This is a Pinterest inspired craft. It was a great way to use up leftover foam letters from past projects. I had completely left this is the hands of Ibraheem (10).
The possibilities of personalizing this craft is just endless.
– leave the foam letters as is in a rainbow of colours
– choose different colour for each word
– create patterns with words
– paint canvas in a multitude of colours
We recently had to stay home all weekend as it was cold as well as Papa was away on a weekend course. I decided to just take it easy with the children and do some fun activities at home.
Silly Putty
Properties and interaction between liquids is something Ibraheem (10) is studying at school. This was an experiment he did at school. We just wanted to do it again as he was not entirely happy with what turned out at school.
The recipe for this was from Steve Spangler’s Science. We just added some blue food coloring to this recipe.
For the younger boys (well for Ibraheem and me as well) it was a great sensory experience. We all just wanted a blob of that putty.
Blue beard Zakariyya
The boys had more than two hours of fun playing with the silly putty at the dining table. They did silly things like pretending to have a blue beard, measuring how long the putty could stretch before snapping, trying to make pretend food. Just having fun.
Snow painting
After clean up, we got down to cutting out some paper snowflakes. Then we got dressed and headed outside for some snow painting.
We used the paper snowflakes as stencils to create patterns on the snow. The painted tree was just stunning. The boys even made snow angles and sprayed colour on it.
Frozen Peanut Butter Balls
We made these little treats later in the day. It was from the show In The Kitchen With Stefano Faita on CBC. Zakariyya (4) loves this show (yes, it’s true) and watched it during the winter break. He then would suggest things for us to try to make at home! This was one suggestion.
The recipe can be found here. It is a really simple recipe that allows children to participate.
Ibraheem (10) did the measuring and mixing. They were all having a race and how many peanut butter balls the can roll – fun, fun, fun. Ibraheem got to do the chocolate melting and drizzling. And of course we all got to eat them!
Angry Bird tin can game
The next day, we made these.
The boys own these stuffies. I cut and paste some images of pigs from coloring pages I found on the internet. I sized templates to fit tin cans I had been hoarding for another project. Printed the labels onto green contruction paper.
Of course my little helpers were more than happy to cut and glue the labels onto the tin cans. I did use a black marker to draw the outline of the pigs over the printed images. Printer ink does not seem to do well on contruction paper.
Trajectory, counting, bowling, stack a pig tower – so many possibilities of having fun with some birds and tin cans.
Papa came home to find the boys full of stories of what they had been doing all weekend without him. Operation cold weekend without Papa – success. Alhamdulillah!
By the grace of Allah, Alhamdulillah this year I have been granted the opportunity to spend Ramadhan and Eid (Insha-Allah) with family and friends in my home country – Malaysia.
I have not had the opportunity to update my blog recently due various reasons. I appreciate all the comments left by readers and will try my best to respond to any questions. I do hope some of the ideas here will be of benefit to all of you Insha-Allah.
Ramadhan Mubarak.
We had our kitchen table top sanded down so that it could be restained to a darker tone that my husband wanted. Sadly the person hired to do the job did not do it quite right. We were left with a rather rough surfaced table top.
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.
I have not been posting for months now. There is a lot to share, just that I have not made the time.
I have been through a cycle of major sleep deprivation and thus totally zombied. The culprit: ECZEMA. I was only the secondary victim. The real sufferer was Zakariyya (3).
This was my itch kit. All sorts of moisturising creams, prescription steroid creams, natural oils, bandages . . . .
The poor child was practically hurting himself by scratching. He could not sleep due to his itch. We have even had to bandage his arms and legs to stop him from scratching. After blood tests and an allergy test, Alhamdulillah, Zakariyya was not reacting to anything in his food or environment. It was just plain old dry skin condition that breaks into an inflammation. He has extremely dry skin which makes him vulnerable.
It was a very trying and frustrating time for us as parents. Many a times, nothing really helped in relieving his itch. Alhamdulillah with lots of dua and a switch to more natural herbal treatment, Zakariyya’s eczema is under control.
These are some of the things we are currently using on his skin:
1. Almond oil for general moisturising
2. A blend of natural oils specific for eczema. You can mix your own or purchase a blend from natural food stores.
3. A bath scrub made of moong bean flour, chick pea flour, a little turmeric and yoghurt/milk. This is just a traditional East Indian bath scrub. Ironically I used it on my children when they were babies, then forgot all about it!
Just before Ramadhan, I was going through my spice cupboard and reorganizing it. For years now I have been using floral foams to create tiered shelves to store my spice bottles. I thought I will share this here. Insha-Allah it will benefit others as well.
Florist foam
I use foams like the one above. This idea Alhamdulillah came about when I had to buy a pack of eight foams when all I needed was two. This is how I repurposed the foams and used them all up.
For the first tier that sits right at the back of the cupboard, I used the whole foam brick as is. For the second tier, I cut the foam brick into half lengthwise. I found a serrated knife works best for this. I then wrapped the foams with some pretty wrapping paper.
Florist foam tiered shelf
You might want to check the width of the bottles you have before you cut the foam for the second tier. Usually one side of the foam is larger than the other.
My cupboard rearranged
Somewhere is our journey of life we stop sprinkling ourselves with magic dust.
I am blessed to have little “Pixies”. They ever so generously sprinkle magic dust on me, the way only they can. Perhaps time stops just for a moment. A moment when I can drown myself in the magical blissful world that only “Pixies” can create.
You may say, “Ah, I don’t have a “Pixie” of my own.”
Or maybe your pixies have lost their magic dust travelling life’s path.
Don’t despair, it doesn’t take much to find a “Pixie” and share their magic dust. Look around, perhaps in the grocery line, in the doctor’s waiting room or even in the car next to yours at a stop light.
Share a smile, say a kind word and lend your ears, for “Pixies” love to be smothered with attention. And for a moment, just maybe a moment, you’ll be whisked into the wonderful world of the “Pixies”. It’ll leave a smile on your face long after you come back.
Now go look for a “Pixie”.
Ramadhaan Mubarak to all. Just starting a blog here . . . it’s gonna take awhile to get the hang of this. Insya-Allah hope to post some useful things in the near future.
Muslim Learning Garden 