What you Need: Outline graphics of bugs or butterflies. Non-toxic paint, water, paper plate to pour the paint in. Wash cloth or paper towels to clean up. 

How to Play?

• You can help your toddlers choose a cutout of either a bug or butterfly. Or offer them just a plain piece of paper.

• Please choose a couple of colors of non-toxic paints.

• Ask your child which color they want, they may not be able  to  name the colors yet, but you can name them .

• Let the children use their fingers and imagination to paint.

• You can help them get started. They will want to feel the paint, they will squish it, and then spread it on the paper.

• As they are painting their creature, talk to them about how the paint feels? 

  • Is it cold? Hot? Do they like it? 

  • What colors are they  using? 

  • What part of the body of the bug/butterfly are they painting?

  • How do butterflies fly?

  • Do bugs fly?

  • Do butterflies have legs?

  • Can you fly? 

  • Can you paint with other body parts?  Your nose? Your tongue? Your elbow?  

  • Who likes bugs and butterflies? (Lola)

• Show your child pictures of beetles, butterflies and bugs or read books about them.

Skills Practiced:

Physical Development: Fine motor development, using their fingers to paint and feel the paint

Social/Emotional Development: How they feel about the environment, the butterflies, bugs

Language Development: Learning new words about the parts of butterflies, bugs, and colors.

Cognitive Development: Painting the butterfly based on experience, memory, conversation with parents, photographs and other stories. Focus on animals and color.

Religious Formation: Appreciating your fingers, blessings from Allah. Learning about creatures in the environment and learning from books. Emphasizing the importance of gaining knowledge. Talk about how Prophets and Hazar Imam guide us and give us knowledge.

What you Need: A doll, mess it up with some washable colors or dirt, Band-Aids

How To Play:

At this age, your child is able to engage in pretend play.  Tell your child that the doll they have was playing with a friend in the playground, and they were fighting over a toy, and the friend pushed your doll.  Now the doll has a scratched knee, a dirty face from falling in the dirt and is crying.  So what are you going to do to help the doll feel better?

• Give your child an unkempt doll with messy hair, a dirty face, and scratches on the knee.

• Ask your child what would they like to do?  (Clean the doll’s face, brush her hair, straighten her clothes, put a Band-Aid on her knee. And, end by hugging the doll.)  

• As you help your children with the activity, you may converse with your child and ask questions, such as how is the doll feeling? How do you feel seeing the doll like this?  How can we help her? We should be kind and help her. Let’s blow on her knee to make her feel better. Do you think her knee hurts? Can you put a Band-Aid on her knee? Do you think a hug will help her feel better?

• How do you think the other person feels?  The one who did this to the doll?  Was that a nice thing to do?

Skills Practiced:

Physical Development: As the children clean up the doll, they are using their fine motor skills and improving their ability to use hands and fingers. 

Social/Emotional Development: Children are developing empathy by realizing how the doll feels. Pretend play fosters the child’s social-emotional development. 

Language Development: As the parents talk to and interact with their child, new vocabulary is being introduced and children are learning to express their feelings and thoughts in words. 

Cognitive Cognitive Development: Children are doing simple problem solving by determining what they can do to help the doll and acting upon it. :

Religious Formation: Being kind to others and caring for them is an essential ethic of our faith. Examples of this lie in the lives of the prophets of Allah. 

You will need: Pictures of mom, dad, Mawlana Hazar Imam, teacher, grandparents, siblings etc…

How to Play:

• Stories have a magical way of engaging children and immerse children in the emotions of the character.

• Using a collage of picture cut outs, you can demonstrate a way to make a story come alive.

• The tactile nature of the story pieces invites children to feel each story component, and because the story is being told instead of read, you, the parents, have more time to reflect on the behaviors and interaction of the characters.

