Turning a Story Book alive : D-I-Y Puppet Theater and puppets

Imagination is a beautiful gift of childhood. 

With a growing collection of books, my 5-year-old is an avid reader. She loves reading through sight words and phonics and has gotten so good at it. Taking a cue, we have increased her stash of Read-it-yourself books. 

Meanwhile, her winter break project from school has been to make some puppets of their favorite story characters. 

She chose her story and wanted to make puppets of 'The Tortoise and The Hare' from Aesop's Fables.

As back to school got nearer, I got wondering whether a small puppet theater would interest her. She absolutely loved the idea. And here's what we made. 

That's a old tissue box, of which the front has been cut out. Some printed stock images for the back ground.

The images of a forest are to be glued on the insides to form a story back ground.

Some tissue paper mache. Lots of cutting and sticking. We used a watered down white glue for the purpose. Leave to dry overnight. P.S. And no we didn't do all the gluing and cutting over that pretty rug of mine.

Once completely dry and stiff , add a coat of color all over. Notice that lovely texture that paper mache gives. The idea was to get a feel of a wooden log .

This is the front. We added some paper mache to replicate grass on the inside bottom too.

Next some lovely animal cutouts from stock images. Few trees to add layers and depth to the theater. My daughter dutifully colored the main charachters - the tortoise and the hare.

Now two slits at the top one for the tortoise (bottom straight) and one for the hare. The hare has a little stop over near a tree where he takes a nap.

Time to bring in the actors.Tape our tortoise and the hare to two long wooden skewers which go through the slits in the box.

See that prize over there, guess who is going to win it? Time to get ready for the show.

Small and easy for her to handle, with simple stuff lying around the home we managed to create a puppet theater which is probably going to have unlimited shows, as we read her currently favorite story. 

This was the first time we did 'Paper Mache' at home, and that was a hit with all the glue and tearing and the mess of course. 

She carried the project with pride to school. 

Guess I need to stock up on used tissue paper boxes or any other box for that matter. We've got a lot of stories to read and many tissue box theaters to make :).

FARZ

This post is linked to 

Made for Kids-17 @The Resourceful Mama

Wordless Wednesdays @Tots and Me

        A little bird told me Linky party @ Natural Beach Living

Sharjah International Book Fair: This year (2015)

SHARJAH INTERNATIONAL BOOK FAIR is an annual must-visit ritual for us. It is the largest book fair of the region and is graced by many authors and book launches.

After our haul of books from the last fair, (http://colorsofourrainbow.blogspot.ae/2014/11/sharjah-book-fair-for-love-of-written.html) we were waiting for this year's event.

As the adverts got plastered all over the city, our daughter's demand to be taken there, went up a notch.

Look at what we spotted this year, apart from the books, of course.

STILT WALKERS

They were probably 10 times the height of our little one :)

PINOCCHIO

A play based on Carlo Collodi's novel. A group of very talented artists put up an enthralling play.

What a visual memory of the story, for every time we get to read it. Surprisingly, our daughter actually sat still in her seat through the length of the entire play, which was about 45 minutes. Wow.  

THE WORLD'S SMALLEST BOOK

Little smaller than the thumb and tiny little pages - this is the world's smallest book on sale. For a price as small as the book, just AED 10. You can own one of the smallest books in the world :)

COMICAVE

The world's largest comic and collectible store, had a very inviting stand. All the super hero fans would have just loved picking up their hero from here.

Oh yeah! We did browse and buy a handful of books.  

So if you are in the vicinity, pop in with your kids, before it closes on 14th of November, 2015. 

Farz

Learning About Butterflies: DUBAI BUTTERFLY GARDEN

Almost anyone who has been in UAE would  have visited the DUBAI MIRACLE GARDEN- mammoth man-made flower arrangements located in a truly miraculous garden bang in the desert of DUBAI.

The sad part is DUBAI MIRACLE GARDEN is shut during the scorching summer here. But there is a new and interesting place to visit just next door- DUBAI BUTTERFLY GARDEN, that is open all through the summer too.

Open from 9 am to 6 pm all days of the week

And admission ticket is 50 AED per person.
Contact No: +9714 422 8902

http://www.dubaibutterflygarden.com/ 

(Keep an eye on the website before you go in case of change of timings or holidays)

This is the world's largest indoor butterfly garden with a huge collection of butterflies all housed at a comfortable temperature of 24 degree centigrade all year round.

Its a pretty huge place with a sizable collection of butterflies, for a city that was originally a desert. The air-conditioned domes house innumerable butterflies. The place brims with plants and flowers, the earthy smell, the chirping of birds and the colorful fluttering of butterfly wings. The butterflies fly about freely in the dome and feed on the fruit bits and nectar combs placed for them, apart from the huge array of flowers available.

Great for butterfly watching and an amazing stop for photography.

The best part about the DUBAI BUTTERFLY GARDEN is that the butterflies come sit on you and we can feel them up close.

We had an amazing day-trip with our daughter to this place.

The walk ways were so pretty. and there is a gallery with amazing butterfly art and butterfly quotes as you enter.

The interconnected domes are rich with foliage and the free flying dainty butterflies.

The butterflies flap around, sipping on the nectar soaked sponges and fruits that were dotted all over the place.

