Felt Bracelet

Lil Muallimah Sews Again

Here's a simple & neat needle work project Lil Muallimah made:

Just cut a slit in the felt for the button to pass through Voila! 

Paper Fun

Lil Muallimah gets Creative

Time and time again children surprise you with their creativity and creative expression. The other day Lil Muallimah served me with tea and cookies Lil Muallimah style:

• Tea bag with brown paper in the cup and a tea bag tag fixed with a ribbon hanging from the edge of the cup,
• chocolate chip cookies
• crackers
• yellow and pink paper strips for banana strawberry smoothie (if I wanted to drink something cold)

It was just too adorable Mashallah!

Art Journal

GOT TO LOVE ART JOURNALING

Don't know when and if the kiddos will reach this level but they are thoroughly enjoying their creative exploration at this point.

While I intend to write a detailed post of our first Art Journaling experience, here are some sneak peaks from their Art Journals .

Lil Muallimah's

 Lil Muallin # 2

and of course Lil Muallim # 3 did not want to be left behind........ he was quite particular about what he wanted and where he wanted it!!! 

Home made Play dough

WE LOVE PLAYING WITH  PLAY DOUGH

Yes Play dough has brought endless fun many a times in our home (and the mess and clean up that comes with it). We prefer the home made Kool Aid Play dough recipe I got from youtube.

1 cup of flour

1 package of koolaid

1/4 cup salt

2 tbsp cream of tartar (optional)

1 cup warm water

2 tbsp vegetable oil.

Combine the dry ingredients in a sauce pan and then stir in your warm water and oil. Stir in your sauce pan on Medium heat for 3-5 minutes until the mixture forms a ball. Remove from heat and let cool. Knead the playdough and store in plastic bag in the fridge until ready to use.

Recently Grandma visited us, and as she loves baking breads and other fancy shaped savory goodies. 

When she saw the kids making home made play dough and playing with it, she couldn't resist playing and teaching the kids GRANDMA STYLE....

KIDS LOVED IT !!!

Felt Hand Flower

Personalized Flower Brooch

I saw this post at Handmade beginnings and knew that I had to make it with Lil Muallimah. We actually ended up making 2 in one go as Lil Muallimah wanted to gift it to her lil neighbour friend too Mashallah.

Lil Muallimah LOVED the idea wanted to do it all by herself by needed help in making it secure. I really should do more sewing projects with her so she can be more independent Inshallah.

We used the tracing of Lil Muallimahs hands and Lil Muallim # 3 so it was a truly personalized project for us. The added touch of cuteness. Mashallah

If you do not have a toddler handy you can do what the original poster of this activity did here :) She has complete step by steps in pictures too.

Here's what ours looks like. Colors were chosen by Lil Muallimah ofcourse.

I don't have pictures of the second one but we actually used a kids safe safety pin for that one, you know the one that has a lock. Like the one here.

Popsicle Stick Crafts

FUN WITH POPSICLE STICKS

Lil Muallimah and I have dabbled in popsicle stick crafts. After making some typical geometric shaped baskets using a glue gun, we went in popsicle craft frenzy. Infact Lil Muallimah started craving to make things on her own. So I opened pinterest for ideas and voila! Following are some of her copied and original ideas.... Mashallah!

COPY WORK

Wall Decore Snowflake

Earing Stand

ON HER OWN

She made up a story about these characters while making these popscile puppets.

Will share pics of the ones we made together too.....Once I find the pics on my hard drive !!!!! :(

DIY Push Pins

EUREKA MOMENT

Where do you find large push pins ? As much as I wanted  to introduce the push pin activity to my kids I delayed it till I found one. Which I didn't ....Sigh ! 

Finally, I was just struck with the simplest DIY. Love those moments. Well I got right down to it, it was difficult to take pictures while doing it but you will see it is very simple really :) I just got our wooden craft beads from the $ store, push pins and a glue gun.

At a closer look you can see it's not the neatest job, but my glue gun isn't the greatest (doesn't warm up enough) so I have to use more glue to ensure a long lasting joint :)

For the activity I also glues together 2 square cork boards I got from the $ store......... To see the actual activity go here.

DIY Smelling Bottles

Sense of smell: Smelling bottle

Got to love this one! You could pretty much use any bottles for this, with screw caps or flip tops, where the child can open the bottle and smell the scent. Or like I saw an idea on another blog where, the lady used baby food jars and simply hammered in 5 holes at the top. But I liked the idea of using salt pepper shakers the best.

