We had recently completed a month with our marine reading corner, our third themed corner so far. All praise be to Allah for giving me the inspiration and guidance thus far for coming up with the ideas for our reading corners and the related activities. All knowledge comes from Allah and I am truly grateful that I get to learn so many new things with my daughter and share my love for animals with her too.
For the marine reading corner, I had included fiction and non-fiction books, Islamic books, peg puzzles, wooden lacing beads, and marine and coral Toobs (What would I do without Toobs?) This time, I decided to prettify the reading corner with a light aquamarine table cloth, which is actually one of my shawls that was given to me by my BFF, Hil.
A look at our initial set-up
Waking up to the marine reading corner
Immediately attracted to the marine peg puzzle
Trying to lace the wooden beads
I had wanted so much to go to the S.E.A Aquarium with the little girl as part of the theme but our plan didn't fall through. But Allah is the best of planners and I believe he gave us something just as beneficial without us having to leave the comfort of our home. We hardly watch TV at home but lately, we've been hooked on animal documentaries. It started when I turned on the TV one night and a marine documentary had just started. I spent most part of the hour just awestruck and amazed at the beauty of Allah's creations. I think I was more excited than the little girl!
For that first documentary on BBC Knowledge, we saw penguins jetting out of the water like torpedoes and landing squarely on their feet, walruses basking in the sun like what they do best, and a group of dolphins swimming and jumping in unison. But what blew my mind was an orca, also known as killer whale, jumping high out of the water, catching and gulping a sealion in mid-air, before splashing back into the water. And it was in slow motion! If that was not awesome, I don't know what is. Somewhere near me, I could hear my hubby going "Wow!" and then I was excitedly asking the little girl, "Did you see that? The killer whale just swallowed a sealion!" I'm sure I wouldn't see that at the S.E.A. Aquarium.
Going for the kill
In another documentary, also on BBC Knowledge, we learnt all about whales. It was really timely as we had read about sperm whale, blue whale, narwhal and humpback whale, and to see them in action was nothing short of marvelous. I had also been following Stories of The Prophets by Mufti Ismail Menk on YouTube and that very night, it happened to be the story of Nabi Yunus (as) who was swallowed by a whale.
So the very next day, I decided to read the story of Nabi Yunus (as) to the little girl. In the book, Quran Stories for Kids, that I got at Wardah Books, it was said that it was likely a sperm whale. That makes sense as sperm whales dive deep into the ocean to look for giant squids. If they can eat a giant squid, swallowing a man would not have been a problem. After reading the story, we reenacted the story at her water table with a plastic boat, some beads that could be thrown off the boat, and a sperm whale Toob. I then let the little girl paint some whales.
She calls it "mummy whale and baby whale"
Sometime during the month, I realised that we have a bottle of wooden marine animals that I had bought at Growing Fun. They could be used for stacking into a tower, as play materials in dry medium like sand or styrofoam beads, or any way you want to. That's the beauty of open-ended manipulatives. Them being wooden is an added bonus.
If you can name them all without looking at the guide, you are a genius
I had printed some marine colouring sheets and we had great fun colouring them. I used the pronoun "we" as I was busy colouring too. I've always found colouring to be therapeutic and that was before I found out how great colouring is for handwriting. Colouring is just awesome. As you can see from the picture, our mini art caddy is made up of repurposed plastic cups and cup holder from McDonald's.
Marine colouring pages
Colouring a penguin
Here's another look at the reading corner before I took it down. The George Luck puzzle was replaced with a fish colour matching peg puzzle as the former was beyond her ability for now. I had also included new books that I had purchased during the month.
We had a glorious month reading books, doing activities and watching shows related to the theme. Watching Tiddler and Other Terrific Tales was one of them. We have changed to a new theme for the month so watch this space to read up about it!
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