Preschooler craft: Ramadan lanterns

Kul sena wentum Tayeebeen! Just in case anyone is looking for last-minute decoration ideas, here's what Basbusa and I made last week. We always make a whole bunch of these little lanterns (so easy that even Kunafa, 20 months, can help), and although they're plain, they do look festive when you make a whole bunch of them and string them up like a garland.

The new kind for us this year was these:

(They actually don't look quite as cool as that - I think the camera is doing me some favors :) They're totally not "traditional" in appearance, but they're pretty, and they glow, so hey, they'll do.

You need:
- white paper (we just used regular computer printer paper)
- a white crayon
- watercolor paints
- tape, glue or stapler
- oil (any kind)
- an empty jam jar
- a candle

Here's how we made them:
1) Scribble randomly on the paper with a white crayon.
2) Paint over it with watercolors (because they won't adhere to the part where the crayon is). I just offered Basbusa three colors, because of the tendency for things to turn into a massive pool of brown when she has unlimited options! Basbusa thought it was pretty interesting to see the white crayon-lines "magically" appear.
3) Wait for the paint to dry.
4) Put a few drops of oil on the paper, and use your hands to spread it out all over the page (this makes the paper more translucent so that the light shows through better).
5) Roll it up so that it's just about wide enough to cover your jar (we used tape, but a stapler would probably have worked better - the tape didn't really want to stick to the oily paper)
6) Put a candle inside the jar, light it, and slip the cover over it.

Just one note about the oil - we used canola oil, which worked fine, until I noticed that it was starting to attract ants! We'll use baby oil next time instead, insha'Allah.

Toddler Ramadan craft: fawanees!

(Update: Please also see this post for an idea geared towards slightly older toddlers/preschoolers)

I haven't found too many Ramadan craft ideas that toddlers can really get the hang of, so I thought I'd share this one just in case it's useful for anyone! Basbusa and I made a bunch of lanterns out of construction paper, and then strung them on a piece of yarn to make a garland. Here's our finished product:

Each lantern takes about 45 seconds to make (well, 45 seconds in grown-up time; longer depending on how old your kid is and how insistent he or she is about doing it "by myself!"). All you need is construction paper, a scissors, and some tape.

We have a pad of 8.5"x11" construction paper, so the first thing we did was cut a sheet in half (to get two short, fat pieces rather than two long, skinny ones):

You'll only need half a sheet for one lantern. The next step is to cut a strip off one of the long edges of the paper (this strip will eventually be the handle of your lantern):

Next up, make a narrow fold along both of the long edges of the paper:

Then flip over your paper and fold it in half, so that the two narrow folds are back-to-back, facing outwards:

Next, open out the two narrow folds so that your paper looks kind of like an odd paper airplane...

... and cut all along the "body" of the plane, with each cut starting from the folded edge and stopping when you reach the "wings."

Open out your paper, wrap it around in a circle, and tape:

Last step, tape on your handle:

Ta-da! All finished. I learned this in elementary school in Ireland (I forget what holiday we were celebrating), and I think I remember that we also taped some red or yellow construction paper inside the lanterns, to make it look as if they were lit. But I thought that was too many steps for Basbusa, and they look fine without it.

How much of this did Basbusa really do? Well, we did the first one together, with her doing practically all of it, and me giving very-very-very detailed guidance on exactly what to cut and what to tape. She was able to do it, but she absolutely adores cutting and taping, and I felt bad spoiling her fun with so many instructions. So from then on, we worked happily side by side, with me making lanterns and Basbusa making this:

The lanterns also look great if your toddler decorates the paper with random scribbles and drawings before you start (as long as they won't mind their picture being cut up afterwards). Normally, Basbusa would have been totally into this stage of the process, but today, the attractions of tape and scissors outshone those of her pens and crayons :)

Muslim tot-school: masjid artwork, and a question for other Muslim moms

Umm An-Nu'man over at A Muslim Child is Born has a lovely set of three downloadable templates for masjid-based art.

