Our First “Tot Book”

Yes, it’s true … I am officially a lapbook addict. So much so that I have even got my three-year old daughter started on the latest craze in lapbooking for little ones … TOT BOOKS 😀 

Never heard of TOT BOOKS? Well they’re simple really, it’s just a smaller and simpler version of a lapbook. More suited for pre-school kids. This particular tot book has an ocean theme. I found the templates at this wonderful website dedicated to TOT BOOKS. There are lots to choose from and there are plenty of tips and ideas if you want to make your own.

There are lots of things that you can add into a tot book. Things to do with numbers, colours, shapes, card games, puzzles and more.

Seeing as this was an ocean-themed tot book, I thought it would look pretty laid out on metallic blue card.

This pocket and cards were not actually part of the templates included in the Ocean Theme pack from the Tot Books website, but I thought it would be fun to make up some little picture cards of creatures from the ocean. My daughter thought it was fun too, she loves them and knows most of their names now already, masha’Allah. We also sat down and watched some video clips online showing the animals in the wild. I think the turtle is her favourite. I found a lovely clip of a Green Sea Turtle swimming in the ocean here. (You may wish to turn off the speakers as this clip contains music)

These little cards are good fun, even my 2 year old daughter joined in. We used them to make matching pairs and we also used them to play the memory game where all the cards are turned over face down and each child takes a turn to pick up one card and then another to see whether they can find a matching pair.

Again, this jigsaw puzzle wasn’t included in the templates from the website pack, but I saw something similar in other tot book packs and decided I would have a go at making one myself, and I think my daughter was very glad that I did. She loves this puzzle and sits for ages playing with it. To make it I looked for a nice picture online, pasted it into a MS Word document and enlarged it to almost A4 size before printing it on thick photo paper. I cut it into 6 blocks to make it easy for her to put together.

This little accordion book is probably very popular with most toddlers, and was another of my daughter’s favourites. She loves colouring and knows most of the colours now, so she found this little exercise very enjoyable.

This is another nice little book that can be useful as an introduction to phonics. Obviously, it doesn’t contain the complete alphabet because that would be too much for little ones. It contains about 8 pages, which are printed, cut out and then stacked and stapled.

This is a lovely little book to help teach number recognition and counting. Again it is simply printed from the template, cut out, stacked and stapled. This particular book counts up to 5. My daughter can actually count up to 20, masha’Allah, so this was slightly easier for her but she loved it all the same.

I am currently waiting to hear about a nursery placement for my 3 year old in an Islamic nursery, but seeing as placements are snapped up so quickly I thought I would give her a head start by doing some of these activities with her, and tot books are a perfect way to teach her and entertain her all in one. If you want to know more about tot books, what they are and how to make them then please visit Tot Books & Tot Packs.

Honey Bee Project

This was one of the largest and most detailed projects I have ever worked on with my kids and I also learned so much along the way, masha’Allah. The Honey Bee is the most fascinating creature and is truly a blessed creation. I can’t take full credit for this project because it was actually emailed to me in a Lapbook format from an absolutely wonderful list I’m on dedicated to Lapbooking. Anyone interested in Lapbook or wanting to know more would benefit from signing up here insha’Allah. This list is set up to coincide with the Islamic Lapbooking Blog which is an absolute must-see for anyone addicted to Lapbooking.

The above photo doesn’t do true justice to the scale of this piece of work. It is two A1 sheets taped together. It was so large and so heavy that even a combination of blu-tac and drawing pins couldn’t keep this on the wall for more than 24 hours at a time! Eventually it came down from the wall and is being kept in safe storage until we can take it apart carefully and put it together into a lapbook form.

With a whole chapter of the Qur’an (Surah An-Nahl) named after this amazing creature, it was the focal point of the project to look at the ayat (verses) which mention the honey bee. We read the verses and then discussed the meaning of it and I asked the kids what they thought the verses meant in their own words, and by the end of this project they were amazed that these two short verses were so precise and detailed enough to show that Allah is the Creator of amazing things, subhan’Allah!!

We put together a set of about 10 vocabulary cards. I googled for some images to add to the vocabulary cards to help the kids understand a little better what we were talking about, and as I said before, I learned quite a bit too from the very beginning! There was a nice template of a pocket to fit our vocab cards into. Alot of the stuff I printed onto various shades of yellow card for obvious reasons ;D

We made some hexagonal cells from cardboard and then filled them with scrunched up golden tissue paper to make them look like honey-filled cells.

I’m sure many of you will have seen something like this before. This shows the four stages of the life of the honey bee. From the egg through to the adult stage. Turn the wheel to see the different stages.We also watched a great time lapse video on the development and growth of the honey bee here.

Then we learned a bit more about the Queen Bee herself and put together this simple question and answer flap book. The questions were pasted onto the front of the flaps and the answers were researched and then written inside. We found a lot of information on the Queen Bee here.

 

Another little flap book with a few more details on the Queen Bee.

A diagram on the Honey Bee anatomy coloured and labeled by my son. I got him to do a bit of research himself in a book called ‘Ants, Bees and Wasps’ and he was able to use the info from there to complete the diagram labels.

Next we did a bit of research into Drones. These are the male honey bees who fertilise the Queen bees eggs. There are only about 10-15 drones in one hive and their sole job is mate with the Queen. We made a little hexagonal-shaped flap with some info on Drones.

