Crayon Craft

 

I am always out on the look for new ways to use crayons! We use them so much in just about every craft we do! They are easy to use and easy to replace!

I came across this site: How Toons

They have so many neat scientific crafts, that I just had to jump on it.

My Lil missy had this white zip up hooded sweatshirt that had so many pen marks on it and I didn’t want to trash it so I thought it would be a good way to reuse it as a part of our recycling crafts~

Here are the pics after we finished coloring it!

 

 

 

 

My Lil missy loves rainbows, so she just had to surround her lil muslimah with a beautiful rainbow!

Both side of the hood!

Try this craft! Blog about it! You will see crayons in a whole new perspective!

Crayola has these new things called slick stix, and they are so easy to slide across fabric. Those are what I let the little boys use since the whole sweatshirt was labor intensive! LOL

This isn’t a permanent application but it does last for a little while,insha Allah.

Frugal Crafts?

 

 

We LOVE to craft, but we also Love to Recycle as we know it helps preserve the Earth and by doing that is showing our Gratitude to our Creator!

I have been teaching the little ones about appreciating and Loving Allah.

Spring has Sprung and we are in full active persuit to really get in all our lessons on Loving Allah with each craft we do. 

Recycling is one of the ways we show gratitude to Allah.

 This helps us at home by not having to spend countless dollars on those premade craft kits, and also helps preserve the Earth one craft at a time,insha Allah.

We use our creative minds a bit more,but we are also able to customize our craft for each child so each one is unique in it’s own just as our children are,masha Allah.

We plan ahead by keeping a “craft recycle” box and as we use the containers in our home we wash and pack away for a future craft, insha Allah.

Here is our box that we are currently using:

My children even turned our box into a craft by simply adding some color to it. My lil missy just wanted to write :

“We ♥ ALLAH”

I thought that was so sweet,how could I resist? Masha Allah, she is learning!

Some of the items we save but are not limited to are:

•oatmeal containers

• ceral boxes

• milk jugs

• milk or juice cartons

• large and small yogurt containers

• eggs cartons

• baby food containers and jars

• 2 liter soda bottles

• bottle caps or other lids from juice containers and such

• paper towel rolls

• cookie holder plastic

• popsicle sticks

• mayonaise jars

• Spaghetti jars

• spice containers Small and large

• apple sauce and fruit cups

and so much more…..the list just goes on and on.

I just sit and think before I throw away to the trash, “Can I use this for something?”

We save both ways by preserving the Earth and limiting the amount we trash and by saving $$ by not buying miscellaneous craft kits. Alhamduliah!

I also made up a couple coloring pages for the kids to color.

Here are the files :

muslimah Recycle coloring page

Muslim recycling coloring page

We would love to see your recycling crafts and what you use, insha Allah!

Snow Measuring Stick

Alhamdulilah! We had one amazing day!  We had a complete day of non-stop snowing! The kids were so excited to get out there to play. We had to wait for the snow storm to finish before they could go out and play so they went out the next day.

To make up for them not being able to go out, I let them craft and have special snack! This is always a great excuse for us ummies to get a little sweetness in our diet!

Since this was suppose to be a “BIG” Snow, I decided to let the kids make a Snow Stick that measures the snow fall. I always try to incorporate some kind of lesson whether it be simple or complex I somehow manage to make it work for both older and younger children.

While making the snow stick we discussed simple measurement. We talked about how tall they were and how some people are taller than others. They also watched their abi outside cleaning snow off the sidewalk and his car. They saw how the snow was big on abi.

When we finished the stick I then asked each child to guesstimate how much snow they think fell.

Ab & Missy said 17 inches

Chunks said 16 inches

Big girl 1 said 15 inches

Big girl 2 said 13 inches

of course there was an incentive to this whole measurement thing right? The winner would get a special dessert! They love their desserts!

It was a windy day after the snow!~

Can you see that~!

You read it right….13 INCHES!

 

I will say this much, I can’t just have one winner in the house! Really, I just make them all winners for putting their thinking caps on and participating. I measured different areas of snow just so each child could be a winner!

