Eid ul Fitr with Amma Fatima

The Bookworm Book Club resumed today after its Ramadan break. Sister Almas hosted the special Eid party session at her place and had the children involved in its preparation by handing them paper ribbons and balloons. Her family had installed fairy lights over a mirror giving the room a festive look and furthering the children's excitement when Sister Almas read about another Eid party with lights to decorate.       

 Mothers and children alike listened intently to the story Celebrating Eid with Amma Fatima as her family prepared to celebrate Eid with a party, games , tasty food and also special packages for the poor and orphans to make sure they were not forgotten and were able to enjoy this special day too.

 The interactive narration by Sister Almas had the room resonating with takbeer and then followed by an Urdu poem marvelling at the beauty of Allah's creation and the love of the Creator Allah SWT.

 Next the Book club members stretched their limbs to action nursery rhymes and then settled down to some tasty snacks, free play and chatter.
 
Alhumdulillah what a wonderful beginning to a new club session.

13 Shawwal 1434

Sunny Summer Salad

This week the Bookworms decided to take a break from their books and enjoy Allah's blessings on Karachi; our summer season fruits. Our summer heat is perfect for ripening our world famous mangoes as well a variety of juicy, fleshy, sweet and tangy summer salad cocktail fruits. So the Bookworms (under the watchful eyes and gentle guidance of their mothers) gathered in the Pirani kitchen, each family bringing a different fruit, rolled up their sleeves, grabbed a variety of knives and began peeling, chopping, dropping, gigging and sampling an array of fruit which eventually was tossed together to make our Sunny Summer Salad. What did this consist of you wonder? Well make a guess:

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3

4

5

6

To further the fruity fun, some of the younger children had their eyes covered and were made to feel some of the fruit, then asked to describe them and guess their names. The juice from the pineapple and a sprinkle of dried mint for the moms added to the zest of this salad . Unfortunately we don't have a picture to share and words can not describe the glee of the children and the pleasure of their mothers as they literally enjoyed the fruits of their children's labor.

The Fruits:
1.Garma fruit; cantalope
2. lychee
3. Sindhri mango
4. peaches
5. bananas
6. tinned pineapple (not a local fruit but enjoyed locally)

Shaban 1434

"The Silver Sword" - 1

Today, our big bookworms started reading a new book - "The Silver Sword" by Ian Serrallier. The introduction to the book from the back cover says: "When the Nazis seize their father and mother, in World War II, the three Balicki children are left to fend for themselves in occupied Poland. Bravely they survive the hardships of war, and never completely lose hope of finding their parents again. This is the exciting story of their quest, of the clever orphan boy Jan who helps them, and of the silver talisman that accompanies them on their dangerous journey."

 

The little bookworms were busy with the adventures of the famous three bears family and the Goldilocks. No, they didn't read about the Goldilocks - they read about what happened after the Goldilocks had left the bears' house.

As it turned out upon inquirying, all the little bookworms were really well familiar with the story of the Goldilocks and helped Umm Uzair with details about what had happened in the bears' house, when Goldilocks had visited it. The book they read this time was "A Chair for Baby Bear" by Kaye Umansky and Chris Fisher. Now, we won't give you out all the details of the story, in order not to spoil it for you, but we can assure you that the baby bear got a new chair by the end of the book.

After reading the book, little bookworms gave a try to drawing their very own chair for the baby bear - one that they would like to send to him. Have a look at the chairs we've got - don't you think the baby bear would be happy? :)

"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" - 4

Today the book club started out with an exciting competition - the big bookworms presented their character sketches of their own created child-characters, who have 'supposedly' won the fifth golden ticket for visiting Mr. Wonka's chocolate factory. Umm Uzair distributed among kids folded pieces of small papers with numbers in them - this way, kids got to know the order, in which they would be presenting. As each child came up in front, Umm Uzair wrote their number and name on the whiteboard, along with the name of their created character. Masha'Allah, we had nine presenters and this is how the list looked like:

We really enjoyed hearing the presentations, seeing the illustrations and even live demonstrations of the children's stories, Alhamduillah. All the children had put good effort into creating their characters and all of them really could have been the fifth finders of the lucky tickets.

However, we had to find the one winner of our competition. So after hearing the character sketches, Umm Uzair once again distributed small pieces of paper to all mothers and children in the room, on which they wrote the number of the presentation they liked the best. She later counted the votes and got an obvious winner - Hibatullah (the youngest of all our participants!!!) with her character of  Ted Khan, who never liked to take shower and was tricked into washing his hands and mouth by his parents, who promised him in return a Mr. Wonka's chocolate bar, which turned out to be the lucky holder of a golden ticket. Here is part of Hibatullah's story, which she wrote out all by herself:

Hibatullah's Ted Khan

And here are some of the other stories we heard today:

Muadh's Jesse Meany

Hajrah's Chexy Flexy

Ayesha's and Maaria's story - part 1

Ayesha's and Maaria's story - part 2

Sohaib's Thackery

Uzair's Peter Shy

Hafsa's Elizabeth Boutique

Hafsa's illustration for Elizabeth Boutique

 After the competition presentations, the big bookworms continued reading "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" by Roald Dahl to find out who the real winner of the fifth ticket was.