The flap template was actually quite small considering all the information we wanted to include, so I decided it would be a good opportunity to let my son brush up on his IT skills. So he sat and typed up the information into hexagonal boxes which we then printed, cut out and pasted onto the flaps. We found lots of  information about Drones here and we found this video very useful too, masha’Allah (although I would advice caution if visiting the website of Harun Yahya, Allahu alem)

The Waddle Dance (sometimes known as the Waggle Dance) is a very interesting phenomenon of the Honey Bee, masha’Allah. I knew next to nothing about this until we watched this informative video. We watched the video a few times and then I got the kids to tell me in their own words what they understood about it. Then my son wrote inside the little book to explain what he understood about the Waddle Dance, what it is and why the bees do it.

The term “busy bee” is no joke! The Worker honey bee has an almost never-ending list of jobs to do as you can see from the photos above. All the worker bees are non-reproducing females and they work almost non-stop until they die. On average, the worker bees live for about 6 weeks in the Summer and 4 months in the winter. The reason they live longer in the winter is because they are not collecting nectar or pollen during this time.

We really enjoyed doing the research to make this little T-book on what bees do for us and what they give us. Again, the template was very small so after talking about this subject I typed up these little flaps, printed them and folded them.

Next we made a list of all the Honey bee’s predators. We found a long list of Honey Bee Predators here but alot of them were animals that even I didn’t recognise, so I decided it would be a good idea to print pictures of the predators too, just to make it a bit easier for the kids to understand. We also watched a couple of really interesting videos on how bees deal with predators using a defence tactic called “balling”. For some reason, these videos were my son’s favourite part of the project (why is it always boys who like the gory stuff LOL!)

Bee Balling Video 1     

Bee Balling Video 2

We printed and pasted a larger photo of the Golden Rod Spider attacking a honey bee.

I searched for hours one night looking for a labelled diagram detailing the process step-by-step on how bees make honey but I couldn’t find anything suitable anywhere. So in the end I resolved to make a diagram myself. If you would like to use it, you can download it from the link here by scrolling down to the item titled: “How Bees make Honey”.

After looking at how bees make honey we made a brainstorm chart showing the health benefits of honey.

Then we made a note book with photos and information on different kinds of bees.

We found out a lot of information about different kinds of bees here and we extended our research using Wikipedia.

Finally we finished up with a colouring page and a honeycomb-shaped worksheet to list facts about bees. All in all, it was a very thorough and enjoyable project.

ALHAMDULILLAH FOR THE HONEY BEE!!!

Solar System Poster

Last year I covered the Solar System with my eldest son and daughter. At the time we were really into making posters for everything because they would hang them on the walls in their bedroom and it would be amazing to see how much info they retained just by seeing them day after day. My daughter, who was 5 years old at the time wasn’t massively interested in space and the planets … it tends to be a ‘boy thing’ which, at the age of 6 was most definately the case with my son.

I decided that the best way to learn the names of the planets was to have them put together a poster which would be a visual aid. My son knew most if not all of the planet names already but he didn’t know the correct order and within 2 days of this hanging on the bedroom wall he had memorised it, masha’Allah. My daughter is still not a strong reader and struggled with the names but she recognised the planets because we talked alot about them as we painted them, and she remembers the ones that she painted LOL! and with big brother helping her, she has also learned to memorise them.

I followed up this poster with a more in depth project with my son, details of which will be posted later on insha’Allah.

We used an A1 size piece of black card (which was only just big enough) and painted the edge with an orange arc to represent the sun. Then using a brush we dabbed the card with spots of PVA glue and sprinkled with silver glitter to create the effect of stars in deep space. Then my son pasted out the title with PVA glue and my daughter added on the silver glitter to spell out “The Solar System”.

Using a text book for guidance, I showed my son how to use a pair of compasses to draw perfect circles, and he drew the planets on white card according to their relative sizes. Then we had lots of fun mixing up paint colours that would be just right for each planet. The kids painted on the base colours and we left them to dry for a couple of hours before adding on finer details to make the planets look realistic (yes, I did help with that part).

When everything was dry, we glued down the planets and painted on the rings around Saturn (which I later regreted not actually drawing them and cutting them out on card first because the after effects of the painting and the shortage of space on the card meant the rings looked a bit wonky and squashed LOL!) Finally we cut out and pasted on the planet name labels.

Phases of the Moon Poster

Subhan’Allah, has it really been a whole year since I last blogged??

Well, alhamdulillah, we are a week away from Ramadhan insha’Allah, and my 7 year old son and I are making a start on our first ever Ramadhan lapbook with much inspiration from Umm Abdul Basir’s blog. Part of the lapbook will contain a section on phases of the moon and sighting the crescent moon which will signal the beginning of the month of Ramadhan. We are currently reviewing this subject from last year.

Last year just before Ramadhan we had lovely weather, masha’Allah, so we were able to do alot of our lessons and arts and crafts in the garden … so much less hassle than trying to get paint off the carpet or the dining table!! I thought it would be nice to make a large poster showing the moon phase cycle and it has helped my son to memorise the 8 major phases and their names. Our poster is based on the cycle as seen in the Northern Hemisphere.

First of all I printed off some moon phase templates onto thin card which I then cut out ready for my son to paint them a pale grey colour. You can find the templates here. Being outside in the warm air they dried much faster too.

While waiting for the templates to dry, he got to work on colouring in the labels for each of the phases. I just used MS Word Art to create the 8 labels: NEW MOON (not visible), WAXING CRESCENT, HALF MOON, WAXING GIBBOUS, FULL MOON, WANING GIBBOUS, HALF MOON, WANING CRESCENT. We didn’t make a template that represents the New Moon because the poster was made using black card, and obviously, seeing as the New Moon is not visible to the naked eye it wasn’t necessary to add a template to the poster. 

We used orange paint on the edge of the black sheet of card to represent the angle of the sun and then the templates were glued into their relevant positions with a title label in the middle of the diagram.

Finally the labels were added and the poster is complete … a useful diagram that serves as a refresher as Ramadhan approaches.