Ms Melissa Christmas gift

Ummi can we celebrate christmas? Ask Harith, no Harith we are muslims, christians celebrate christmas. Often times Harith will get frustrated with my answer. We can observe our friends , teachers celebrating it as a part of my effort to teach him religious tolerance . He wants to make christmas trees, he used to want to have the christmas tree's at home as well. Rather than dismissing his wish I try to go around it and try to use the opportunity for life lessons. I do let him do the christmas tree as a present to his teacher. So, this time our christmas tree to Ms Melissa which is Harith class teacher is made from his recycled color paper. 

The pieces of colored paper is rolled to become a beautiful cylinder shape.

Harith is cutting more paper stripes to role. We have few colorful cylinder , many of green as the leaves color.

Uyay helped as well, as seen the papers are used recycled paper .

Thats how the cylinder looks like.

We made our own DIY tree stamp shape from sponge , stick it on blocks , color them with water color and stamp.

The finished stamp paper waiting to dry.

Harith now started arranging his cylinder into a christmas tree shape, i helped him glue them with glue gun.

Almost done, feeling excited.

Yeay done!!. 

Later on the last day of school just before the winter break Harith bring the christmas tree frame to school to give them to his teacher as a christmas present. I would like him to learn respect, appreciation and understanding that we sometimes are different but can still live together in peace. Our differences are what makes us unique so that we can learn from each other. 

Bee hives

This is a very simole math activities Harith learn at school and later wants to do more of them at home. Its very simple very fast and Uyay get to do them as well.

Thats the only equipments we need. 

Once measured and cut the rectangle paper is folded in two and then fold again in threes. Altogether giving them a 6 edges that are able to make a hexagon shape.

We did this while the boys are having their dinner, and its done in minutes.

Put together the hexagon shape can fit in each other , complementing each other shapes making a bee hives structure. This is math in 3D, math in nature that the school is trying to instilled in the students. Math are life, logic, functional and fun. Math are not work on paper,  frustration, exams, test, complex as i used to understand them at school before. 

Long shot riffle

My little inventor at work again, suddenly i hear the tape scrap scrap again and uyay is at work. He found our broken green ikea children writing table leg( yeap our famous green table is missing a leg, thanx to Harith) and applied "tape" the magnifying glass at the side and tada!! He got a long shot riffle, able to shoot far target.

Busy taping taping taping and sigh ....taping, did i mention this boy is a perfectionist, he wont have the magnifying glass wobbly, it must be attached firmly at the expenses of soo much tape.

Yeap!! Thats the masterpiece, oh yes at the back he attached a holder from a broken shovel to the stump of the table leg for easy handling.

Ummi now is his easy prey, see how he gets the magnifying glass viewer so alligned with the so called riffle. 

Yes, Uyay is very technical, while Harith is very artistic. I am now finding and exploring more toys / tools to enhance and nurture their imaginary innovative inventive ability which I believe are within every children given the chance to explore this natural gift. 

Fruit tart

Been wanting to bake a fruit tart and I finally did!! The dough recipe is just like those of cheese tart.

Yep this post is one which i gloat at my own tiny mini achievements, lol.

Terry fox run

In the year of my birth, a hero Terry Fox, a cancer survivor himself at the time started a marathon called "marathon of hope" to raise money for cancer research. He ran or rather hop everyday in rain, strong wind with one leg ( another been amputated due to the osteosarcoma) 43km a day for 143 days in the hope to raise money and awareness to help cancer research center to study and eventually find cure to cancer. Although the spread of the cancer eventually force him to stop his quest. 

Today full of energy our families for the first time ever join the "marathon of hope" and wish that his spirit of helping, fighting and sharing stays with us and help us grow into somebody in the likes of him.The marathon was held in many coutries every year and raise millions for cancer research. 

We finish the 10km run , walking while pushing Diha stroller( Diha been a darling the whole time) , harith biking, uyay riding his scooter. We enjoyed ourselves soo much.

Semangat waja nak start!

Initially i never have expected that we will complete the run , and so proud that we did. Bravo to my boys who didn't want to give up and want to see the finishing line.