I picked one, shrank it down quite a bit, printed it out and laminated it, and since then we've been trying to use it. Umm An-Nu'man and her kids used paints to fill it in, but Basbusa hasn't had much practice with paint yet, and is still far too fascinated by "exploring" it to be able to use it in a real "art project." (Much more interesting to find out what happens when she sticks her fingers in it, paints her feet, mixes colors together, etc etc :)

So, we tried scribbling in it with markers, outlining it with crayons, and even putting it underneath the paper and doing "rubbings" of it. They all worked in the sense that Basbusa got the general idea, but I think she's still a bit too young for a structured project with a pre-set goal, and I don't want to do anything that might teach her to think that there's a "right" and a "wrong" way to do artwork. So, I put the template aside until she's a bit older.

But I guess something sunk in, all the same! This morning Babusa was scribbling on her magnadoodle while I finished off some work on the computer, and she suddenly said, "Mama! Masjid!"

Well, I'm sure a mother's rosy-eyed view is influencing my interpretation, but you can kind of see what she means, right? :)

And a question for other Muslim parents: have you tried - or even seen in real life - any formal Islamic Studies "curriculum"? Do your children use one in Islamic School, and if so, what do you think of it? The ones I've heard of are IQRA, ICO Islamic Studies and Goodword, but I have no idea how good they are, and there seem to be millions of other options too. Basbusa is still too young for these, but I want to start investigating the possibilities so that I have some sense of direction when she's older. I'd like something that concentrates mostly on Islamic values, using examples from the Quran, seerah and ahadith, rather than just presenting simplified versions of stories from the Quran or getting tied up in the technical details of exactly how to wash your ears in wudhuu'. I'd really appreciate any input, even if it's just, "My kids did fine without any formal curriculum," or "I have no clue either, but I heard from my friend's aunt's sister that X is no good..." Jazaakum Allahu khayr!! :)

tot school: introducing the Glue Stick

Today's tot school was a bit of a failure, really, but that's most likely because Basbusa has been miserably sick with a virus for the past few days. I thought she might like a bit of very-low-key crafting while her fever was down, but she just shook her head miserably when I tried to hand her bits of paper, and said, "Mama do it." She even shook her head at her beloved scissors and just snuggled on my lap instead, whereas usually she likes nothing better than chopping up strips of paper.

So, the following crafts are all me, not Basbusa. I persevered even though she was just watching me, because I had an Ulterior Motive: I'm hoping to start making an Arabic Alphabet picture book with her soon, with lots of pictures for each letter for her to glue onto each sheet, so I wanted to introduce her to glue sticks and how they work. We (well, I) made this:

using her two current favorite colors, pink and black, with a few bits of orange thrown in. She wouldn't hold the glue stick at first, but eventually, after watching me use it, she picked up a second one, wound it up and down a few times, and then started scooping bits of glue out of it with her fingernail, and smearing it on the paper. Well, that works too, I guess! She did enjoy doing a bit of "I Spy" with it afterwards, looking for the hearts and the circle among all the random shapes, but that was about it.

So we moved on to this (hideously ugly) little guy:

Know what it's supposed to be? Basbusa did, much to my astonishment! As soon as I had the eyes glued on, she said "Owl! Owl!" and was all excited. I chose him just for a bit more glue-stick practice, and also because her favorite book in the universe is still Owl Babies, so anything owl-related is usually a hit.

So, I'm not sure how much of the whole gluing process really sunk in, but hopefully she picked up some kind of idea. We might have one more try before we move on to making her alphabet book.

tot school: alpha-fishing and caterpillar-making

Today's main tot-school activity was another one of those where the time, effort, and dreamy-eyed imaginings on my part far outweighed the amount of value Basbusa actually got out of it! The basic idea was to make some flashcards with the letters she knows on them, attach paperclips to each card, and then go fishing for them with a magnet on a string. Like so:

I was imagining all kinds of excited conversations along the lines of, "ooooh, look, you caught something! What is it? Yes, you're right, it looks like a sssssssss! It is, it's a red ssssssssssssss!" It kind-of worked, for eight cards, as in these photos:

("ooooooooo! oooooooooooo!" and "g!", said Basbusa), but after eight cards she was all done with the game, with a very definite "been there, done that!" air.

Why, exactly, did I think it was so important to glue on letters that I had cut out of craft foam, in three different colors, rather than just writing the letters with a pen?! There was some logic to it at the time, I swear, but I no longer have the slightest recollection what it might have been. In retrospect, in the light of all the tracing, cutting and gluing I did, and the four-minute activity length, "mild insanity" seems like the best guess.

