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