Wednesday 30 October 2013

Building with blocks

Bismillah

Assalamu alaykum

Yusuf has been playing independently with the blocks since he was 2,5. His Dad would build him masjids, towers, etc., when he was young and Yusuf would sit and watch him. As soon as he hit 2-2,5 he started building by himself, whenever AbuYusuf builds something, he usually helps him to put a block here and there.

Blocks are great fun and really good at keeping your child busy for some time, alhamdulillah. (smile)

Below are few examples of what they did together in the past few months:












Sometimes Yusuf comes up to me and asks me to build with him, I'm not as creative and good as his Dad. Together we built masjids, zoo, farm, shops, parking lots, etc..


Yusuf's work:

Yusuf mostly builds masjids and then parking lot next to the masjid. He likes building ships and trains too. Once he is into it, he can spend an hour playing with the blocks. Alhamdulillah I can leave him to play on his own for some time, although I have to be close-by, whenever he calls me.





Thursday 24 October 2013

Letter Dd

Bismillah

Assalamu alaykum,

Letter Dd

Reading Alphabetti Book 1-1, from Progressive Phonics' website.

What is letter 'd' made of?



d is for daisy:


Ocean diorama with dolphins on top. Dd is for dolphins:


Ocean life:

D is for dua coloring page:

We read D is for dhikr page from "A to Z of Akhlaaq" book. 

A To Z Akhlaq

Wednesday 9 October 2013

Learning the 5th pillar - Hajj

Bismillah

Assalamu alaykum,

Alhamdulillah the most blessed days are upon us. May Allah accept the Hajj of the hujjaj and make it mabroor inshaAllah, ameen. 



We are learning about Hajj this week. Alhamdulillah so much available on the internet to use and get the inspiration and ideas from, thanks to the technological advances. MashaAllah Muslim Ummi Bloggers input is amazing and may Allah reward them and their families with all the goodness for their hard work, ameen! 


We started with a Hajj mobile, we copied the idea from HERE. May Allah swt reward the sister Umm Sayang and the team at Smart Ark. The coloring pages are taken from Smart Ark, Yusuf colored the pictures (I helped him a little too with few of them), we added extra pictures of air plane and sheep to our Hajj mobile. We used cardboard, hole punch, few pipe cleaners and stapler to make the mobile. Yusuf was really interested in knowing more about the Hajj rituals, was asking questions, so I thought we should not stop here, but continue learning as he is eager to learn more. He likes when we do craft work, he always comes up to me and says Mom I love you, when you do crafts with me. (smile)



The next thing we did was Hajj Bulletin Board, we got all of our materials from IBB. May Allah reward sister at talibiddeenjr and sister Umm AbdulBasir for all their work, ameen. 

I explained more about the Hajj rituals using the map and Hajj day by day cards. To help him understand a little more, I thought of making a Hajj rituals display on the little table. We started off by making mini paper tents.




Our Mina tents:
They were supposed to be white in color, I only had yellow construction paper at hand, hence they are yellow looking. I went ahead with yellow, just to give him an idea of how tents may look like.













We made palm trees using construction and crepe papers, have a look HERE for step by step pictures on making a palm tree. Our Mount Arafah model is not yet finished, but I took a photo of it anyway. I need to add more layers of construction paper to make it look more mountain like. 

Finished mount Arafah:



We also looked through few Hajj related books, the one I liked was "Hajj and Umrah from A to Z" by Mamdouh N. Mohamed, it is uploaded at http://www.kalamullah.com.
We will inshaAllah be doing Hajj theme activity packs designed by sister Umm An-Numan. We also looked through mini books made by Umm Sara, may Allah swt reward the sisters with Jannah, ameen.