Our daughter was a bit queasy around so many butterflies for some time, but later on she was a bit sad that the butterflies sat on mommy and daddy and not her! So we picked up this artificial garland from the souvenir shop inside and then she had two butterflies riding on her throughout the visit.

We also spotted some chrysalis.

Nice place to take the kids to. Nice to add bits of learning.

On our way out we spotted these two life sized animal replicas near the Dubailand office. They looked pretty amazing.

We saw Butterfly videos at home. Read Eric Carl's THE HUNGRY CATERPILLAR. 

And picked all the snaps of the different types of butterfly we clicked and made our own butterfly identification guide.

Here is the link for your free download.

Do visit the Butterfly park if there is one in your city. Seeing so many butterflies fluttering about is really amazing. Throw in a lots of butterfly activities for the kids along and after the trip for more fun.

We would have loved to grow a caterpillar to a butterfly at home. Sadly not much outdoors for Dubai.

Leaving you with a snap of DUBAI MIRACLE GARDEN too:)

ZAIN & FARZ

This post is linked to:

MOMSTERLINK 23rd OCTOBER 2015

How to Sunday Linky-3 @Monkey and Mouse

Made for Kids-5 @The Resourceful Mama



Let kids be Kids Linky- 13/10/2015

Littles Learning- Link up- October-13

SHARJAH PLANETARIUM: Learning about the skies and Beyond. (Free Space Journal Download)

Well we are back with a new place in the city we stay- SHARJAH, UAE.

This newly opened place is amazing and a power house for learning. What we love about this more subdued cousin city of DUBAI is that, it has so many hidden gems that make it an amazing place to be with children- sans screen time and the new age gizmos. 

Well where did we go? and what did we learn?

Looking at the sky when the lights were out, staring up at the stars, looking for stories they seemed to tell and wondering what was beyond. This is an amazing growing up experience. What better place to understand the sky and space than a Planetarium. Its pretty much sure that almost every major city on earth definitely has a Planetarium.

So off, to ignite our daughter's curiosity about SPACE and its vastness, we drove to the newly opened and glistening SHARJAH PLANETARIUM.

The Planetarium is a part of SHARJAH CENTER FOR ASTRONOMY AND SPACE SCIENCES
Here's the official page
WWW.SCASS.AE

The Planetarium is housed in a massive and brand new building. Opened in May 2015 in the University campus in Sharjah, it has a huge golden and eye catching dome representing the sun and the garden has rings and the planets :) 

Here is the map for anyone who seeks directions. 
GPS Coordinates: 25.285168, 55.46089

Well moving to what we actually did there , we saw an amazing show, many astrophysics games and telescopes to view. 

The massive building seems to have many more things to pop up including a cafe and a souvenir shop, and probably many more shows too.

The staff were very friendly and helpful. 
We will probably make another visit at a later date when there is a new show.

Well we couldn't let off our daughter till she could relate to what she saw there. What better way to remember than a tiny little journal of sight words of SPACE. 

It took some time to make, the pictures, the writing practice space, the drawing and coloring space. and the easy sight words and images she could grab.

Well here is a glimpse.

The little one had a zillion questions to ask and million things to point out, and some to look back into her journal, many peeking sessions into the telescope. 

Any one interested in astronomy in UAE can follow the DUBAI ASTRONOMIC GROUP. Their website has loads of articles for the space geeks. They have a great camping school program too.

Well there you go with the details of an interesting visit. We are definitely doing more star gazing this winter.

I found this very cute space activity in a wonderful blog, 
Space Playdough @ NO TIME FOR FLASHCARDS

PHOTO FROM : http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2015/09/space-playdough.html

Seems like much fun. We are definitely doing this. Need to scour for an astronaut play-set :)

Well closing off with some info on the place and the mini space journal download. 

SHARJAH PLANETARIUM

SHARJAH CENTER FOR ASTRONOMY AND SPACE SCIENCES

Open on all days except TUESDAY and FRIDAY

Timing : 9am to 8pm

Show timings : 11 am and 6pm on SATURDAY

                         11 am on other working days

Tickets: Child - 20 AED

              Adult - 30 AED

              Family - 100 AED

Contact Number : +971 6 5166000

     Website : http://www.scass.ae/Documents/en/about.html

MINI SPACE JOURNAL (for Kindergarten and Primary grades):

Please use the following download only for non-commercial learning purposes and do link back directly to this blog page and not the download page. 

Get your free Space book here MINI-BOOK FOR SPACE

This journal can be used for sight words, as flash cards, for writing practice, for the sequence and identification of planets, and most importantly as a mini journal to take to the planetarium visit. 

ZAIN & FARZ

P.S. Other fun learning places to be visiting in SHARJAH featured on our blog.

SHARJAH DISCOVERY CENTRE
SHARJAH AQUARIUM
SHARJAH MARITIME MUSEUM
SHARJAH BOOK FAIR
SHARJAH NATIONAL PARK
SHARJAH CHILDREN'S READING FESTIVAL
SHARJAH SCIENCE MUSEUM
SHARJAH LIBRARY
SHARJAH PLANETARIUM

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Made for kids-3



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Littles learning link-up

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