A Year of Natural learning

Animals in neighbourhood

 Pets at home

learn and play

Observing a butterfly sucking nectar from a flower

 Construction

Where do all the garbage go? a daily watch of garbage truck.

                  Aquarium.....  Sharks....  why dont they keep whales?

Allah gave me Ears to Hear

 In the past week we have been learning about Sense of hearing and Hashir enjoyed all the activities. He learned that Allah gave him two ears which helps him in hearing.

Islamic

We repeated the same dua which i mentioned in my old post about Eyes. This dua is in our morning/evening azkar for the protection of our body, hearing and sight.

I have downloaded Azaan by different Qari and Muazzin on my mobile and we have been listening to them frequently. Hashir now recognize the call of Azaan and when ever he hears it from masjid, he says Baa'a pointing outside. He hears me replying to the Azaan and insha'Allah he will pick it soon.

Hashir learned that noise, shouting, screaming is disliked in our religion . At the same time its not good for ears. Whenever he now raises his voice or cries loudly i mention that my ears hurt, this makes him go back to his normal voice. Masha'Allah what beautiful religion Islam is which teaches us about the manners of listening and speaking

Vocabulary

I made flashcards with words related to this topic like ear,  hear, listen, low, high, voice,  clean, dirty, cotton bud, earings, noise. We read these books too.

Hashir pointed out the ears of different animals. These days his favorite book is Little Elephant and he wants me to read it to him almost every day. I point to the big ears of the little elephant whereas he likes to show me the elephant's tail :)

Hearing Games

Whispering  is always a source of fun for kids. We played this game in which i  whispered something in his ear and he repeated the words back or i asked him to do something in whispers. This game always made him laugh as there is a tickling feeling in the ears.

He used headphones and speakers to hear the Azaan, and he learned how to use the volume control to raise, lower or mute the voice. He understood the low and the high sound by doing it himself.

 

Again we played the blindfold game, where the one who is blindfolded has to catch the people around by means of hearing only. This was fun for him but he still did not like to be blindfolded.


Montessori Activities

• Popcorn are one of Hashir's favorite snacks and now he knows the simple recipe of making them. What amazes him is that he put the corns in and close the lid, then he hears this bang bang popping sound and when i open the lid to show him whats inside, Wow .. All white big popcorns. This surprised him couple of times when this phenomenon was new to him but now after watching this number of times he no longer make that cute surprising look.

• Hashir did some pouring and spooning activity along with sound making activity with  items like coins, stones, wood, corns, sugar, water, sponge.

 We took plastic, glass, tin and wooden containers and poured the above materials in them one by one, closed the lid and shake, shake, shake. Every other combination made different sound. Coins in the metal tin made the noisiest sound, where as sponge made almost no sound in glass.

• I talked to him about cleaning our ears with the cotton bud as our ears get dirty and need cleaning. He makes a particular kind of face when i clean his ears like he wants me to keep doing it. 

• He have been feeding birds from quiet some time and now i have added a potted plant in the same window which he waters. He likes watering plants and love watching birds.

Triangle


Hashir learned about Triangle and did the shape sorting , coloring and sticking activities with triangles.

He now tries to make a square by joining two triangles.

             

I helped in coloring the triangle as he only scribbled in it. It was all a happy learning time Alhamdullilah.

Scribbling, Painting and Some more Scribbling

Scribbling is fun activity for toddlers to do. I have given Hashir a notebook on which he scribbles. After 2 months of scribbling his grip is much better on colors and his control on movement is developing . 

He has been scribbling with different materials like pencil, pens, oil pastels, crayons, poster colors, glitters, color pencils and markers. He had used finger painting, brush painting, sponge painting, glue and glitter and stickers. 

He wants me to join in with him so we both have a daily scribbling fun time. At the same time i can supervise him that he do not eat the crayons or write on the walls.

   

Allah Gave me Eyes to See

Alhamdullilah, we enjoyed learning about Eyes and Sense of Sight. We did the following activities. 

Islamic  

Allah Our Creator who Blessed us with Eyes :  I talked about Allah that He is our Creator and The Creator of everything. Hashir love birds and animals so I told him the Allah made them all and that Allah is up on his Arsh pointing up. Now he points up when I ask him where Allah is. I have this A4 size print of Allah in Arabic with me; we see Allah’s name whenever we open my file which is on the first page. I point to it and say this is Allah written in Arabic and now he recognizes the text. When learning about sight I talked to him number of times that Allah gave Hashir these beautiful eyes, repeating the word Alhamdullilah.

 Dua for the Protection of eyes ;I printed this dua which is in morning and evening azkar about the protection of our body , hearing and sight.

اَللّٰھُمَّ عَافِنِیْ فِیْ بَدَنِیْ اَللّٰھُمَّ عَافِنِیْ فِیْ سَمْعِیْ اَللّٰھُمَ عَافِنِیْ فِیْ بَصَرِیْ لَآ اِلَہَ اِلَّااَنْتَ

 I read this dua loud daily number of times and point to eyes whenever I say ‘basari’ and he listens to it regularly. This time I repeated the translation too for him. You can check it in the link , it has the correct recitation along with translation in English and Urdu.

