18th meeting

Our today's stories - "The Zax" from "The Sneetches and other Stories" by Dr. Seuss and "The Smily Crocodile" from "My Animal Treasury" collection of stories

Today, we had new kids join our book club - we welcome Zukhruf and her brother Musab (with two their two yournger siblings, who had come along with them)!

Before reading the stories, we talked about having arguments and solving them. Umm Uzair asked us, if we liked to fight with others, how we felt, when we were fighting and what we could do for avoiding arguments. We also talked about what we should do, if an argument has already started and we want to cool down and end it.

All of us agreed that we didn't like having arguments. We felt bad fighting with others. As we talked, what to do, if argument has already started, we came up with the following suggestions: go and make wudhu, sit down, pray, drink some water. We talked, how anger and arguments come from Shaitan and the best way to stop them is by water and trying to cool down. Umm Uzair suggested that for avoiding arguments, we should simply try to talk to the person, who is making us angry, and solve the situation this way, without getting into fight.

The first story today was about two stubborn Zax - one, which was always going south, and the other, who was always going north. When these two Zaxs met, they were so stubborn that none of them would let the other go, by stepping to the side from his route. They started arguing, since none of them was willing to give up. So the story ended with these two angry Zaxs standing in front of other for years and years - just to their stubborness and anger.

The other story was about a smily crocodile, who found it difficult not to smile and impossible to get angry at anyone. Other crocodiles in the river were mean and angry ones - they couldn't understand the smily one at all. One day, a herd of hippos came to their river. Crocodiles were not happy about it at all, except the smily, who enjoyed the new company. They wanted to get rid of the hippos and tried to do so in a number of mean ways, but didn't succeed. Then the smily crocodile suggested that it would be better just to talk to the hippos nicely and ask them to leave for a different place. And that's what he did. And it worked! To the great astonishment of the angry crocodiles, the hippos were ready to listen to the smily one and moved.

After the stories, Umm Uzair distributed to us big lips she had cut out from paper. We had to make smiles and colour them. Then, Umm Uzair stapled our smiles onto straws. She said that we can use these smiles any time we felt angry for hiding our anger. She also said that our every smile is a Sadaqah for which we get rewarded! Isn't that nice?