Winter 2016 : Malaysian breakfast at SKMM

Usual scene on Saturday mornings at Abraham Moss High School cafeteria.

We had Malaysian breakfast with our kids, who are attending Saturday supplementary school, Sekolah Komuniti Malaysia Manchester (SKMM). Malaysian community around Manchester will come here and sell Malaysian delicacies at this 'Kedai Kopi Malaysia'.  

Libyan also runs their supplementary school here on weekends. It is a good exposure for the students to mingle around with others of different nationality every week. We love to buy sandwiches made by a very nice Libyan lady.

Winter 2016 : Nabil joined football training

We received this letter in November and thought that it is good to let Nabil join the football team. We are in Manchester kan.... a city famous for football, so why not?

They got meal sponsored by famous sports brand (I cant remember, Nike? or Adidas?) on Tuesdays and trained by experienced footballer.

This is an experience that Nabil couldnt get somewhere else. Alhamdulillah.

Winter 2016 : Ancient Egypt Home-Learning Projects

So this is what Nazreen will learn this term. 

For Ancient Egypt, Nazreen chose to produce a book on River Nile.

First, we discuss on the content and layout. Then Nazreen will proceed with the work. He started with the world map showing major rivers in the world. He traced the map on my laptop screen.

Then he cut each continent, pasted them on the blue card and labeled each river with a pink paper.

These are what he managed to do that night. The world map, animals of the River Nile..

...and diagram showing how people lived along the River Nile longgggg time ago. This is a very detailed drawing and he spent more than one hour to produce this precious.

At the other corner of the room, Nabil pasted together 6 A4 papers to make one big sheet for his Ancient Egypt project. He produces a drawing on the process of pyramid construction.

Similar to Nazreen, he produced a very detailed drawing, however, I didnt manage to capture them because my phone was broken. I was using a very old phone with low resolution and didnt work well at night.

Nabil managed to finish his project that night.

Winter 2016 : Brotherhood lagi

How I keep them close?

Do everything together and share everything (in this case, the warm blanket).

And sleep together. 

They can talk and laugh together for hours before they sleep. We usually make sure the lights out by 9.30 - 10pm because we dont want any trouble with the Council.

Winter 2016 : Ethical Trading Initiatives

I took Work and Employment in Global Economy course. It taught me a lot about globalisation, labour, private standards and global production network. I wrote a lot of essays on private standards, Ethical Trading Initiaties (ETI) in the UK and Fairtrade.

One day I came home and I saw Nazreen’s homework on ETI! It is good for them to understand about ethical trading from early stage and raise the awareness to choose the right products from the supermarket shelves. 

I, on the other hand, only being exposed to this pretty late, during my Masters ;p 

Winter 2016 : Coca dates drink

Blend together low fat milk, cocoa powder, banana, dates and oats.

Delicious!

Enough to keep them full for a couple of hours before dinner. It is already dark at 5pm and they keep asking when they could have their dinner.

Winter 2016 : Leisure Library @ Cheetham Hill

When they have new home-learning projects, this is how our Saturday looks like.

Nabil is working on a project on Ancient Egypt pyramid.

Nazreen is working on a River Nile project.

Mama has a lot of critical essays to complete, but equally excited to start the new projects with them haha #ohmypriority

Winter 2016 : Convenient online shopping for Papa's birthday!

I ordered some stuff from eBay and get them to send to Argos for me to pick later. Since I am in the campus most of the time and my husband is busy running errands and managing the kids, so we might not be home when the Royal Mail guy came.

It is truly convenient to be able to choose where to pick up the stuff we bought online, at our own time. I chose Argos at the Manchester Fort Shopping Park as I also ordered some perfume and men’s stuff for my husband at online Boots store. Argos have allocated special collection point for eBay orders.

I told my husband that I just need a while to pick up some stuff at Boots (and pray hard that we will not follow). He decided to wait in the car as it was cold outside. I emptied my backpack earlier and put the books at the backseat. He didn’t notice. I glad I did that because the boxes are massive!

