Magnificent Mosaics

Somehow we've discovered a creative streak within us!!

The girls love doing art and craft activities and I find that it helps in many ways.

Not only does it help to re-enforce and consolidate concepts in a creative way but art is also a good way to have a break!  It helps to get away from something that may be a struggle and then return to it with a relaxed and refreshed mind.

We have been into mosaics for a while.  Rahmah did a beautiful set of bird mosaics with felt squares some time ago.  Recently we've been observing mosaics and geometry in our surroundings, and the kids always pointed stuff out to me whilst we were on holiday in Tunisia.  I  was delighted to have the opportunity to take them to an art workshop where they got the opportunity to work with real tiles and create their own mosaics.

So here are our masterpieces:

This one is Nur's 

and this one is evidently Rahmah's.

I am collecting materials to make a few more over Ramadhan insha'allah.

Sea life Part 3

No project is complete without a cooking activity and so as part of our Sea-life project we made fish shaped shortbread cookies, F shaped Pizzas and also a fish dinner.

The cookies were an easy recipe we often use from here.

We just shaped then into fish shapes and used a cut up piece of raisin for the eye.  Even Fifi joined in with the baking, by climbing onto the table and rolling the dough.

The Pizza shapes were made with some pizza dough from Aldi, tomato puree and cheese - as simple as that.

The girls then invited their cousin over for tea and managed to eat all the cookies before their dad got home from work.  Nur wanted to save some for her daddy but they were just too yummy!!

I had initially hoped to take the girls fishing, to experience handling real fish but then I decided it would not be as easy to organise and so i just picked up some whole sea bass from the supermarket and let them explore!

Even shopping for the fish was an experience as it was the first time we'd actually looked closely at the fish counter and we even saw real octopus for sale!!

I printed off and laminated some fish nomenclature cards from here as I wanted the girls to familiarise themselves with the different body parts of a fish.  We then used the real fish to locate all the body parts.

The girls were not squeamish at all and were particularly fascinated by the eye!!

I thought they would have issues with eating the finished product but they surprised me by really enjoying the meal, despite having to fiddle around to remove the bones.

Rahmah even said it was better than fish and chips from the shop!!