Next up was an activity which I found here, to go along with one of Basbusa's current favorite books, The Hungry Caterpillar. Here's what we ended up with:

I drew the face, and cut the big green strips. Basbusa did all the tape-pulling, tape-tearing, and tape-trimming with the scissors (when four miles of tape ended up stuck to each link of the caterpillar). She loves both scissors and tape, and she understood the connection between the book and the finished product, so she enjoyed the activity. Plus, since the whole craft took only about five minutes at most, we could easily finish it before her attention-span ran out. Mr. Caterpillar survived as a toy for another day or too, before ending up in a sad crumple on the bathroom floor.

tot school: coin-hunting in rice, and a snowflake thank-you card

Since playing with rice is still by far Basbusa's favorite tot-school activity, I thought I'd introduce a new twist to it this evening: coin-hunting. I took three pennies and a quarter, and drew around them on an index card, as a visual indication of how many things Basbusa had to look for, and how big they were. Then I hid the coins in the bowl of rice, and Basbusa excavated carefully with a cautious index finger until she found them. She put each one onto a dot on the index card, so that she knew when she had found them all, and then we put the four coins back into the rice again. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Basbusa loved it, both the finding and the hiding of the coins. She seemed to think it was magical, the way they sank down and disappeared beneath gently-jostled rice :) From my point of view, it was fun for her; it was more sensory exploration with rice; it was a little tiny bit of one-to-one correspondence by putting the coins onto the dots; and it was a chance to talk about big and little as we found either pennies or the quarter. (In other words, my kid played with some rice. I'm not sure whether or not I've gone completely insane with this tot-school stuff.)

Next up, we made a thank-you card for a beautiful set of mini-books which Basbusa received recently. I used this fantastic post from Valerie at the Frugal Family Fun Blog as the inspiration. Amazingly simple and amazingly pretty given that it's created by a toddler! You just use a few bits of tape to make a snowflake on a piece of paper (or a card, in our case), go wild coloring over the whole thing with blues and purples, and then peel away the tape when you're done. (Basbusa scribbled with markers rather than using paints, though, to reduce mess and drying-time.)

Although I love how it turned out, this was totally artwork-for-mom's-sake rather than for Basbusa's. I did the folding of the card, I taped the snowflake, I chose the colors, and I did most of the snowflake-tape-peeling when she was finished. Very cute, but I must remember that making messes, not artwork, is the point, when she's still so young!

"Muslim" craft ideas... hmmmm....

Inspiring as all my bookmarked mama-blogs are, there's one area where their creativity points to a hole rather than a highlight in my own tot-school plans: holiday crafts. I can't even count the number of adorable, fun, holiday-spirit-infused, toddler-friendly Christmas crafts I've seen posted over the past few weeks, everything from Rudolph sugar-cookies to personalized tree decorations. I'm sure when Easter rolls around, there will be eggs and bunnies galore! But so far, at least, my list of possible Eid-related crafts is ... well... isn't, would be the best way to put it.

So, ok, let's say it's an opportunity rather than an obstacle. I can use the next few years to be on the look-out for ideas I can adapt, and by the time Basbusa gets old enough to have a clue what the heck a holiday even is, I'll have a whole list of fun projects lined up (insha'Allah).

We can do "seasonal" crafts, like spring/summer/fall/winter... We can do a whole bunch of lantern-related things for Ramadan, I guess... We could do Ramadan calendars instead of Advent calendars... Eid al Adha is a bit tricker, though. There isn't a set of associated icons that adapt naturally to toddler crafts. ("Happy Eid!" ads on TV in Egypt tend to feature cartoon sheep trotting around, which, clearly, they only do until they meet their destiny on Eid morning. Hmmm. Haven't figured out how to translate that into a craft project yet, without involving an awful lot of red ketchup.)

And what about Halloween and Thanksgiving crafts? Hmmm. I know the orthodox answer on Halloween, in any case, although I haven't completely figured out my own position yet. But Thanksgiving? Should be fine, right? Can anyone see anything haram in a toddler making a bunch of turkey-related handprints...?