I bought 3 packs of 2 pairs of salt and pepper shakers for a $1.25 at the $ store. This gave me 6 pairs to work with.

To make the smelling bottles you simply have to make pairs of bottles with the same scent, one in the salt shaker the other in the pepper shaker. This helps in pairing and identifying the pairs. For scent you can use flavor essence or fragrance oils, ittar, pot pouri or dry spices.

I used:

1.  coffee beans (I picked up a few that were scattered on the shelf in the grocery store under the coffee bean holders). 
2. Vanilla essence 1/4th teaspoon dropped onto a cotton ball, 
3. chocolate (1/2 teaspoon of strong cocoa and water mixture),
4. cinnamon sticks, 
5. ummi's perfume (wild honeysuckle scent) 
6. abi's ittar. 

Be careful when putting in the smells not to touch another bottle with hands smelling of the prvious sent especially the ittar

I placed one of each pair in a different colored tub, and we were ready to roll. 

I showed Lil Muallimah how to sniff one bottle from a tub and then put it aside. Then try to find a matching pair  form the other tub. If the one you picked is not a match put it aside, not back in the tub. 

If you think you have  a match sniff both bottles again one by one to make sure.

 

UPDATE

To renew the smells, the bottles must be washed well and left in sun for some time to enusre no previous smells linger.

DIY Touch Boards

Touch Boards

Differentiating between rough and smooth surfaces is a very common practice in our daily lives. Incorporating the Montessori touch tablets I came up with these.

I bought these small wooden boards from the $ store, and stuck a low grade sand paper on one. Lil Muallimah got to sense rough and smooth by rubbing two fingers on each board.

You can see the video for touch boards at ehow. 

I added a variation to this activity by keeping a different surface objects in a tub next to the tablets. Lil Muallimah feels each object with her hands and decides if they should go under the smooth surface board or the rough surface board. I plan on using different things from time to time. Like shells, rocks, vegetables, fruits, leaves, toys etc.

Later on I will add a blindfold to this activity to throw in some challenge and fun too. Inshallah!

UPDATE

We got our own Montessori Touch boards. will be posting the pictures and activity soon Beidhnillah.

DIY Red Rods

MAKING OUR OWN RED RODS

You may have heard of the red rods in Montessori method. These are wooden rods of different lengths that are to be set like stairs when put on order of length. The key is to hold the rods ONLY from the ends to get the feel of the length increasing or decreasing. The rods work on base 10, the longest being a meter and the consecutive ones decreasing by 10 centimeter, making the smallest 10 centimeter in length.

Well for now I thought of making our red rods by cutting strips from a very heavy carton box I picked up from our local grocery store. This was an excellent math activity to involve Lil Muallim # 1 in.  I made him mark lines of 2.5 cm width. Then I cut them with a sharp blade cutter.

The actual measurement for red rods is: 

1. 2.5x2.5x10cm, 
2. 2.5x2.5x20cm, 
3. 2.5x2.5x30cm, 
4. 2.5x2.5x40cm, 
5. 2.5x2.5x50cm, 
6. 2.5x2.5x60cm, 
7. 2.5x2.5x70cm, 
8. 2.5x2.5x80cm, 
9. 2.5x2.5x90cm, 
10. 2.5x2.5x100cm.

As I was making these with strips cut out of a carton, I only maintained the width and length not the depth.

Lil Muallim # 2 was responsible for gluing two strips together. As the strips got bigger I had to actually join a couple of strips together by sticking another stick to remaining length of the single strip. Then  placed some heavy books on top to press.

  I used Lil Muallim # 1 as my measurement calculator. As our ruler could measure only 38 cm, he calculated how much more to make 50, 60, 70 ......100 cm. in his words................

 " I am just thinking logically, as you said each strip increases by 10 cm then I am just telling you the answer by addimg ten more to my previous answser" Mashallah! He helped a lot in this project and got a thorough measurement review Alhumdolillah!

Once the strips ahem.. rods were all stuck together, the Lil Muallim # 1 painted one side and Lil Muallim # 2 painted the other with acrylic paint. 

Once they are all dry I will coat them with contact sheet for durability and securing the paint. This was a BIG family project, taking almost 2 day.

