Hot air expand.

Recently, its hard to find real time to do big projects with my boys. But as much as I can , in the midst of all the house chores I will try to pay attention to their request and fulfill them as much as I can. The other day, while I was busy cooking, Harith having seen a science project you tube about how a baloon expanded on a heated bottle wanted to try and demostrate that phenomenon right away. 

He found a bottle and a ballon and get me pour him a hot water in a cup.( yup its at night and they are about to sleep cause tomorow is school)

Yeay!! It worked!!

Getting excited now we do them on a boiling water, it expands bigger! But we stop before something started to blow up! After all this is fire guys!!

This is Harith illustration on how the concept work.

Pincer grip practice.

There are lots of activities to train pincer grip practice, just be extra carefull cause the object for training pincer grip is small.

There is the small lego toys parts again. Choose small objects that is colorfull.

Diha trying to pinch them.

I demonstrate to her to pinch and put in container, this have to be done many many times, she will watch us do them and then occasionally immitate the action, of course the "messing" up moves are expected at this age.

Remember to watch her closely cause they will put this cutie stuff in their mouth with a blink of an eye, so " dont even blink!!!" Lol.

Transfer.

This activities focus more and motor skills. Grab and transfer skills and fine motor skill.

On a mat I put 2 similar container, one id filled with small lego's cause at the sama time I want to train her fine motor skills. Therefor since this is involving small object, close no blink observation in required kay!.

Then i started to show her how i take one lego and put them into the empty container. I let her watch several time , if she attempts to start grabbing them try to hold her hand first and continue few toys transfer.

Then let her do it, and take her hands and guide the as well.

Then we start observing while at the same time be ready to intervene if she starts throwing or putting the toys in her mouth.

Diha manage to transfer a few.

Before she starts grabbing the whole container and messes up!!!

Solat lessons

Recently we have started solat lessons with the kids. Harith is almost 7 years old and we have decided that we can start fiqah education. Since they were small we have gradually introduce tauhid knowledge to them. Telling them about Allah, the creator, and all His attributes (sifat) so much so that Harith can engage with us in a lenghty discussion about Allah and His greatness. But of course its still a long way to go for us all.

We believe that creating the good environment is important, we beleive that we should teach them right early. We teach them to dress well to solat, prepare yourself well because solat is about presenting ourselves to the creator and worshipping Him. 

The boys nicely in jubah preparing to solat Isya' together.

Abah explaining the steps.

After solat we revise the steps and the proper ways of ruku' and sujud

Harith turn is done , now its uyay's turn to show his steps.

This is on another day before solat where abh gives a short tazkirah. 

Kusyu' dengar tu :D.

May Allah guide us always. 

Batik craft

I am in a middle of figuring out the best way to do batik craft with kids. hmmm.. So this is one way, which is not so successful but nevertheless quite ok and easy to do with the kids.

A piece of white cotton, draw on them and trace them with candle stick.

Iron it out.

See the candle outline of the drawing.

Painting time, however I find that, the candle tracing still takes color so thats why it is not so succesfull. After the kids finish coloring i wash the cloth with hot water to fix the color.

And hang them to dry. Anyway the finished product is still very nice. 

Color sorting activities.

Maybe this is also too advance for Madiha, so I am just putting it up for her as an introduction, of course she will do her Major skills now with them that is "messing up" hahhahahah.

So sorting concept is so vast, and we can play around with it in lots of interesting ways.

See how these cups are soo usefull. So today its a color sorting activities. At madiha stage, its about "in" and "out". And exploring.

And "messing" and more "messing".

"In" 

"Out"

Nesting

I found this very usefull interesting colorful nesting cup in ikea.

It is colorfull with different size that you can nest them and stack them together and can also be use later for other differentiation games. Though at the moments at ten months she either watch me nest and stack them up and she will play her parts in destroying the towers and messing up!!

Present them to her in orderly manner and observe what she does with them.

Build a tower, now she's coming to detroy them. Oh by the way we can bring this to play with the sand too, or we can play these with our DIY snow sand.

Keep in mind always that things we see and simple and natural are all new and exciting to them. 

