Our first visit to "Learn to Learn" (L2L)

Yesterday, we went on our first visit to "Learn to Learn" (L2L) active learners club and really enjoyed ourselves there. There were different activities available for the kids, while parents were listening to a lecture about security at home. Smaller kids had their activities structured around the topic of turtles - they had a real tutrle to pet and they could watch a video about turtles. If they wanted, they could join in on a board game as well as participate in a show-and-tell activty. The bigger kids had some science activities in a different room, along with a clay project. The guided clay project that kids were working on together was a map of Pakistan (part of the ongoing theme of floods at L2L). They could also just make out of clay whatever they wished. The clay activity was so popular that even the moms joined in on it, after their lecture!

Hafsa was very excited to pet a real turtle, while Uzair like the most the clay activity - he made a great jug all by himself. After coming home, he kept on talking about one of the electric games he had enjoyed at L2L, till he decided to make a model of it from for playing at home. Although his model does no beep like the real game did, he and Hafsa still enjoy playing it. It does seem that we would be going back to L2L again, Insha'Allah, as all of us really liked it there!

Different types of hair

Today in our Usborne encyclopedia, we read with our mom about our hair and nails. For understanding better, why different people have different types of hair (straight, wavy, curly), we made clay models of all three types of hair. It turns out that straight-hair-people have round shaped hairs, wavy-hair-people have oval shaped hairs, while curly-hair-people have flat hair! Check out our work in the pictures below.

As we learned about our nails, we realized that the nails grow from the roots, just like our hair. We could very well see this by looking at Hafsa's nails, which had some mehendi on them. Mom had coloured her nails with mehendi on the Eid and by now all the colour had almost grown out of her nails, as the new nails kept on coming up from the roots.

Football the Pakistani-style

Just as the world football chempionship started, Uzair took keen interest in football. Now finally he's trying to play the ball we brought back from Latvia as a gift from mamma's sister. The story of the ball is also a quite unique one - when mamma's sister and her husband bought the ball and got back to the car, suddenly her husband started to laugh really heartily. Upon examining the ball, he had found out that although it had "LATVIA" written on it, it had come all the way from Pakistan, where it was made! So the ball just ended up travelling across the world one more time all the way back to its country of origin.

In the afternoon, Uzair went to play outside the gate with his football. Not long after, he came to mamma and asked for her help because his ball had stuck up somewhere. When mamma came out, to her great astonishment, she found the ball right in the middle of the huge cactus-tree in front of the gate!!! How in the world did it end up there??? Only Uzair knows. :)

Making roti

When in the evening mamma heads for kitchen to cook roti, both Uzair and Hafsa are eager to join in and make their own rotis. Mamma has to admit that their work is really good, because their rotis even blow up on tawwah, indicating a skillful craftmanship of rolling! Even more, they are experts not only in cooking rotis but even in making their own sweet parathas!

This time, Hafsa has got the spotlight of photo-session, while she is rolling her roti. She is using her toy roller, which is just perfect for her size. Dough is real, though, and will be cooked, after she finishes working on it. Before the dough gets to the tawwah, it goes through a myriad of different shapes in Hafsa's hands - but that's all a part of the 'serious' work session for creating her own roti.

Catch the fly!

Uzair and Hafsa are always full of ideas for inventing their own games. Mamma has even lost track of all the names they give to their games. Today, they came up with yet another new one - catching flies on carporch with their toy buckets. The trick is to approach the fly sitting on the ground slowly, slowly and then quickly put the bucket over it. They spent a good hour today busy in this new fun game! :) All that was left for mamma amidst their happy laughter was to feel sorry for the poor flies...

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.

Insights into rats' diet

One morning, our mamma came back from kitchen excited to tell us some new things she had just discovered. She said that she found in the kitchen some signs of a rat's visit! Interestingly enough, it seemed that the rat had been a desperately hungry one, as it had snacked on our soap, which we keep in kitchen for washing hands. Mamma showed us the tiny marks of rat's teeth on the soap. We kept on wondering, if the poor animal survived after such a soapy breakfast...

Later on, when mamma started to look through the dishes in the kitchen, she noticed that the rat had snacked also on the side of her wodden cooking spoon. Can you believe that? Why in the world would it want to eat THAT??? May be there was still some smell (or taste) of food in it? What do you think?

All in all, we concluded that in hunger rats are ready to go for anything, which comes in their sight. We just hope that they don't reach us in our bedroom, when we sleep!!!