DIY birdhouse

Assalamu alaykum,

There are lots and lots of websites out there, where you can find activities to keep your toddlers interested and busy (even for a little while), alhamdulillah. Ummi bloggers and other bloggers are a great help in this area too, alhamdulillah.


We made this birdhouse with Yusuf, even though he was only watching I consider it a group effort (smile). Like most of our other activities, it was done some time ago. I saw this activity on the internet, where you can print out the birdhouse and birdies and you involve your toddler in the activity. Here is the link to the website:


http://www.toddlertoddler.com/todays_birdhouse_fun.htm


And these are the shots from our birdhouse:

It is not only a fun activity, but also educational for growing toddler. He will get to learn new words, different colors, starts differentiating between the words in and out and practice his gross motor skills.

Nursery rhymes

Assalamu alaykum, 

Yusuf can differentiate between the text and the pictures when I read him a book. Sometimes I read and sometimes I keep it short by telling him the story in my own words and in our language. We mainly have books in English and very few in our language (Uzbek). Same goes with nursery rhymes. I don’t know many Uzbek nursery rhymes, so we read and learn them in English. There is website to few mini nursery rhyme books if anyone is interested in printing them out:

http://www.nellieedge.com/free%20little%20books.htm

I made a lapbook for Uzbek nursery rhyme and it’s about baby chicks. I made it awhile ago and Yusuf was too young then. I gave him the lapbook, he watched the pictures, we read the nursery rhyme and  later when I was not watching, he ripped off one of pictures. After that experience we had to go back to our board books or I just had to watch him when he was handling thinner books. He is now much better at handling lapbooks, paperback books.

If anyone wants to download the pictures for the lapbook, you can do that here and here, inshaAllah.

I have also made Yusuf a felt book, it was one of my first felt projects. Yusuf was around 1 then. I came across a short poem (nursery rhyme) about apples and thought I would make a book for Yusuf and use that nursery rhyme. It’s in Uzbek, it teaches about different apple colors and the word Bismillah before eating the apple. Up until now Yusuf reads his apple book and at the moment learning to say Bismillah properly.