As the story continued, Charile's life took a turn for the worse: his father lost his job and meals at home became scarcer than ever. Charlie showed certain wisdom that only children can; by moving more slowly, not going out to play and setting off for his walk to school much earlier than usual, he would conserve some of his body's energy. His family was fretting with worry, they could see he was starving, and no matter how they tried to give him their share food, the good little fellow refused to take it. It was now, when things seemed like they could get no worse that a wondrous thing happened... what could that be? I bet you can guess, and surely you are right! Follow along with the us, bookworms, if you can, tonight...


The small bookworms heard a wonderful story about a Giant - presented by Fatima and her mother. It was "The Smartest Giant in Town" by Julia Donaldson. The main character of the book George the giant wished he wasn't the scruffiest giant in town. So, one day, when he saw a new shop selling giant-size clothes, he decided it was time for a new look. With smart trousers, a smart shirt, stripy tie and shiny shoes, George became a totally new giant. But, on his way home, he met various animals, who desperately needed his help... and his clothes!

As Fatima and her mother read this wonderful picture book, the other bookworms had to guess, which animals needed which of George's clothes. At the very end of the book, the animals thanked George for his kindness with a very special gift. What the gift was? Read the book to find it out! :)

"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" - 3

This week, the big bookworms continued reading about the adventures of Charlie in Roald Dahl's book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". We read about the first two finders of Mr. Wonka's golden tickets: the nine-year-old, enormously fat boy Augustus Gloop, who muched on sweets all day long, and the spoiled little brat girl Veruca Salt, who always got from her rich parents whatever she wished for.

We also read about Charlie's birthday and his only b-day present - his very own Wonka's chocolate bar. We listened with very hopeful hearts that he would find the ticket... but his chocolate bar was not among the lucky ones. Although Charlie's parents and both sets of grandparents tried to keep up his spirits and encouraged him for enjoying his chocolate, the truth was that somewhere deep inside all of them were sad that Charlie didn't get the golden ticket.

Afterwards, we learned about two more finders of the golden tickets: Miss Violet Beauregarde, who was famous for continuous chewing of gum, and armed with eighteen toy pistols Mike Teavee, who all day sat at TV watching gangster movies.

As we got to know the lucky finders, Umm Uzair announced a competition for us. She said that for the next book club, we have to come up with a fifth child character, who would fit in nicely with the four ones we had read about. We had to give the character a name, describe some of his/her weird qualities and tell, how he/she found the golden ticket. Umm Uzair promised that the winner will be determined by voting and a prize would be awarded for the best character! Good luck to all the bookworms!!!

Our younger bookworms listened to a story about a big hippo, who bullied any animal that crossed his path... until he kicked a buzzing ball! It "bee" -came a life changing event in the hippo's life.

Following the story, Umm Abdullah demonstrated different mannerisms of a guest visiting a friend and asked the children to decide, which was the correct way to behave and which wasn't. The children were then asked to demonstrate good manners for the rest of the group to watch as well. It was a fun laughter filled activity to round off the day.

"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" - 2

Our senior Book Worms continued reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, beginning with a story about a queer Indian prince, continuing with the strange observation that the amazing factory never had any workers entering it or leaving it and yet it churned out delicious chocolate, and ending with the exciting announcement that Mr. Willie Wonka would be hosting five lucky children on a tour of his scrumptious factory.

After listening intently, the children were prompted to ponder over the story of the strange prince, who had Mr. Wonka build him a chocolate palace to live in. The magnificent palace eventually melted in the summer heat. What would have happened if someone in Karachi had commissioned a similar home? The following is the outcome of our Book Worm members imagination:

The group of smaller bookworms started their reading by following the mischief of Peter the rabbit. One day, Peter’s mother sent him and his sisters off to woods to look for some berries. Sisters, as good little rabbits, listened to their mommy, while Peter right away decided to go for some forbidden enjoyment – farmer McGregor’s garden. Peter stuffed himself with fresh and crunchy vegetables so badly that his tummy started aching. And, if that was not bad enough, the farmer McGregor noticed him and started chasing him all over the garden. Only barely did Peter make it out of the garden unharmed, although he had to part from his shoes and jacket, which he lost in fleeing from Mr. McGregor. As we read the book, bookworms took turns lifting the flaps of the book and searching for the hiding places of Peter the rabbit on every page – that was fun!

In the second book, we got to meet Poldy, the scarecrow, and his friends birds, along with whom we learned about colours. Poldy and his friends landed in a dark jungle, where they suddenly saw splashes of colours all around them. They discovered that these bright colours belonged to parrots, so that they can recognize each other in the dark jungle. Later, they met two children, who taught Poldy more about colours and even coloured his body and clothes with all sorts of beautiful colours. However, accidently, Poldy fell into water and all his colours got washed away.

As we read about the beautiful parrots, we had some discussion about these birds. It turned out that at home Aasiya had four nice parrots of her own! Noor had just the day before visited a family, which also had a parrot, which was flying all over their home! She even told us of the strange noise the parrot was making. We also discussed about how parrots learn to speak. Umm Uzair suggested that they do it very similarly to how babies learn to talk – if they hear some words being repeated over and over again, then they start mimicking these words and eventually learn to speak them. She also told the bookworms a joke about a parrot.

After reading, bookworms had activity of making their own parrots. They coloured the bodies of the parrots Umm Uzair had prepared for them and then folded from coloured paper wings for them.