Honestly speaking, the last 100 cm one is left to be made, Lil Muallimah cannot hold the 90 cm and 100 cm ones by the ends, too long for her. 

These are only 9 rods, I am still working on the 10th one

I was so excited to share this with you all that I couldn't wait for the last rod and try them out. 



Using Red Rods

 Step by step guide to this activity and variations can be found here

 The method to work with red rods is to place a mat on the floor. This defines the space to work in for the child. Then ask the child to pick up the rods from the shortest to longest and place them on the mat not in order.

 Then ask the child to build a stair from longest to shortest always remembering (reminding) to hold the rods from the end only. This gives the child a sense of length as the distance between their hands increases and decreases. This further heps them correct themselves through their sensorial experience. It gets tougher to hold the rods from the ends as they get bigger, so the adult can help. Got to love this! 

I personally found this to be a learning activity for all my Lil Muallims as:

 Lil maullim # 1 got to practice measuring exact width and lengths and working in base tens. Hands on conversion practice from metres to centimters, and decimeters and  milimeters . (will make anoither post on this)

Lil Muallim # 2 got to visualize and feel a meter, and learn how to measure and stick thin strips aligning them together.

Lil Muallimah got to learn differences in length in a VERY hands on experience Mashallah

As we are getting to do more and more Montessori style activities Lil Muallim # 1 reflected: " I always thought Montessori was only for babies" hehe well if it was ... Lil Muallim # 1 is thoroughly enjoying being a baby hahahaha

 Step by step guide to this activity and variations can be found here.

NOTE: if you are handy with tools, have lumber lying around and time on your hands not to forget ULTIMATE DEDICATION you may enjoy this post on DIY red rods.

UPDATE

These have been on my to buy list for quite some time. In my impatience (till I can get them Beidhnillah) I ended up with the DIY with available resources. Eventually we never got around to making the last one. But loved working with what we had.  They weren't toooo durable but lasted us some time. The kids miss them and hope to get them too.

INSHALLAH !

DIY Sound Cylinders

Sensorial

Recognizing different sounds

Okay so this one is really cool and fun to make. The best part is, when you see the child has mastered it you can change the sounds. What am I talking about? Sound boxes. The purpose of this activity is to engage the sense of hearing, enabling the child to recognize/differentiate  sounds.

To make this activity I found some transparent bottles at the $ store in the crafts section (6 for $ :)). I bought 2 packs. To make the sound bottles I needed 2 sets of 6 bottles with color.

 I cut thin strips of construction paper according to the height and diameter of the bottle. In my case it was 3cm x 9cm. I simply took the strip rolled it and inserted it in the bottle. No gluing no taping. Then to cover the bottom of the bottle I cut circles 3 cm in diameter and inserted it in the bottom and pressed the sides to make sure it was fixed. Voila! the bottles were now ready to be filled.

  

You could use anything to put in them lying around the house. Just make sure each set of bottles has one bottle with exactly the same objects so they make the same sound. I used: 3 crystals, 1 wooden bead, 3 nuts, 1/2 teaspoon rice and a 1/4 teaspoon lentil. I left one pair of bottles empty.

Once it was all done I placed the blue bottles in the blue tub and the red bottles in the pink tub. Now for some Sound FUN!!!!!

So she was asked to pick one bottle shake it and hear the sound it made then, she had to pick a bottle from the other tub and find  the bottle with the matching sound. It's quite exciting to see the intense concentration, the shaking of each bottle next to the ears. :) Once a match is found the two bottles are kept together  and she starts all over again.

Lil Muallimah really enjoyed this activity. Not only that, while she was doing it, Lil Muallim # 2 kept saying "Can I do this after her this looks sooooo FUN!!" And once he was done I put in front of Lil Muallim # 3 who had just come in the room and he did it too. He infact, did it extra cautiously... not wanting to take any chances hehehe!!! That was fun to watch. ALHUMDOLILLAH

Tip: You could use anything that can be closed tight to make them, like bottles, boxes, camera film cases etc.

The important thing is that as this is a sensorial activity. It should be done in silence with concentration. You can see how in the video.

Another awesome DIY idea can be seen in this blog.

Also found a link on flickr to make these out tissue rolls. (check out the following pictures to see the steps)

And this is what the actual Montessori Sound Cylinders look like