Alhamdulilah! We have finally had our first snow and was it a big one!

I must first say, my lil guy AB said it snowed so much because he made du'a for lots of snow,masha Allah. He is my lil du'a maker,Alhamdulilah!

We have 20 inches of snow outside of our house right now! The wind was treacherous,so kids had to wait to go out and play. We did watch abi "dig" us out!

This is a short video of what we saw once we opened the door! Zawj didn't know where to start it was so overwhelming!



I have always loved the snow, growing up we did everything in the snow. We built igloos,went sledding,had snowball fights. This is something I had wanted my children to have a love for,and masha Allah they do. I think all children love snow,don't you?

Here is a slideshow of pics we took:


We decided to do a little winter snow day crafting!


we made some winter scenes with handprint trees!

This is my 3 yr olds tree, he used confetti snowflakes and cotton!

My 5 yr old added an igloo~!

My 7 yr old added cotton for snow!


My 20 month old even participated! What a great keepsake!

Simple, but fun craft for all ages,masha Allah.


I hope all my sisters are keeping warm and enjoying the winter season and all that Allah has blessed us with!

My children absolutely,positively go bonkers over play doh and clay. They go on for hours playing and creating and imagining, it's so wonderful to see them all pitch in and help one another with their creations!

Over the years we have bought so much play doh, I thought today we can try making our own. What a reward they would feel and also nice science experiement to see how liquids solidify!

I should have taken pics of the process,but really this was just a spontaneous experiment so I wasn't so prepared with step by step pics!

First I will share the craft clay recipe we used:


1 cup salt
2 cups flour
2 cups water
4 tbsp oil
4 tbsp cream of tartar ( in baking section of grocery store)
food coloring

Combine, and our in pan over low heat.
Stir constantly until mixture binds together

This recipe I split up to make 4 colors. You will have to split and color before you put in pan.

The recipe is quite easy and comes together well. I will also say that the clay is super soft! I did let my lil 17 month old play with it,watching him closely of course. He was able to manipulate it and play with it just fine.


Here are our pics:



Our octopus growing hair!




Another one of our play doh tools, perfect flower imprint!




Go make some craft clay today and play with it yourself so you can see. You will feel like a kid again, and your kids will love the quality play time!

Enjoy!



                               

Since we're working on arabic in our home, I wanted to make it more realistic and keep a visual close to the kids.

We have used the regular English alphabet desk strips in the past, so I thought to make a fun arabic one.

Here is what it looks like:


Here is the file if you want to use it in your classroom too

Arabic Desk Strip

Enjoy teaching!

More arabic practice in our house! I put together an arabic color matching file folder game similar to our paintbrush matching file folder.

Here are a few pics of our game:

The entire layout of the game

The pockets that hold the crayons


folder with out crayons in pockets


The crayons


Crayons and pocket up close

I have two versions to offer

Color

Black & White


Enjoy!

Having 4 littles in the house brings many busy days! My 5 yr old has been practicing shoe tying as a quiet activity latley. I didn't like the fact of using his dirty outside shoe to practice , so I did some searching and came up with an idea. I have seen many people make their own cardboard cutout of a shoe and then lace it and have their children practice.


I chose 5 pieces of sturdy cardboard, mine was from a diaper box. I used the end flap which happened to be white for what I used for the top piece.


Next, you will need to punch holes in the white piece where you plan on lacing your shoelace for the tying practice.



You don't have to do this last step, but I did to make the shoe look more finished.
This is what the sides will look like once the strips are completely glued.


Your ready to start decorating your shoe now!

Here are what our shoes looked like once the kids colored them.

We chose to color with markers, but you can either paint,color,glitter,glue nice beads or anything you can think of to make your shoe stand out and be appealing.


All three kids shoes.







Here are the sides of the shoes:





I think this is such a great alternative for learning how to tie your shoes. Go ahead, try it!



                                 
                                 

We have continued our Pillars of Islam study, and the littles ( my younger children)  sure love it.

We all know our children love visual learning aids, well at least mine do *smile*

I decided to craft up a mobile for the Pillars of Islam.

My first go with the mobile is actually good for a wall hanging mobile. Here is a pic of that:



Here are pics of the mobile that is suspended from the ceiling:


The entire mobile
The pillars up close
1st Pillar close up

2nd Pillar up close

3rd pillar up close




4th pillar up close

5th pillar up close


entire mobile up a little closer

Things we used to make this mobile were simple.

• wooden dowels, but tree twigs would work just as well
• curly ribbon or any kind of string you choose to suspend the pieces
• paper towel rolls, or you can just roll each pillar in the file
• cardboard for more sturdy parts, we use cereal boxes which are great for durablity and easy to cut
• crayons or markers to color
• hot glue gun to glue dowels together

File for this mobile: Pillars Mobile

Hope to see your mobiles soon,insha Allah

                                                                                                  
                                                                   

We did a Pillars of Islam file folder game. The paint brush matching was such a huge hit, I thought beyond that and did a Pillars of Islam one. This is a simple game that teaches not only the names of the pillars but teaches the spelling too. My 6 yr old has been covering the Pillars so I thought the timing was perfect to make this one.






The main layout of the file folder game has the five pillars and 2 pillar shaped  pockets.



The concept of the game is to match the letter tiles onto the correct Pillar spelling out each pillar of Islam.



A Pillar up close with Spelling tiles.


Pillar shaped Pocket that holds the spelling tiles


Another Pillar shaped pocket holds the picture cards.


Pillars up close with matching picture cards as an addition to the lesson. The student will match the picture below each pillar.


The entire game with cards and some matching spelling tiles.

I have made two version of this game for you to download:

 Black & White
Color