Hafsa's artwork at KIBF

Hafsa participated in an art competition organized by HibaKidz. Over a thousand entries were received, Subhanallah. Here is the announcement of the competition.

Hafsa's painting got selected for displaying at Hiba stall in Karachi International Book Fair. Come and visit Hiba stall! :)

 

 

A happy moment

When we heard HibaKidz (http://hibamagazine.com/hibakidz/) announcement about a photography contest featuring pets of kids, we were very sorry we couldn't participate, as we didn't have any pets. Later, however, HibaKidz allowed kids, who have no pets, to take photos of any other animals and send them in for the contest.

On the last day of submissions for the contest, we got rrrrrreallly lucky - Allah (swt) gave us the chance to participate! In the morning, our Mamma found in the back of our house an eagle!!! It seemed to be unable to fly. We couldn't see any obvious injuries on his body, so we gave him some water and let him be our guest.

As we looked at the eagle, we got the idea of taking photos of him and sending one in for the HibaKidz photography contest. And that's what we did! Here is the photo we sent in:

The one-liner we gave for the photo was as follows:
"What are you looking at? I'm not a pet - I'm a predator with shaaaaaarp claws!"

After sending in the photo, we were eagerly waiting for the results to be announced. Today was the big day and here are the results:

We are thankful to Allah (swt) for this success!!!

Hafsa's science project on HibaKidz site

Hafsa's science project (of growing her own salt crystals) got published on HibaKidz website! Check it out: http://hibamagazine.com/hibakidz/science-success-how-to-grow-your-own-salt-crystals/

HibaKidz creative writing workshop

At the end of December, Uzair had the opportunity to attend a week long creative writing workshop titled “From Planning to Publishing” organized by “Hiba” magazine's children’s addition “HibaKidz”. Aunty Ruhaifa, the leader of the workshop, taught children all kinds of tips and tricks for creating successful stories. As part of the workshop, all kids had to write their own stories and work on perfecting them in the course of the workshop. Uzair’s story was titled “The Adventure of the Stolen Berries” – he has submitted it for “HibaKidz” organized competition of stories. We wish for Uzair best of luck in the competition and will post update on the results, insha'Allah. At the end of the workshop, Uzair received the award for “The Best Effort”, Alhamdulillah.

Asma's crawling!

During this last week, Asma has finally prefected her "art" of crawling, Alhamdulillah, and now can get on her own where ever she wants. Uzair and Hafsa were helping her to learn it by putting at a distance a really tempting thing, which Asma wanted to get... and this method worked! Needless to say, nothing is safe now from this happily active baby.

Asma's trying to crawl

Asma is sitting!

Asma has learned to sit all by herself! :) She's just a few days short of six months.

Uzair finished his Qaida!

Today Uzair happily shared sweets with all of us and his Quran teacher Mrs Naima, as he successfully finished his Qaida and will start reading Quran now. Can you guess from the picture, what his favourite sweets are? :)

Hafsa's First Printing!

Hurraaaay! Also Hafsa's drawing got published in "Young World" art page on January 22, 2011. We were very surprised to see it there, though, because Hafsa had sent them her contribution about a month ago, and we had already lost the hope of seeing it in print. That morning, Abba looked through the newspaper and didn't notice it, Uzair looked through the newspaper and didn't notice it, but when Hafsa picked up "Young World", she found it! :) Congratulations, Hafsa!!! :)

First printing!

This morning was a very special one for Uzair. He ran out to pick up the newspapers from the carporch and was very happy and proud to announce to all of us that "Dawn's" "Young World" magazine has printed the painting he sent in for the arts section! Here below you can see Uzair with the "Young World" as well as a copy of his painting. We hope and pray that this first success will enocurage Uzair to work even harder on developing his artistic side!

Reading for fun

When his class three study books got over, Uzair started to look for things to do in the mornings, while Hafsa was working on completing her study books with mamma. He looked through the Oxford readers we had not read yet and decided that he would read one all by himself. It was not easy to pick a book, so mamma suggested that he should give a try to "Sherlock Holmes" stories, which was what Uzair did.

As he started reading the book, he got so very carried away by the mystery stories that he just couldn't stop reading. Even his new rollerblades couldn't make him put the book down. Instead, he kept on reading it, as he skated around the table.

When the lunchtime came, the book came along with him to the dining table, and mamma had to say a few stronger words to convince him that this was not such a good idea after all.

Uzair finished the entire book in a matter of a couple days. Then, since the book had been so very great, he decided to gift it to his friends - Atefa aunty's boys - so that they could also enjoy the stories of Sherlock Holmes.

Hafsa learned to read!

Where did you learn to read? Most probably at school, right? Do you know, where Hafsa learned to read? Sitting on a kitchen counter. :):):) One day, she picked her "Maze" reader about Fatima and Abdullah, sat in the kitchen on a counter, while mamma was cooking lunch, and starting from the first page, read through the entire book on her own! Today, she had picked the next level reader and read most of it again in the kitchen, but this time requesting mamma to bring a soft chair for her. Can you guess from the pictures, just which is the most comfortable position to read a book? :)