Tennis

If you arrived in Doha this week you would probably have been impressed by all the possibilities for entertainment - including international film festivals and tennis tournaments. Unfortunately, for us,the rest of the year is looking pretty dull. This week, however, the girls had fun and enjoyed the International Women's Tennis Association Championship. They loved it so much they went again the following night. A will go off and enjoy the final tonight with friends.

Microwave Playdough Recipe

Best and easiest recipe ever.
(And no messy saucepan)

1/2 Cup Salt
1 Cup Plain Flour
2 Tablespoons Cream of Tartar
1 Cup Water
1 Tablespoon Oil
Colouring

Mix dry ingredients together.
Add oil, water and colouring
Microwave on medium for 2 minutes
Remove and stir
Cook a further 2 minutes on medium.
Remove and stir.
Mircrowave 1 more minute more if required. (Until mixture congeals)
Allow to cool sligtly and knead until smooth.
When cold, store in an airtight container.

I would probably recommend doubling the ingredients to make more playdough perhaps even for one child. I usually seperate mine into balls when it is a dough and then add the food colouring into 3 seperate fistfull sized balls - although this means you may get some dye on your hands. Also, to make chocolate playdough just add 2 Tablespoons of cocoa (more if required) to the recipe above and take the same amount out of the flour. It smells amazing but be aware it can be even more tempting to eat for little ones. :) For more sensory experiences you can add essential oils such as peppermint or eucalyptus, or something to change the texture such as sand or use wholemeal flour. My girls love glitter added too.
(This is yesterday's playdough pictured - already jumbled together.)

We play - shapes

Inspired by some ideas from E's classmates who were studying 3 dimensional forms as part of their maths curriculum I decided to introduce this idea to the girls. To start we made playdough. Reviewing the photos, I see that rainbow or bright colours would have looked far more appealing, but this playdough was made with cocoa and designed to appeal to the senses. It smelled divine. Anyway, we rolled the playdough in tiny balls and used toothpicks as the lines to make our geometric shapes. We made cubes, pyramids and rectangular and triangular prisms and explored how geometric forms as opposed to organic forms follow specific rules. (That's the great thing about learning at home - I'm learning all the time too). E conveyed her enthusiasm for the task when she suggested that I tell the other homeschooling mums we know about this activity. To complement our study of 2 D shapes for our kinder and grade one girls - we played with A's childhood tangrams (kindly sent in one of the many parcels from my mum) we made shape pictures with coloured paper shape cut outs, made a powerpoint about shapes in the everyday world and played a shapes' computer game on cbeebies. They are still playing it. Your little ones can find it at - http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/#/lb/misc/shapestore

Playground for children open 1 PM - 12 AM

I take back all those nice things I said about Doha yesterday. I went back to the park to take the girls to play this morning and discovered that it is closed until 1 PM every day. So annoying! Here, we drive past the playgrounds late at night and you can't get a carpark, but in the morning they are closed. We were particularly frustrated as we had specifically asked the team of secuity guards at the gate whether we could come back in the morning.
"No problem, no problem" they politely responded which is the first sign that there will be a problem! Usually for us. So the playground is not open to children in the mornings. What the?

Oasis in the Desert

We found this place today. Such a lovely surprise. Well, it wasn't actually new to us. It is very near our house and we used to visit there when we were living here 4 years ago. But Doha has improved a lot and this place was greener and nicer than we remembered. And the metal play equipment has been replaced with much more practical heat friendly materials and even had shade cloths. The weather has finally cooled down enough that we can visit in the mornings. And just so we can imagine we have been transported somewhere far, far away the speakers play birds tweeting relentlessly to compensate for the complete lack of wildlife. We were particulary delighted to find this secret garden. I plan to take the girls back in the morning for a breakfast picnic.

Coffee

I found this today - in case you don't recognise the logo it is Gloria Jeans. It was a nice suprise to find something so familiar which reminded me of home.

Yes Mart

Here are the girls at our local "Yes Mart" - or corner store, milk bar or 7-11. They often enjoy this very short walk in the mornings or evenings. Actually, the store will happily deliver by bicycle - milk, yoghurt, plastic toys, lollies, some fresh produce or anything really. Often, when in the midst of cooking I quickly need butter or eggs (and I miss my Melbourne neighbours) a phone call is much easier than putting on the obligatory pants and sleeved top or scarf to cover myself. It seems like such an effort especially in the heat just to run into the store to buy milk. Or at least it seems easier. But, when I ordered milk over the telephone and they turned up at the door with detergent last week, I thought I must practise my Arabic just a teeny bit more. Unfortuately, a common problem here is that most of the people we are dealing with don't speak much English or Arabic but mostly likely an Indian dialect or something. So the girls and I often try and speak a little Arabic and find ourselves saying "Shukran" (Thank you) to the local service staff who are equally puzzled.

Is that a car seat or a cheetah?

I took this photo driving to work today. A needed the car so he and the girls drove me and as we pulled up next to the lights....at first glance I noticed an interesting 4WD next to me - "wow that's a really, fluffy, leopard print seat cover. It looks so thick and plush!" Imagine our surprise when out popped a small cheetah's head from the window!!! The girls didn't know whether to be excited or terrified. The poor little girls were so confused as this challenged what they thought they understood about the world - what was a cheetah doing in the car? They knew enough about animals and habitats to know that it doesn't belong in Doha, or in cars...and then why wasn't it at the zoo? Very confusing questions even for me!!! This place conintues to surpise us all.

