Upcycled girls t-Shirt dress!

upcycled girls t-shirt dress
Upcycling has become popular over recent years, as more and more of us are trying to become greener, budget wiser and have a little creative fun!

As my girls get older, I seem to find it more and more difficult to find clothing which is suitable, and so I figured I need to try making them myself!

I'm not the best sewer in the world.....the finishing's are what I tend to epically fail on.....things like getting a neat neckline and inserting zips, stuff like that....the important stuff which sets the final garment!

To get around this as I practice, I wondered if I could do something by upcycling....taking old clothes and altering  them to make a whole new garment!

I had a look on google and pinterest, and was inspired by this {dress tutorial} which takes a kids t-shirt and adds fabric to make a pretty little dress!

We had a rummage and found one of the kids t-shirts, and instead of buying material I used one of my old dresses that is never worn!
Bare in mind this was my first attempt at something like this so I didn't want to buy some new fabric before I had done a practice run!
Will definitely do some more inshaAllah......its way cheaper than buying something from the stores and quicker than making something completely from scratch, plus you have more choice on fabric and style that you like!

I'll post a complete tutorial when I make my next one with some prettier fabric from the market inshaAllah.....I think this could become quite addictive!
 

Entertaining todlers!

I received this email a short while ago and reading through it, the thoughts of the sister resonated with myself when I look back to when my two girls were babies, and I am sure many others too will relate to this!
With the sisters permission to turn this into a blog post, here is my advise.....

home school advise

بسم الله

Wa'alaikum asalaam wa rahmatullah,

I look back to when my second child was born, my eldest was 2 years and 4 months old. Overnight, my little 2 year old seemed to look so much bigger and more capable than her new baby sister...so I expected exactly that from her! I expected her to be more co-operative, I expected her to behave like the older child, I expected her to just.....grow up!
I forgot that in actual fact, she was still only 2 years old! Even before the birth of her little sister, I would always look ahead to older children and wonder when she would reach that next developmental stage..... crawling, walking, drawing, exploring, conversing, reading, writing...... I couldn't enjoy her in that moment that she was....I was living for what would come next!

home school advise
I look back now and cringe! I look back and realise how many precious moments I lost with my eldest child, simply because I forgot how little she actually was, and I forgot to embrace that!

When I read your email, and see that your eldest child is just 15 months old Alhamdulillah, I first want to remind you that he is still a baby himself albeit slightly bigger than his younger 3 month old sibling!
He is still a tiny little person who can not yet occupy himself nor can he focus his attention on anything for a sustained period of time.

Do not make the same mistake I did, in thinking that he is so much more capable than his baby sibling. While yes, he is further ahead in his development, he is still very young subhanAllah.
Enjoy him, play with him, talk to him, include him when you are tending to the baby.

Montessori pre-school activities are excellent resources that can be made very cheaply at home and occupy little kids as well as helping to develop their fine motor and cognitive skills bi'ithnilllah....and are much better than buying toys!
Simple activities such as providing two small jugs and filling one jug with water to allow him to pour the water from one jug into the other. ......This may sound like such a trivial activity, but subanAllah can occupy little minds for ages as they are fascinated in pouring the water and helps their hand-eye co-ordination development! -yes you will have a little water spilt....but its just water....it will dry!

Have a look on google and pinterest for some home-made pre-school Montessori activities you can try inshaAllah! I did a quick google search and found this blog which lists 50 Montessori activities for a 2 year old. (note: not a Muslim blog).

home school advise
From my own experience, I advise you do not try to make your child run before he can walk! Really, allow him to grow at his own pace....of course you will encourage him and nurture him, but don't rush him. Enjoy him and don't be blind-sighted into forgetting he is still only 15 months old himself subhanAllah.

Talk to him, play with him, let him follow you around, because this is how he is learning. He will not learn by sitting him down at a table and telling him "now we must learn". Learning is as natural to children as breathing is Alhamdulillah. They just do it subhanAllah, and they learn a lot through play subhanAllah!

I look back to when my children were pre-schoolers, and I wish I had appreciated them for the age they were, and played with them more, because now several years later, as I try to homeschool my 5 and 7 year old, I realise how silly I was.

Enjoy them while they are still babies, and recognise that at this young age, they will learn best through natural exploration and play inshaAllah!
 

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Counting and place value mini-office!

counting and place value mini office
I find that homeschoolers over in the USA are several steps ahead of us here in the UK (or maybe they just blog more than us!?)

 I don't internet surf as much as I used to when I started out home-edding 3 years ago, but yesterday I was doing just that.

 Checking out some American homeschooling blogs, and I stumbled across something called "mini offices".
Maybe everyone else knows about these mini-offices and I am the last to pick up on it....whatever the case, I think they are awesome Alhamdulillah, and are great for school kids to give help with homework as well as home-schoolers!!

For those of you who like me, are new to this world of mini-offices, basically, its a resource which your students can use that is packed full of useful information about a particular topic or subject.

So for example, you might have a literacy mini-office that will include points to remember when writing.....constructing sentences, paragraphs, grammar etc etc.

These mini-offices can be ready assembled for your children as a resource or perhaps for older kids, they could make their own!

I know how easy it is to spend money of resources which are overpriced and mostly, are hardly even used! Something like this is great, because you can cheaply pull together the fundamentals of any given topic and throw them together in this kind of format, and it won't even take a lot of space to store away when not in use!

To get us started, I have put together a very simple counting and place value mini-office that can be used to help our numeracy lessons inshaAllah.

counting and place value mini office
counting and place value mini office
counting and place value mini office
 
As this is my first attempt at a mini-office, I am giving this one away as a free download Alhamdulillah!
 
It includes:
Counting in 2's to 100's, a hundred square, ordering and place value explained.
 

To download, click on the highlighted text:
 
Its entirely up to you how you want to put it together - file folders would be great for this.
 What I did was tape together 3 sheets of blue A4 card (to produce a tri-fold stand) added a darker blue paper, before cutting out the information pieces and sticking on top.
To prevent wrinkles, I printed onto thin white card (45 sheets from one of the pound stores) and stuck all the layers together using double sided tape.  
 
You don't have to do what I did, you can of course just print out onto card and not cut out the individual elements, instead just taping each A4 printed sheet straight together down the sides to have your tri-fold office, or like I said a file-folder would be ideal and less time-consuming to assemble!
 I just like to make things a little extra cute!
 
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