What we did today..

Alhamdulillah, I'm grateful to Allah for what we have done today. Abdullah was happy and I was happy too.

It's water play time. I gave Abdullah a brush and a bucket and he can paint the wall! He's always so excited about this and imagine that he's a workman who's working hard to finish up building a house or something.

I took the chance to 'paint' some letters and we worked on some letters recognition; both Arabic and the ABC.

And, he just couldn't stop himself from bringing the joy to the next level :

He learned a few things that float on the water and those that don't. 

This is another activity that he did today which was new to him; one of the Montessori approach to developing child's language - the mystery bag. 

You will need a bag and a few different but familiar objects around the house and put them inside the bag. Ask your child to put her hand into the bag and describes what she can feel without actually saying the name of the object. You try and guess the name. After a while, change places with each other. This game helps your child to increase vocabularies and and also train the sense of touch.

I do think this game is nice because it is so fun to hear what your child is going to say to describe the objects. I can't help myself from giggling each time he described them. But masha Allah he impressed me. I'm looking forward to play this game again tomorrow.

We played some more fishing game with the alphabets of 'r', 'm', 'j', 't', 'l' and 'k'.

Alhamdulillah for all of this. A soon-to-be-4-year-old boy is so full with energy. I think well-planned activities can help to reduce the mess and chaos that he's capable to create :D

New Space

Alhamdulillah I managed to create a special space to accommodate Abdullah's stuffs; his toys and books. This room used to be our library area where hundreds of Islamic books were here, so it took a few weeks to accomplish as we had to take all the books upstairs to the TV area (so now no more TV). I had to settle down with both before I can be happy to proceed with our homeschooling projects.

So, there are reasons on why I chose some particular ways to arrange the books and toys. I was very much inspired by the Mostessori approach and I thought they have a nice view on this part. So let see how it goes.

Before this, I used to store the toys in one huge container. And you can imagine how it would be when Abdullah is trying to find his small favorite truck or tool (or whatever it is), and the living room floor is likely to be scattered with toys! What Montessori suggests is to place toys with many pieces in appropriate containers, such as plastic boxes or small baskets. Avoid putting out too many toys and books at one time. Divide toys into three or more sets : favorites, which are kept out on the shelves continually, and two or more sets that are rotated in and out of the closet every month or so. Store them on low shelves so they are accessible to your child. Small containers are great to store toys with lots of pieces and enable your child to tidy up herself. And so far, this works great with Abdullah and he found it  easier for him to tidy up his toys from a small container rather than a huge one (he used to complaint he is so tired that he can't tidy up his scattering toys when we used the huge container). So I  love this small container idea! 

I used them to store his wooden train set, small trucks, hardware tools, fruits and his puzzles.

As for his favorite machines, I display them orderly on low shelf. It somehow make your child appreciate his toys more. Abdullah willingly put his machines (or even the small containers) back on shelf after use because it shows his sense of belonging and love of his toys. Even I became to appreciate and respect more of his stuffs. And they are also unlikely to break as they would be in the chaotic jumble of the huge container.

Last but not least; the books! I don't just arrange them this way so that they will look nice. I made the front cover of each book is visible except for thick books which Abdullah can recognize which book is it. It's nearly impossible for children to choose books when they can only see the spine. I used to stack up Abdullah's books in the living room which is the worst way to store children's books because they tend to end up in a heap on the floor more often than not as they hunt for the cover of the book they have in mind. This one works great too! It is easy to find a book and easy to put it back too. Now I spend less time to tidy up the living room alhamdulillah :)

My son is totally in love with his new space and eager to start learning alhamdulillah! And I'm a happy mom too hehe :)