26th meeting

Our Today's Story: "Dick Whittington and His Cat" from "Folk Tales from Around the World"

We started out today our book club by trying to define, what a folk tale was. Umm Uzair tried to ask us prompting questions till we one by one pieced together a quite good definition. We decided that folk tales have to do with certain peoples, and that these are the tales that they tell to each other. From here on, Umm Uzair explained to us that people all over the world have some special tales that are being narrated down from generation to generation. For example, your mom's mother might have told her a tale, which was told to her by her mother, and then your mother told that the same tale to you - that's how folk tales are being passed down and preserved in memories of different nations. Usually, nobody knows, who is the author of the tale.

We also learned that different nations of the world have very different folk tales, which are specific to the regions they live in. The book, which Umm Uzair had, contained folk tales from West Africa, Germany, the USA, Britan and Japan. We listened to the tale from Britain about a poor boy called Dick and about his cat Tom, who made him rich by serving on a ship and catching the mice.

After the story, Umm Uzair had prepared for us a painting activity! All of us together made beautiful pictues of the under-water world. Umm Uzair was making her picture and we followed her step-by-step in making our own. First, we put all the colours and then, when the paint had dried, made the outlines with bright pastels. See below the pictures we made!

25th meeting

Today's Story: "The Gingerbread Man"

This week, the location of our book club meeting was moved to the home of Atefa aunty, who kindly invited all the kids and their moms over.

Inspired by the previous week's book club, in which Imaan was sharing with kids a story, this time, Uzair decided to read for children one of his favourite stories - "The Gingerbread Man". Now, nearly all of us were familiar with this story already, but it didn't stop us from enjoying listening to it again. We liked how Uzair tried to read the parts of different characters in different voices. Plus, this book had more in it than just the story of the Gingerbread Man. At the story of Gingerbread Man, we had the chance to see a comic story of what the same moning (that he book talks about) would have looked like for the fox - what the fox did in the morning, before he saw the gingerbread man at the river. Moreover, there was also a diary entry of the two children, who were also chasing the gingerbread man - they were also telling their own version of the story up to the point, when the gingerbread man escaped with the fox. By reading these additional stories, we realized that we could do the same with nearly every story we read - we could imagine, what the story would be like for the other characters involved in it! :)

Before we sat down for the story, we had the chance to cut out our very own shapes of gingerbread cookies! Umm Uzair had prepared the dough for us, and the gingerbread cookies were cooking in Atefa auntie's oven, as we listened to the story, spreading a mouth-watering smell all over the house! What a delight it was to eat the warm cookies later on!

After the story, Umm Uzair gave to each of us a paper gingerbread man, which we could decorate with pencils and crayon whichever way we wished. When we finished the work, she attached our gingerbread men to sheets of paper with recipe of gingerbread cookies, so that our moms could make some for us at home as well. :) See below our work!