Color and all its wonder

Kids loves color, thats why kids toys are colorfull. My aim today is introducing her to color names.

I will always use this placemate or tray to present her with the subject. These are the main colors ( not primary colors) red , blue , green and yellow.

Of course babies wont wait, they just go on and grab all these at once , so let her plays and hold them and either name the colors of object in her hand or take her hand with the particular block and tell her the color of that particular block. Later in all her surroundings( while she is playing and messing up) if she is absorb playing with somethings that particularly have that particular color like a red car, then i will tell her again "red". 

Material introduction

Today we learn a bit about material around us. It might be a bit advance, but I learn that knowledge introduce in a spiral manner is good for children. In Harith school they use these methods for mathematics. Concept are indroduce gradually in each grade. 

Today I gather up, bottles, spoon, plastic toys and plastic wood and let madiha plays with them, after prsenting them in fornt of her, i started lifting them up and tell her the thing's name and nature like "spoon" and then "metal". And continues on with plastic, wood, and glass.

My material trays.

Diha is at the stage where she bangs all the things that she holds together so i let her bangs the spoon with glass, glass with glass, plastic withgalss and let her enjoys the different sound they make with each other. Ohh and she is also at the stage where she then throw everythings away pulak. Hehehhe

After she's bored with them, I will put these tray of stuff away at one side and let her play with them again. After awhile we can change the stuff in this tray and introduce new stuff.

Pancake cake

This is a very easy fancy desert, it looks rich and grand and yet easy to make, no forms of baking required.

The other day I wanted to bring dessert to a friend's house for makan makan session, but I cant cause madiha wants me at her side all day long and she takes such a short nap at daytime.

So in the morning, have to make this quick fix dessert. 

This is my favorite pancake mix, i always have them at home for breakfast, Harith love pancakes for breeakfast, its very quick and easy to make. First I make about 5 big size pancakes.

Then after they cooled down I started layering them. Chocholate and nuts layer and cream cheese layer. 

You can even layered them with these easy instant whipped cream. Kalau sangat rajin kan !!! Lol

Cream cheese layer. And continue on untill all the 5 pancakes have been stacked up.

Tada!!! It looks fabulous right?? Perah santan sendiri minum laaaaa !! Lol.

Periscope

The kids loves to watch TV IQ in Malaysia. In saigon there is no such channel but sometimes they will request that ummi type them a science project video. I am so glad that they are into science project now to do as a project. 

The other day Harith watch about a periscope and immediately wanted to do it, in fact he draw a plan on how it should look like and even the priciple of how they actually work.

So we gather our things and started.

The equipments are a long rectangular box, 2 mirror and tape, scissors and cutter. Above you can see Harith drawings on how the periscope works. He drew an eye and how the eye see through the reflection of the mirror. Look at the direction of the arrow. Well he soon will learn that the reflection is of light that goes into the eyes not the other way around.

Now we are aligning the mirror in the  box.

I did the cutting work.

Set the mirror and tape them up. Making sure we secure them well.

Done!!!!!! the kids were having a blast with them.

The next day Harith brought them to school to show it to his friends.

Hot and Cold

Hot and Cold

Again emphasize is actually on language development taking advantage of the activities to enhance baby motor skills. 

Actually activities with babies are much easier because the surroundings are their classrooms, thats why we see babies touching everything that they see and they will spend a long time touching, playing, messing up with new things that we gave them cause its their natural instinct which is curious and passionate of learning.

This is my recycled nutrition bottle. I do keep lots of these bottles at home.

I put ice in one bottle.

Warm water in the other.

Tada!!!! Then present them to her. This is the good way we try to instilled organization in our kids too.

Remember istiqamah always, small but continous.

Then she will start touching them, we as usual start saying "hot" and "cold" everytime she touches the respective bottle. Then I let her play with the bottle as long as she like, if she plays them quite long then the temperature of the bottle will wane , so i put in a fresg ice cubes and a fresh warm water.

I love these bottles cause its really water tight and really hard to open, which is of course madiha favourite thing to do, opening up container.