Latest addition to the homeschool

I just wanna have a quick share on how my homeschool looks nowadays. Precious!! Lol

Yepp we have a new student and she is soooo naughty!! Oooootttyyy!!( nickname by abah)

Uyay my little inventor

Uyay loves to invent stuff , he will put 2 and 2 together and give them names and fuction. Once he complete his masterpiece he keep them there ( nobody can take it and kemas taww!!) marvel at them, going around telling people in the house that is me, my maid, his abah, Harith about it. Initially he just had them arrange in ways and it stays there but now he learn the use of tape and his creativity has broaden and become more creative , which also means frequent tape in ummi groceries list!! Asyik habis je my tape!!Lol.

There!! A multipurpose hat with speakerphone, antenna and earphone!! 

His cutter laser beam. To cut cakes and fight toooo!!

There!! His proud invention arrange in rows, now its stays that way thanx to the tape. All of them has names and mostly are cooking tool !! 

A ba ta projects for Diha and the boys.

I am really determine in the kids religious study , Quran study and have plan and started the lesson with Diha as well. For starters I made a ba ta flash cards, with abang Uyay help. He loves the cards so much that he started arranging them by order on the flour. Later i made a board and stick them on the wall so Uyay and Harith can keep changing the letter everyday to enhance their recognition with hijaiyah alphabets.

Our DIY a ba ta flash cards.

Uyay at work arranging the fkashcards in order.

Diha! No!! Jangan kacau, uyay struggling to stop Diha from messing his flash cards arrangements.

Yeay!! Happy boy , completing his task , naughty Diha got distracted with more paper collection at the center there. 

Later uyay arrange the letters on the wall.

Diha pon nak baca jugak and goes and sound like aaa ggooo tattattatat

Being able to spend time doing activities with the kids is priceless, precious and so damn rewarding. Such a bliss......Alhamdulillah, haza min fadhli rabbi.

Making my own jewellery

For the consular ckub charity bazaar I chose to wear a kebaya and looking at my plain red jubah kebaya I said oh noo!! To plain lah. So i went to the saigin famous SKL shope which sells all the things you might find to make clothes and their acessories, from material, cloth, beads, zip, clips, buttons, neclace and the lost goes on, its really a heaven to crafter and costume maker. Hoping to get 'kerongsang nyonya' well you know the 3 serangkai kerongsang but hofkos to no avail, where to get a malaysian jewellery here in saigon la. But i found some very interesting piece of beautiful gold colored thin nicely crafted metal , with that, i bought some gold colored chain pins and went home to make my iwn jewellery, awwww!! So ambitious!!

I dont know what they actually manucfactured this stuff for, but there you go the beautiful golden metal, gold chain and pin waiting to be glue gun together.

Its really nice and fine. I love them. They have many designs too.

Tada!! Awesome right??

I made some kerongsang too. 

I am in love with them and so proud of them that I went around using these little cheap beauty hahahhaha dang!!

 

Salt castle

Harith went home early today, and press me to do a craft activity with him, well ok darling!! So we made a salt dough and mould them into a beautiful castle , well at least we think so.

2 cups of flour to a cup of salt, add water till dough become playdoughy like clay and we're ready

Moulding the dough. Uyay as usual will come a bit late to the scene.

We cut the dough into a blocks like shape , which will acts just as blocks does when you build a building.

Ahhh there's my little darling uyay helping his big brother with blockings here they have started making the castle structure as a practice before transfering to baking tray.

On a baking tray they build the castle structure again this time using a mixture of the dough with lotsa water to stick the dough blocks together. Once done we bake it in the oven.

Walllah!!!! Looks yummy!!! But tak bole makan salty and berdaki!!! Hahahahahha

After the castle had cool down they started to paint them, later uyay persuade me to make him flags to put at the castle.

Uyay putting the flags. Later once the paint has dried.

Everytime we succeed completing a craft or science project, i feel so proud and happy seeing my kids happy and proud faces. Sometimes its just too dragging to start a project but once it is well underway, we had such fun doing them together.