I made special personalized brownies for them, and they loved it! I even added some sugar snowflakes to them!

The materials I used were:

A paint stick that you stir paint with

paint

curly ribbon ( I chose this because it’s water proof)

foil and cardboard ( to cut out the snowflake shape)

Black sharpie to add inch points.

We had so much fun making this craft. Not too much work and it is easily modifyable!

Here is where I got the idea: Snow Measuring Stick

Here is a pic of the actual blizzard!

This is only halfway through the storm! Beautiful~ Masha Allah~

2010 Wall Calendar

Yes, this is late too! masha Allah.  For months now I have been teaching my girls how to use different softwares to make and create their own things. They loved the Easel and Ink Garden so much that they wanted to make a yearly calendar from the graphics.  They did mostly all of the work themselves, color schemes,layout, and choosing the graphics. I just helped format it a bit and i added the dates in which i used from Islamic Finder site.

They made our family one specifically for us, and then they made one to share with you all in case you would like to print and use it in your house! *smile*

Their thought on it is this, the cover will always show no matter the month change. What will be done is that the cover goes on top and when you have to fold a month that has passes you will just tuck it under the cover to reveal the new month. They are like their ummie so they did try to keep the paper down to a minimum. It is still quite large a whopping 13 pages, but they really did a nice job laying things out, masha Allah.

Since the calendar is late getting out and the month of Muharram 1431 has already passed we changed the page to Muharram 1432 so you can have 12 months worth of calendar to still use.

Enjoy!

 

This is the cover to our calendar, so cute!

 A page of the calendar

Here is the file for you to download the calendar insha Allah.

2010 Gregorian/Hijri 1431 Calendar

Geometric Masjids

 

 

Finally, I am off to posting things we have been working on. Please don’t mind some of our images as some of the stuff we make is well played with,masha Allah.

I found this wonderful Geometric Masjid shapes activity book on SCRIBD. I thought how neat to let my 2 yr old start working on it. I had these geometric shapes for awhile and had been doing little activities with my son which he has done well on, masha Allah.

May Allah Reward the sister for making this book for us all to benefit from, Ameen. I only took the color out of my printed ones to make it more printer/ink friendly and had some colored in by the kids and left some black and white.

When I found these I was so excited, since I always try to find ways to islamicize our lessons.

our shapes which I am sure you can find at any learning store. I believe traditional ones are made from wood, but ours are foam.

Our masjid picture without the shapes.

My son really enjoyed this challenge. I loved seeing that concentrated look on his face while he tried to place each shape in it’s correct spot.

 

I even had the older 2 of my younger children get involved in this activity. Since they are more advanced  I had them copy  the pattern on a blank piece of paper by looking at the pattern and placing the shapes where they belong.

This was a nice simple,educational and QUIET activity! Masha Allah.

Official SNOW DAY!

I know I am a bit late on posting but last Saturday,we have had our first official “Snow Day” Alhamdulilah.

We were hit with about 6-7 inches of snow! I had to give the kids a snow day! Masha Allah

I had my husband take some pics to share with you!

 My 4 yr old son woke up this morning , looked out the window and said:

 “Allah Made it snow BIG,Alhamdulilah!”

I have really been reinforcing Du’a and he sure it taking to it. Making Du’a everytime he turns around. He even made du’a that his abi would make it home safely from work :

 “Allah, can you help my daddy get home safe,Ameen.”

Well, since it was our snow day, I had to make it a day of fun crafts and hot chocolate,mmmmmmm…

First we made our sleds, which was wonderful!

We made it out of popcicle sticks!

A snow man on one of the sleds to make it even more fun!

All the kids made their own sled and colored it the way they wanted. It was easy and simple to make. Glue,markers and popcicle sticks.

Here is the site I found this craft on:

Popcicle Sled Craft

Our Next craft was Snowflakes, again!

I had the big girls make these ones since the cuts were a bit more difficult. It was a  nice time to spend with them, we talked and cut the snowflakes. The different shapes were fun!

