After my daughter started kindergarten, I started inviting her friends from the neighbourhood at my house for reading, writing, art and crafts and science related activities during Winter Break, March Break and summer.
It turned out to be a great opportunity for me to utilize my teachers' education and also my passion for teaching younger kids (ages 4 to 9). It was surely the response to my dua to Allah which I used to make after every salah.
اللَّهُمَّ انْفَعْنِي بِمَا عَلَّمْتَنِي وَعَلِّمْنِي مَا يَنْفَعُنِي وَزِدْنِي عِلْمًا
O Allah, benefit me by that which You have taught me, and teach me that which will benefit me, and increase my knowledge.
It was a great learning experience for me. I loved interacting with kids of these ages. In the beginnning, it was challenging to accommodate the needs of children of such a wide age range. But setting up rules and assigning roles and responsibilities to children helped me manage them efficiently.
We read lots of books together. Older children loved to read the books to their younger friends and ask questions about them. We also did many forms of writing. Some of the writing activities included picking words from a jar and using them to write stories (or sentences for younger children), writing on assigned topics, writing about a book you just read, making word families cards, etc. For younger kids, I planned word hunts (around the living room) followed by sorting of words according to their word families. We also did word hunt for sight words and practised writing sentences using them. While doing these activities, everyone was able to learn from each other. Younger children learned from the older ones. The older children improved their reading and writing by teaching younger ones and also by practising independently.
We tried lots of art techniques with the focus on process (rather than the product) using the ideas from Pinterest. We made raised salt art painting, coffee filter tie and dye effect art, water colour resist art, shaving foam marbling, simple pop out cards, rainbow scratch art, etc. I used to set up all the art materials and prepare a sample art work before hand to give the children some inspiration. But I would leave the rest of the work open ended for them. I observed that children always enjoyed the process of working together and creating their artwork independently irrespective of the outcome.
In the next blog, I will share the STEM challenged and crafts, which we did during our camps.
It turned out to be a great opportunity for me to utilize my teachers' education and also my passion for teaching younger kids (ages 4 to 9). It was surely the response to my dua to Allah which I used to make after every salah.
اللَّهُمَّ انْفَعْنِي بِمَا عَلَّمْتَنِي وَعَلِّمْنِي مَا يَنْفَعُنِي وَزِدْنِي عِلْمًا
O Allah, benefit me by that which You have taught me, and teach me that which will benefit me, and increase my knowledge.
It was a great learning experience for me. I loved interacting with kids of these ages. In the beginnning, it was challenging to accommodate the needs of children of such a wide age range. But setting up rules and assigning roles and responsibilities to children helped me manage them efficiently.
We read lots of books together. Older children loved to read the books to their younger friends and ask questions about them. We also did many forms of writing. Some of the writing activities included picking words from a jar and using them to write stories (or sentences for younger children), writing on assigned topics, writing about a book you just read, making word families cards, etc. For younger kids, I planned word hunts (around the living room) followed by sorting of words according to their word families. We also did word hunt for sight words and practised writing sentences using them. While doing these activities, everyone was able to learn from each other. Younger children learned from the older ones. The older children improved their reading and writing by teaching younger ones and also by practising independently.
We tried lots of art techniques with the focus on process (rather than the product) using the ideas from Pinterest. We made raised salt art painting, coffee filter tie and dye effect art, water colour resist art, shaving foam marbling, simple pop out cards, rainbow scratch art, etc. I used to set up all the art materials and prepare a sample art work before hand to give the children some inspiration. But I would leave the rest of the work open ended for them. I observed that children always enjoyed the process of working together and creating their artwork independently irrespective of the outcome.
Raised salt art: Some children chose to write while others chose to draw fidget spinner, rainbow and flowers.
Rainbow scratch art: It was cumbersome to fill the cardstock with crayons. But the scratching part was a lot of fun for everyone!
Water colour resist art using oil pastels
Shaving foam marbling: Loved the variety of results!
Simple yet beautiful way of creating the and die effect using coffee filters, washable markers and water. These beautiful coffee filters were then turned into butterflies and snowflakes.
In the next blog, I will share the STEM challenged and crafts, which we did during our camps.
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