• Put out the cutouts of pictures of people you can learn from. Pictures of mom, dad, Mawlana Hazar Imam, teacher, grandparents, siblings etc… (See end of lesson plan)

• Make-up a story of what each person in the picture teaches the child.For example mom teaches the child how to play with blocks, dad teaches the child how to read a book, Hazar Imam teaches us to be good and help others, brother or sister teaches the child how to ride a tricycle, grandparents teach the child how to pray, give thanks and say du’a etc

• Ask the child, “Who teaches you how to play with blocks?”,  then ask your child to put the corresponding cutout onto the collage.

• Praise when your child puts the picture on the collage or makes any such efforts.

• Parent’s encourage and praise your children, Masha’Allah.

• Point out how beautiful the collage looks, Subhan’Allah.

• Ask, “who created  mom,dad, grandparents,teachers and siblings, etc. All the teachers in the child’s life?”

• Introduce teachers and guides as  Allah's gift to us. 

Skills Practiced:

Physical Development: Fine motor skills by putting the picture on the collage, pointing.

Social/Emotional Development: Learn how to wait to put the pictures as parents ask the question.

Language Development: Building vocabulary, such as grandparents, brother, sister, teacher. 

Cognitive Development: Learning different abilities of the various teachers. Learning to differentiate the pictures

Religious Formation: Provides the children the opportunity to observe the role of the individual teachers in their life, and how these folks are a blessing of Allah. Attributes of Allah: Ar Rahman, The Most Kind. 

You will Need:  Pictures of places of worship - mosque synagogue, church, temple

How To Play:

• Introduce pictures of different places of worship to your child.

• Emphasize how each place looks different from the other. Identify the similarities and differences between each type of building (mosques have minarets and domes; churches usually have a cross on top of the building; synagogues highlight the Star of David).  

• Give your child some wood blocks to play with - work together with your child to build the various places of worship. Note: the purpose of the activity is for you both to work together to construct a building. A child of this age will be able to stack 8-10 blocks together in an attempt to make a building. The blocks creation will not resemble the various places of worship.  

• Note:  it’s the process of creating new things that is important for children at this age and not how the finished product looks    

Skills Practiced:

Language Development: New vocabulary words, such as church, synagogue, mosque, temple, etc.

Cognitive Development: Critical thinking and problem solving. Block play builds children’s spatial awareness and sets up foundations for early math skills. 

Religious Formation: Ismailis from all over the world can come together to pray in Jamatkhana, which is a place of worship for Ismailis.  We also see diversity in the way that people of other faiths thank God

You will need:  A bag with hard objects such as: a wooden block, plastic ring, rock, sea shell, Lego brick; and soft objects such as: sponge, feather, cotton ball, piece of felt cloth, pom pom,  etc.. 

How To Play

• Take the objects out of the bag and place them in one pile on the ground in front of you. 

• Demonstrate feeling each item and talk with your child about each one. Say, “Let’s touch and feel the (object name). How does this feel? Is it hard or soft?”

• Pick up a hard object and run your fingers along it and say, “This object is hard.” Repeat the same process with your child’s hand.

• Pick up a soft object and run your fingers along it and say, “This is a soft object.” Repeat the same process with your child’s hand.

• Assist your child to separate the hard items and soft items into two different piles, following the same process as above. 

You may change the activity:

• Ask your child to pick out a hard item. Tell him to put it under a piece of cloth. 

• Now tell him to put a soft object under the same cloth. 

• Without looking under the cloth, ask him to bring out the hard item by feeling it over the sheet. 

• Repeat this with different objects and ask your child to pick out a hard or soft object, varying the request each time.

Extension: 

You can extend this activity by taking your child outside for a nature walk. This will also provide opportunities to talk about Allah’s creation and how we use our senses to explore the world’s treasures.

• Take a bag with you to pick up “treasures” to bring back.

• Talk about the items that you collected together. 

• Sort them into hard and soft item piles.

Skills:

Physical Development: Picking up and placing the items will help to improve your child’s fine motor skills.

Social/Emotional Development: Discussing the way each item feels as you sort them with your child, is building their social development and their confidence.  

Language Development: Speaking to your child about different textures will help to expand his vocabulary and his listening skills.