 The Sunnah of Wearing Kohl : I have been introducing Hashir to our Prophet Hazrat Muhammad Salalaho alihi wa aalihi wa Salem and his Sunnah. So we talked about the Prophet’s Sunnah of applying kohl in his eyes. I read the hadith from here. Me and Hashir both applied kohl which we got from Saudia a year back. I used to apply kohl to Hashir few months back but then forgot doing it and now after reviewing the hadith , we started applying again.

We are listening to  Recitation of Holy Quran and Asma al Husna daily. You can load this beautiful recitation of Qari Mishari  of para Amma  with children reciting after him from here  and Asma al husna from here. I converted these files to mp3 and loaded them on my cellphone and listen to them whenever we want. Hashir now likes listening to them.

Vocabulary  

 We started with learning the body parts. Hashir knew all body parts in Urdu(our native Language) so I don’t have to tell him what eyes are in Urdu. We learned the English and Arabic terms i.e eyes and A’in .  At this point he cannot speak many words but whatever he knows, he points to it or reply in gestures. So we learned the following

·        Where are your eyes? These are my eyes (pointing to them)

·        Allah gave me eyes

·        How many eyes do you have? I counted in front of him number of times , one and two. So we have 2 eyes. We did this quiet a number of times so now he can count 2 things and say “do” (Urdu word for two). He brings two things and tell me these are two.

·        I pointed to the eye brows and named them couple of times.

·        Flash cards. I have started using the Glenn Doman method of teaching your baby to read through flash cards. I made some flash cards with words related to Allah gave me eyes theme. The words we did are Allah, eye, see, look , open, close, up, down, Alhamdullilah, sight, watch, sense, color, gave, two, circle, square, ball, can and with.

Vocabulary building games:  I showed him how to close his eyes when I say “Close” and then  I ask him to “open” them. So this was a little vocabulary game of Open and Close your eyes . Similarly i asked him to look ‘Up’ , look ‘down’ Stand up and sit down.

Arts and crafts

Along with having fun with Arts and crafts, I plan to teach shapes and colors to Hashir. So we did two primary shapes with Eyes theme, circle and square. The goal is that he recognizes these shapes.

 Coloring; We did a Coloring activity with oil pastels as they were easy for Hashir to hold and they give dark color for him to enjoy. I took three A4 size papers and on each I drew one eye with a circular iris and gave him 3 colors black blue and brown to color the iris. I told him its circle. For him all circles were balls but now he relates circular objects with the term circle.

Sticking:  I cut the shapes circle and square on a sticking sheet and  asked him  to stick them. He loved this activity so much that I have to cut so many more little stickers for him to stick and remove (he loves the removing part more then sticking). It kept him busy for long time and since then its his favorite activity.

Glue and Paste:  I cut the same shapes circle and square on a card board and showed him how to use glue and then put the shape on it. It was a hit too but a little messier.

Cognitive Activities

Matching shapes: I cut out circles and squares three each and mixed them up. We then separated them through matching the shapes. Later, Hashir did this on his own. 

Shape Sorting: Hashir has this shape sorter with five shapes and now he has mastered sorting only two shapes circle and square. Square is still a little of challenge for him but he enjoys doing it.

Shape puzzle: I made 2 simple puzzles of the shape circle for him to complete.

I Collected all circles and squares around the house and we went through them.

Montessori Practical Life Exercises

Opening and Closing containers

Opening and Closing cupboard doors 

Matching lids to the containers

Stand UP and Sit down. look up and look down.

Carrying a small tray/ plate with something in it.

Feeding the birds.

Games

Fun with torch: I turned off the room light and told him about the dark that we cannot see in the dark. I gave him the torch and he had so much fun looking around the room with it. He saw some picture books too with the torch and enjoyed playing with his shadow made on the wall. In fact we played with torch for so many days and still do it at times. Hashir loves playing with his shadow and did all kind of experiments  by running after it, waving to it, coming close and touching it.

Blindfold: I blindfolded myself first and we played find me. When I blindfolded him it was a different experience for him as he was not able to see. He wanted to remove the blindfold in order to find me.we will play this game again.

I spy Bottle: We did this activity from here. Took a glass container and added sand and some of his little animal toys. He rolled the container to see different animals at different angle and recognize them.

Sun glasses : I bought him sun glasses of his size and he wore them in the day light and then inside the house. It was a different and fun experience for him. He copies his grandmother by looking from above the glasses. He practiced wearing them and removing.

Magnifying glass: Hashir has been feeding birds in his window and he found this birds feather. We looked it closely under the magnifying glass.

Books

We watched the animal picture books and pointed out the eyes.

I made this little book for him “Allah gave me eyes”. It mostly contain the words from flashcards we made and things which he is interested in. I read this book to him couple of times.

Thats all. It was so much fun learning about the Sense of Sight. Alhamdullilah, Thank you Allah for giving us eyes to see.