Birth of Asma

We've got a baby sister Asma!!!

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!!! :)

Pictures on the pavement

Did you know that the pavement in front of your gate can be a good space for kids to draw? Well, at least Uzair and Hafsa definitely think so. One day, they just took their sets of crayons (oil pastels) and started the work. As they were working on their projects, they even got some encouraging words from the "upperside aunties' that they were doing really well. :)

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!

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.