I decided on this book as we were heading out for the agricultural show in our city this week and chickens probably will be on display. Also we have been doing activities around birds.

This book as every other Jan Brett book, is just so beautifully illustrated. We talked a little about the location and cultural setting of this story. Also there are hidden animals amongst the mountainous backdrop through out this book. Ilyaas (4) absolutely enjoyed spotting and guessing the hidden animals.

Ilyaas was also able to recall the cormorants from The Story of Ping.

For this book, we made a very simple craft. The idea was from here.

We also talked about some of the things a chicken might eat and added some corn, some worm and flies (clove with drawn in wings).

This book presented the opportunity to have a discussion on treating smaller, weaker beings kindly and fairly. In our house this sometimes is the issue between the younger two boys.

Ilyaas (4) and Zakariyya (3) just got down to experimenting with shapes and it certainly helped in keeping their thoughts away from feeling sick.

Ibraheem has taken up to creating words and pictures on his geoboard.

Default design - a masjid

Insha-Allah we are hoping to further explore geometric patterns using these geoboards.

This week we continued with our Antarctica animal theme. We read the two books we had on penguins.

The first books wan entirely on emperor penguins. The second was about one penguin’s quest to find a million. We did some counting activity with fish crackers as well as used measuring tape to measure and compare our sizes to the size of a penguin.

These we the materials we used for our penguin craft. These are jello container. The bell shape was perfect for this craft.

We started off by filling one container with fish. The boys enjoyed pretending being penguins and eating up fish. We talked about some of the other things that penguins eat.

Then I applied glue to the mouth of the container. The boys placed the other container onto the first one to form the body of the penguin.

Next I cut out flippers, eyes, beaks and feet for them to glue on. Lastly, we squished some white paper into a ball for egg that rest on the penguin’s feet, just like the emperor penguins.

(Looking at the picture now, we probably should have lowered the flippers!)

Since our world map was placed on the table top, Ilyaas (4) has been fascinated by Antarctica. From some other books we have, he discovered some of the animals that live in the Antarctica. He is most fascinated by the leopard seals. This was the one book I found at the library on this particular seal.

The book has very detailed photographs of the seal and its habits. The book follows the life of a female seal.

We tried foam painting for this week. To make the paint, mix equal amounts of white glue and foam shaving cream.

Foam paint

So engrossed . . .

This was a coloring page I found here. Ilyaas wrote the name of the seal. He is still trying to form letters and often flips them.

He added the whiskers and spots to the seal.

This was a template I created from images I found. We used this picture to talk about the concept of predator and prey that was introduced in the book.

This was coloring page from here. Antarctica looked pretty real with foam paint on it.

I took the chance to also discuss about the different types of penguins in Antarctica. In the book itself several species of penguins become prey to the leopard seal.

We watched this video as well.

Crittercam: Leopard Seal

Now we did not mind the looks, however it was effecting the functionality of it. Food often got stuck to the rough top. To solve the problem, we got a glass cut out for the table top.

It was only after awhile, it came to us that we could actually use the table top as a sort of bulletin board that will interest the whole family.

This is our very first display; the world.

So far it has been a conversation starter, question trigger, story board . . . and I guess the possibilities are endless from now on.

What we thought was a disaster, Allah inspired us make it into something beneficial.

Insha-Allah, I am posting a few activities we did that relates back to Umm Tafari’s nature study unit (week, day and title cited) with the hope that others will try their hands at it. Warm weather is just around the corner, it will Insha-Allah be both fun and a wonderful way to appreciate Allah’s many creations.

WEEK 1 – DAY THREE – Tree Rubbing

We did this activity at a local park. Most of the trees had really rough bark. Only one was suitable for rubbing. As Ilyaas was doing this, it attracted other children to join in as well

I made some of these circle crayons just for this activity. It made it so much easier for the little ones to hold and do the bark rubbing.

To add interest to this activity for Ibraheem and his friend who came along, we did a tree measuring activity. We found this activity on Nature Detective labeled as Tree Giants. It proved to be fun for the boys as the competed with each other to find and even taller tree in the park.