Cognitive Development: As your child explores with different textures, he will learn to differentiate between them and learn how to sort and match the items. This will help him develop critical thinking and problem solving skills. 

Religious Formation: The world is so full of Allah’s diverse creation that our senses allow us to explore and build an understanding and appreciation for it. Our senses are gifted to us by Allah and allow us to be more independent while we discover the beauty of the world. 

You will need: Dried beans, rice or popcorn kernels; small plastic bottles with lids; tape; empty oatmeal boxes with lids; wooden sticks or wooden spoons 

How To Play

•  Assist your child in making different instruments  

• Bottle Shakers: Place rice or beans inside a small plastic bottle or cup with lid. Secure the lid with tape.

• Bongo Drum: Tape together two empty circular oatmeal boxes and beat with your hands. 

• Tapping Sticks: Use wooden sticks to tap together, or you can use wooden spoons.

• Demonstrate how to play the instruments. 

• Let your child  practice playing these instruments. 

• Then sing or play some familiar songs that your toddlers can play with their one ro two of their instruments

• Encourage them to listen for the beat of the song and match their strokes to the tempo of the music. 

Skills Practiced:

Physical Development: This activity will help to develop both fine and gross motor skills as they create and play the instruments.

Language Development: This activity will help the children with sound discrimination as they follow along with the music and rhythm of each song. They will also be learning new vocabulary.  

Social/Emotional Development: Exposing children to music from different parts of the world develops cultural awareness and makes them more open to pluralistic expressions. This awareness will help them to develop better social skills.  

Cognitive Development: This activity will help the children form neural connections as they play their instruments to the beat of each song. This will also develop their cognitive abilities as they follow directions when making their instruments.  

Religious Formation:  Music contributes to spiritual development by evoking inner peace and joy within the child. Also, appreciation of art and music is a form of appreciating Allah’s many gifts to us.

You will need:  A tray with a variety of materials to make cards (crayons, glue, construction paper heart cutouts, heart stencils, pencils, washable markers, glue, ribbon). Ensure that none of these can cause a choking hazard.

How To Play

• Play the song, ‘Mawla’s Love’ (from the RF packet) softly in the background during this activity.

• Say, “Let’s make a card to tell Hazar Imam that we love him.”

• Give a sheet of colored (pink or red) construction paper to your child and assist your  child to decorate the card as an expression of their love for the Imam.

• During this activity,you can ask questions and make statements such as ‘what color would you like to color the heart? Can I please have the yellow ribbon? This is beautiful! Well done!’ 

• Whenever possible, engage the child in a conversation.

Skills Practiced:

Physical Development: Fine motor skills are developed as the child picks up items to glue onto the card, uses crayons and markers to ‘write’ on the card. 

Social/Emotional Development: Children find ways to express their emotions (in this case, their love for the Imam). Children develop self-esteem when parents recognize their achievements.

Language Development: Language skills are developed as children engage in conversation with their parents.

Cognitive Development: Children build their critical thinking skills as they engage in creative expressions of their feelings and thoughts.

Religious Formation: Even though we do not see Mawlana Hazar Imam all the time, talking about his love for us to the toddler helps them develop love for  Hazar Imam. This activity reciprocates our love for Mawlana Hazar Imam. Toddlers and parents together engage in expressing their love for the Imam. 

How To Play

• Make a game out of picking up toys, books, and magazines, and putting them in the right place after play time. Sing a clean-up song (e.g. Barney’s Clean Up song) as you all clean up after finishing an activity. Show your toddler how to place napkins and silverware on the table. Allow him to help wipe off areas after accidents. 

• Expect your child  to help you (be reasonable) and praise his accomplishments even if the job is not perfectly done

• Encourage him to “help himself” remove his shoes and zip and unzip larger zippers with assistance. Praise his efforts. 

Skills Practiced:

Physical Development: Practicing helping with tasks at home will help to develop your child’s fine and gross motor skills.

Social/Emotional Development:: Helping around the house will help your toddler improve his self-esteem and teach him a sense of responsibility.