numbers, and ask your child to trace the trail of that specific number using a tape.

I chose number 4 for Aishah as she sometimes get confused with the number. I have quite a nice fancy tape that I bought at Mr. D.I.Y., so I used that as the tape. I had to hold the paper still for Aishah to tape so that the paper won't crumple under the tape. On hindsight, I should have just taped the paper onto the floor. Aishah also cut the tape all by herself.

And we're done! Maryam also wants to help, so I let her do it using a masking tape. Easier to take off later :)

Cotton Bud Painting

Aishah will always be very excited everytime I announce that we're going to do some painting. I'm always on the lookout at the internet of any new items that can be used to paint other than the good ol' paint brushes.

So this time I decided to let the girls paint using cotton buds. As usual, I won't dictate what to draw - they're free to draw whatever they feel like. Here's the result:

A rainbow, 2 flowers, a sun and clouds :)

Baking Soda & Vinegar Balloons

Have you tried blowing a balloon without using your mouth or pump? I have! hehe....

This is another activity that you can do with baking soda and vinegar. As we all should know, baking soda mixed with vinegar generates carbon dioxide (I just learned that when I googled it up as I am writing this post hehe). This time, rather than letting loose the carbon dioxide generated as in our previous baking soda and vinegar activity, we trapped the gas in a balloon!

Here's how we did it:

1. I handed Aishah and Maryam a balloon each and asked them to write or draw whatever they wanted on their balloons. 
2. I put in some baking soda into the balloons.
3. I put in some vinegar into 2 plastic bottles.
4. The balloon holes were attached to the mouths of the bottles carefully, making sure that no baking soda drops into the bottles yet. 
5. I then asked Aishah and Maryam to shake their bottles rigorously, allowing the baking soda in their balloons to drop into the vinegar filled bottles.

And there you go! The balloons were blown up, filled with carbon dioxide. The girls were surprised and excited to see the doodles on their balloons growing bigger and bigger.

Maryam's balloon lasted for several days, and she proudly brings along her balloon everywhere she went in the house, showing it with pride to other family members. Aishah's balloon lasted only for a few hours, though, because somehow the balloon tore a bit and hence the gas slowly came out. 

Alphabet Collage

This one is a simple activity yet full of learning. Aishah knows most of the alphabets, recognises them, knows their sounds and can write them down, but I haven't seen her writing a word by herself yet. She will always ask me how to spell them and then write the alphabets one by one (sometimes in the wrong direction! hehe). So this activity is more of an introduction of spelling to her, as usual starting with the initial letter of the words.

So this was what we did:

1. I took two pieces of paper and asked Aishah to choose 2 alphabets that she likes - she chose S and C.
2. I drew a giant S in a paper and a giant C in the other one, and then just asked Aishah to colour the alphabets as she pleases.
3. I took some old magazines and asked Aishah to identify objects that starts with each letters, cut them, and paste them on the S and C. Of course, I did most of the identifying :P

Here was how it looked like in the end:

As usual, when my husband got home from work, Aishah will proudly show her work to her baba. This time I asked baba to guess what sort of activity we did, and he said, "Hmm... Collecting food related pictures?" 

Haha... well most of our pictures were food related, because the magazines that I used were travel magazines :D

Baking Soda & Vinegar Activity

That day I wanted to cook something without leaving the girls to be babysat by the TV as usual (yes, I'm still that kind of mom, sigh... may Allah give me strength to change this!), so I decided to try this simple activity.

I covered a tray with a layer of baking soda (buy the ones sold in bulk in baking shops. It's cheaper there), drop some different colours of food colourings in a few small bowls of vinegar, and we're ready to go.

I handed the girls a dropper each and here comes the tricky part - teaching the girls how to use them. Once the girls got the hang of it, I asked them to drop the coloured vinegar onto the baking soda using the dropper. Fizzzzzz goes the baking soda, as the chemical reaction takes place between the two.

 Early drops

Colours start to fill up

 

Almost entirely coloured!

It was a simple activity, but it really got both girls grossly engaged. They didn't want to stop! Finally I managed to cook peacefully without any disturbance from both girls. Unfortunately I didn't have any more baking soda to let the girls have a second round of colouring!

The activity didn't have any resulting end product. It's a shame to see that nice art being thrown away, but this was what I did before disposing it:

Fizzzzz away, all you baking soda! :D

Paper Clip Chain

This one is an absolutely zero-prep activity! I really love the hands on: as we grow website for exactly this reason - most of its activities are low-prep activities! Suits busy mothers like me :P

Well, for this one, just grab a bunch of paper clips and sit down with your child. Demonstrate how to connect between the paper clips and voila! You've got yourself a busy kid :)

Aishah was 4 years old when she did this activity, and she could do it after a few attempts.

Flower Blow Painting

I saw this interesting art project on the internet and decided to give it a try. Since my mother's birthday was approaching (9th December last year), I decided to turn it into a birthday card for my mother, fondly called Tokbu by the girls.

First step was to put a few drops of green paint on a paper. Then Aishah simply blew the drops upwards, to make the flower stems. Make sure the paint is a bit watery, or else it won't move when blown!

To make the flowers, I took a bottle with a 5 point bottom, asked Aishah to dip it in paint, and stamp on the paper, on top of the stems that she just made. Then she dipped her thumb on another colour of the paint, and stamped it on the middle. Next she simply connected all the 5 points to the middle using a brush. And there you go! A flower is made :)

Well, the stamping using a bottle part to make the flower petals might not be needed as you can just simply draw it using a brush, but it really does help a four year old to make the flower petals evenly spaced out. Not to mention the fun added to it ;)

This was our end result. Since Aishah at the time hasn't really mastered writing yet, so I just wrote the words using a pencil and she traced them using a glitter glue pen and a gold coloured marker.

Tokbu was really happy when she received it! First birthday card from her cucu ;)

Paper Clip Alphabets

Aishah can identify almost all alphabets now, but she still needs to work on the small and capital letters. She can write almost all letters, mainly in their capital letters form.

To help her in matching the capital letter and small letters, I did this alphabet heart activity. I used the paper hearts we made previously in this dangling artwork. 2 sets of the dangling hearts have since fallen down, so I just took of some of the hearts and used it in this activity.

I think Aishah is still confused with the capital and small letters of 'Y', so I took a heart and wrote 'Y is for yoyo' on it. Then I wrote letters around the edges of the heart, including small and capital Ys. Next I asked Aishah to put paper clips on the small and capital Ys that she could find.

At first she struggled a bit to put the paper clips onto the paper. But after a while, she discovered the right way of holding the paper and sliding the paper clip in. She did it easily after that! Another fine motor skill ticked there, alhamdulillah :)

I also made another version for maryam, but using shapes instead of letters, but putting paper clips onto paper is too challenging for her. Aishah happily did it for her sister. She was so excited on her newfound skill!