WEEK 4 – DAY ONE – Seeds

We did these observation while on our road trip during summer. We were not able to do the actual seed hunt using socks as suggested.

We explained to the children how seeds can actually be within different parts of the plant; the fruit (berry), the leaf, the pod or the flower. We also explained how agents like animals, wind and rain water can then transfer these seeds to a new location.

I must say that the spores on the fern were the most intriguing one for the children.

Our planting seed activity can be found here.

We also did many of the leaf related activities well into fall. Insha-Allah I am hoping to do the bird themed activities this year.

May Allah reward Umm Tafari for putting together this study unit.

With all the snow we had, I thought this will be an appropriate book for a craft this week. We will be participating in stART after such a long time. I miss crafting with the children as often as we had in the past. stART is a good motivation for that

The children enjoyed reading this book and spotting all the different items that went on the snowman. This was a good introduction to the kinds of things we can put out in our backyard to attract birds.

We did try building a snowman, unfortunately the snow was too powdery. When it was good for rolling, the temperature was already in two digits Subhanallah, that it was just melting away.

We just went ahead and made popcorn snowman instead using the recipe provided in the back flap of this book.

Popping the kernels was a fun thing. We counted all the way to 64 before the first kernel popped. The children were just so thrilled about the popping sound that came out of the pot.

Pot of popcorn

This ended up being a very tasty craft. The boys were so busy eating the sweetened popcorn that they only managed to roll a few popcorn balls! Also you have to work quickly as the syrup hardens very fast.

We assembled the snowman on a skewer. It was rather tricky to attach any sort of finishing to the snowman due to the bumps on the popcorn ball. Here are our tasty snowman.

Popcorn ball snowman

Food colouring in spray bottles.

Our neighbour's tree getting a makeover.

Snow angel.

Alhamdulillah, thanks to chinook winds the snow is melting away as fast as it had piled up.

Ibraheem was so excited about the whole affair. He researched, imagined and planned some brilliant designs. He set out to build this super aircraft. Something that looked like it was out of a Star Wars movie.

Subhanallah, he did build an aircraft . . . that got promptly shot down by the evil forces a.k.a two younger brothers. The younger boys just could not keep their hands of it!

After several days of being awfully sad and frustrated about the whole affair, Ibraheem’s mind switched into its default setting. “I am gonna build a masjid!” he announced. Alhamdulillah this was what he created.

Ibraheem's Lego masjid

Masjid dome

We did not have similar colour blocks to create a uniform dome. The instructions for the dome was from the YouTube video below.

Minaret

It was wonderful to see all of the quite imaginative creation that was displayed. The child who won the contest, built a multi teared treehouse like structure with all sorts of Lego man running around in it. It was some sort of war zone.

As for Ibraheem, he was proud of what he had built. He represented his creation well and answered questions from viewers and judges quite confidently. He was analysing all the other creations there for ideas and is geared up to enter another competition. When we got home, he was duly rewarded $10 by his Papa for his efforts

Alhamdulillah, we still did a few activities. This is one that centered around the Kaabah.

The templates for the mini kaabah craft was from Jannah Steps. I printed several copies so that we could paste the upper border around the box. We used a cereal box for this craft.

Ilyaas painting the 'Kaabah"

We read books about the story of Ibraheem (AS) and Ismail (AS) building the Kaabah. We also looked up of some images of the Kiswah covering on the internet.

I made up this ryhme for the boys as we put on towel ihraams and did our mock hajj.

Hajj Ryhme

We made puppets of our entire family in ihraam using templates from Jannah Steps. I printed a reduced size of the puppets for the three boys. Our puppets we glued onto toilet paper rolls.

It was hard to stop the children from just coloring the puppet’s ihraam. I took the opportunity to explain about ihraam to them. We also spoke about the difference in the male and female ihraam.

Alhamdulillah, our miniature Kaabah and family of hujjaj was displayed on our mantle.

Miniature Kaabah & hujjaj craft

 Check out Jannah Steps for more hajj themed activities and templates Insha-Allah.