M&Ms Maths

It's clear from the photos how much fun the girls had with this activity. They were each given their own small box of lollies (big M&Ms, mini ones and smarties to make it interesting for comparison) and they didn’t even eat one lolly for at least an hour. The little ones sorted them by colour, tried to make their own patterns, and then we placed them on graph paper for counting. I then suggested they draw a bar graph with my help. This gave them a good idea of how visual images are used to represent various objects and concepts. A would not let me help. I had envisaged I would rule the lines for the bar graph and she would colour it in the correct colours. Instead she did it herself and drew lines in different colours to represent that each colour and a different amount. Although it wasn’t an accurate representation she demonstrated that she understood the concepts involved – far more important than having an accurate graph with beautiful colours (which was my original objective). E was able to do the graph properly and loved it so much she was asking what other graphs she could do. This is such a great activity as it involves many different skills and processes - even the ruling accurately was a challenge and it inspired them of course because it involved bright coloured little objects and candy coated chocolate! I suggested a birthday graph so she did a bar graph with all our friend’s and families birthdays and both big girls were able to “read” the graph and ascertain which month/colour had the most, the least, less than or greater than. When I finally told the girls they could finally eat they didn’t want too and asked to do more activities with them! They didn't take much convincing though. We had started this activity with our kitchen scales and began to look at measurement - we compared the weights and number of m&m’s and estimated how much each one might weigh. It was a good introduction to measurement but I think we will follow this up soon with some heavier and more contrasting items which will be easier for comparison.

Summer is drawing to a very welcome end!

I finally pledge to stop complaining about the heat and how hot it is living in the desert. Even though A has been telling me for about two months how much cooler it is - it simply wasn't true. But, I can now officially say that I have felt a distinct cool breeze early in the morning and in the evening. It is even noticably cooler during the day - near 40 degrees every day but that is a most welcome change. As my friend said recently "you can have the sun back southern hemisphere" - Enjoy! I was beginning to think almost nobody lived here in our compound but now there are children with bikes and people with chairs sitting outside in the evenings. I can even walk to say hello to visit a neighbour. To celebrate today A took the girls to the park near the Corniche for their first outdoor experience of life here. E told me they were going to wait again to go back when it was a little cooler but they look pretty happy in the photos. It has been a long 3 months of summer, waiting.

Sea shells, Sea shells...

Inspired by our recent trips to the beach and shell collecting I wanted to build on the girl's interest and use their passion for these natural treasures. So, as I keep reminding them, maths isn't just about numbers it's about classification, organisation, grouping, comparison etc. First, we used our science observation skills (our 5 senses) and considered the appearance, size and texture - so we talked about ridges, rough, smooth, horizontal and vertical lines etc. Even 3 year old G was eager and involved. We used a very simple classification chart that all 3 girls loved using and we were able to classify all including the conch, scallop, triton and nautilus shells with nearly 100% accuracy. Since we are living in a place famous for its pearls (well at least here) and with an ancient tradition of pearl diving, we looked at You tube videos of how pearls are made and farmed. The girls are fascinated (as am I) about the humble origins of these precious and beautiful jewels. Since E had been snorkelling only a few weeks earlier and the girls had collected the shells themselves, this activity was even more interesting to them. They also enjoyed playing with the shells in water, in sand and with some little plastic sea creatures. We also tried to sketch our own shells, listened and tried to say the old "seashells, seashells by the seashore" tongue twister and explored the various mollusc creatures who live inside the shells. As part of our beach swimming day we also considered the power of salt and how it is easier to float in sea water than a chlorinated swimming pool. To demonstrate this, we experimented with an egg in water which begins to float when salt is added (about 6tsp). After this day of learning, E enthusisatically concluded that she would like to become a conchologist when she grows up. I had so much fun I think I might add this to my list too.

Chicken anyone?

This is a photo of our local chicken shop. Okay, so we have never been inside but it is at the corner near our compound and right next to the traffic lights - so we see it often. Truthfully, it makes me a little uncomfortable as it sells chickens to eat - live! I have often tried to be vague, evasive, when the girls ask me questions about their meat and where it comes from. Tonight at dinner, when presented with roast chicken on the table (purchased clinically at the supermarket) my 3 year old asked "mum, how do you think they killed the chicken?" I was a little hesitant and tried to distract her so as not to draw everybody's attention at the table to her comments, when she answered herself concluding it was probably with a stick "yes, they killed the chicken with a stick". So, I'm guessing I no longer need to delicately skirt around this issue. Perhaps they have picked up on more than I thought living here. We did notice a goat in the desert paddock once near our house being taken live off the ute (yes this is a very popular car here) to be slaughtered by hand ready for the family feast. My distaste and disdain for this practice as it seems so primitive is slowly waning as I grow more comfortable (or at least I think I should be) with it. I'm now glad that my girls are aware of where all their food comes from and can begin to make this choice for themselves. It seems part of our first world culture where we seperate our food and its origin (or clothes or products for that matter) to allow us to live as we please without guilt. So, we literally make ourselves and our environment sick by consuming only the best part of the meat in extravagant portions when if we ate less we would benefit ourselves and the environment...I really do spend a lot of time in traffic, at that corner staring at the chicken shop!

The Shangri La, Oman

We loved our time at this luxurious resort. When we moved on to our very humble abode in neighbouring Nizwa, G asked to go back to Oman. I tried to explain to her that we were still in Oman and she qualified her request with “not this Oman....the other Oman”. It reminded me of a friend taking her children to Thailand and teaching them about resortland and Thailand. Andrew and I were glad that they experienced and enjoyed both. Here, are some of the highlights from resortland. (P.S. - the foggy pictures are not reflective of our photography skills but the humidity!)