Autumn Leaves and Kids

I took Sumayya and Shifaa to the park the other day, in hopes they'd entertain themselves with all the fallen leaves. Sumayya, "How, mama?" Me, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAa."

So anyways, I later got the idea to have the girls grab their baskets, go outside and collect leaves of different colors and shapes. We did that, and could have spent alot more time on it, but it was raining that day. Today, we stayed home and actually did some things with those leaves, and I'm so happy alhamdulillah. I hardly ever feel like I'm doing something useful with Sumayya, so this was a good experience that I want to record so that I'll remember some other plans I have.

Basically we took a few different shapes of leaves and did markings of them on paper with the wide side of different colored crayons. Sumayya got the hang of it and actually wanted to keep on going, which is a rarity with her when it comes to artistic/crayon-associated projects. We also got into talking about the veins of the leaves, their job and compared them to human veins. Sumayya was interested mashaAllah. :)

Some other things hope to do inshaAllah:

• Leaf/tree identification.
  
• go out and collect many, many more leaves.
  
• wax meltings of leaves and wax crayons shavings . (leaves/crayons between wax paper, iron to melt them together).
  
• God's Characteristics: Al Musawwir (all the different leaf shapes out there, leaf colors, trees, etc!.) The qur'anic verse on " No leaf drops but He is aware of it...).
• Leaf in basket collection: collect many more!
• Rake up leaves and jump in! (this is when a child sized rake would be useful.... for eid?)

Now, maybe with getting her engrossed into leaves and playing with them at home, she'll have more ideas on how to play with them on her own out in the park... And that's basically how it works, if you know something, you have power over it, you're able to identify it, see it, know it, do something with it. But if its a big blob of nothing that you see everyday but don't 'know', don't have interaction with, you'll just pass by it everyday without taking it in....

Asbah ala kheerr..... time for sleep.