Here is the site I found this craft on: Paper Snow Flake Craft

Hope you all are keeping warm during our winter season! Have a cup of Cocoa from us!

Rainbow

I have been thinking of ideas to keep my 2 yr old busy while the bigger kids are schooling. I also want him to learn along with us so I found this cute rainbow activity some time ago on another blog. I am not sure where but if I do find it I will post the link here insha Allah. The activity is quite simple and I think an endless one. We started out with basic colors and can move on to others as well as he learns the ones we covered.

Here are what the pieces look like:

Here is the rainbow pic that I used click on the picture to get full size and save to your computer. You will need to print two for the “puzzle” you see above.

Snowflakes

With winter vastly approaching, we have met our first snow of the season over this passed weekend,masha Allah. I personally love the snow, and my children also love the beautiful white flakes that Allah has made fall from the skies.

I took the picture from a window in my house that is screened so that is why you see the lines in the pic. The children weren’t able to go out and play in the snow since it was sopping wet,but they did make du’a for more snow.

My 4 yr old immediately said:

“Allah make is snow lot’s of snow’s” 

They can’t wait to get out there and just play.

Since we weren’t able to go out just yet, we did start our winter crafts with snowflakes. This year we made 3D snowflakes which were so much fun,masha Allah.

We made a few of these 3D snowflakes.

The White snowflakes….these are so neat and actually easy to assemble. I had the big girls buddy up with a little kid and these were such a hit with them all…Masha Allah.

A colorful snowflake. This helps you to see the different sections of the snow flake

Our snowflakes clustered together hanging in our classroom area.

Here is the website I found the instructions for the 3D snowflakes. Try them, you will love this project…even for just yourself!

Make a 3D Paper Snowflake

                      

Alpha Buddies

My focus these past few weeks is teaching my 4 yr old son his letters along with recognition and phonics. He learns much differently than my 5 yr old so I took a more hands on fun-like approach and so far so good, masha Allah

Our First letters

A Which we made an Alligator

I had him write lettes A‘s all over his Alligator

B is for Buzzy Bee

We made two different variations since he loves insects

C is for Crab

D is for Dinosaur

This one I couldn’t resist. He used a foam sticky letter D for the Dino’s Eye.

We did make a letter E crafts but it was not a Alpha Buddy. It was an elephant paper bag puppet which didn’t survive long enough to get a picture….lol

F is for Fish

Bowl without fish

We made a fish bowl out of blue construction paper for the water. Glued little ripped pieces of colored contruction paper for the pebbles at the bottom as well as some green plants for the fish bowl.

We covered the  with a half storage bag to give it a bowl like feel. I left the top open so he can add his fish in the bowl.

More to come insha Allah…………….

Pajama Girls

We prepared all the children for the coming of the new baby, but the younger children needed to be separated. I had my 5 yr old daughter with my 4 yr old son. I felt it time for change and put all the girls together despite the age difference, My 5 yr old is old enough to know now not to touch her bigger sisters things. The boys are together now. My 2 yr old was rooming with ummie and abi and now it’s time to make room for baby!

In making the transistion easy I had the kids all do a craft, a simple on at that. I wanted to include them all. Although I know that this one is a bit elementary for my older girls, I just wanted to let my 5 yr old think that she was a big girl and her sisters played along by humoring both me and my 5 yr old in this one.

I had a pajama coloring page. They were able to decorate their pajamas any way they wanted. Then I made a name plate for each one and we Taped it to their bedroom door so anyone who visits can see that the girls all share their room.

Here are the pics:

 This one belongs to my 5 yr old.

This one is my 14 yr olds

This one is my 12 yr olds

I just thought I would share because they are so cute! I will miss when they are all grown up!!

I had the boys color in cars, but I am in the process of changing their room over to dinosaur theme and plan on having dinos on the front of their bedroom door. I will post when they are done.

Please share your ideas, I would love to see how you all handle different age leveled children and if they have to share rooms with one another.