That night, we blew some balloons for papa while he was sleeping, then we surprised him with a loud birthday song and showered him with a lot of birthday presents and kisses!!

Winter 2016 : Insect mosaic

We went to a charity event at a local school and came across this gigantic display of insect mosaic a la Christopher Marley created by a bunch of students. Marley used to be scared of bugs but now he is creating a wonderful artworks using colourful bugs.

Winter 2016 : THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

30 January 2016.
A day after the Storm Gertrude.

We were chatting with my parent via Skype when the guests started to arrive. My sons were so happy to see other kids came to their party. New friends in Manchester! They loves the cakes (of course!) and the M&Ms disappeared long before the whole cake finished, as I expected. haha.

 

We had a really fun art and craft sessions. I didnt mind seeing our living room like this as long as the kids were having fun and the guests were enjoying themselves, helping the kids to do some artworks.

My neighbour (who is also my junior in IIUM), a PhD candidate, was struggling to meet a submission deadline that day, therefore, she couldnt make it to the party. I asked her if she could send over her kids to my house and let them stay here until Maghrib so she could focus on her writing. I truly understand what she went through and that was the least I could do to help. And she did! 

It was good to see Naufal & Aesyah really enjoying themselves with crafts and the loud & colourful party poppers :) The kids made these, toilet roll ninjas (in our case, they were actually kitchen rolls cut into two) and straw sculptures.

I had so much fun baking, cooking and entertaining the guests! It is a good break from my study. Cleaning up that evening was a breeze.

I read the news online and surprisingly we are expecting Storm Henry the next day!

Winter 2016 : Planning for a Birthday Party for Nabil, Nazran and Nazmi

It was January 2016 and finally I had a free time (and extra money) for our sons' birthday party. Nabil and Nazran was born in December and Nazmi was born in February. First, to get things going, I designed the birthday invite. I just invited a few close friends.

It is going to be Nabil's 10th birthday, Nazran's 7th and Nazmi's 3rd. Good age combination. Those numbers (10, 7, 3) fit into the BIR7HDAY C3LEBRAT10N!!

On Friday, January 29, the day we welcomed Storm Gertrude to the UK, after sending off the kids to school, we went to get some presents for them and ingredients for the main menu and desserts.(Northern UK was the most impacted, but we still get the strong wind)

The night before, after they went to bed, we hung the birthday bunting, pump some balloons and wrap their presents. We keep a few blankets ready to cover everything should any one of them came down to get some water (they did that sometimes, in the middle of the night). 

They will get the light sabers they were asking for quite sometimes, books, stationery and some cool clothes. None of them knew we planned this party. We cant wait to see their faces in the morning! Waking up to the house full of balloons :)

The next morning, YUP, as we expected, they were cheering and laughing and running around the house in joy once they went downstairs and saw all the deco. As I was preparing the chicken rice, they helped me to spread the chocolate topping on the cake I baked the night before and topped it with a few packs of M&M. 

25% of the M&M went into their mouth but I just pretended that I didnt see a thing.

Winter 2016 : Borrowing books

After the Maulidur Rasul celebration, we went to the local library, register the kids as a member and borrow some books. Their teachers said they need to read more, so I asked them to choose and borrow 8 books each - the maximum allowed for 2 weeks. They were excited to use the self-checkout machine at the library (well, I did as well when I first borrowed books from my university library!).

Look at those I-dont-want-to-read-8-books faces. LOL!

Winter 2015 : Maulidur Rasul celebration in Manchester

There were built up events on Saturdays before the main Maulidur Rasul celebration in Malaysian supplementary school in Manchester. The kids participated in poster and card design competitions, learned about the Prophet Muhammad, watch educational movies and learned the selawat. 

On the real day, they participated in nasyid competition and Maulidur Rasul quiz. And they bring home a lot of present from the competitions and quiz. Well done! 

Our first photo in baju kurung and baju melayu together, taken in front of our house. It was freezing cold outside!

Winter 2016 : Meet the teacher - Nabil

A few days after a meeting with Nazreen's teacher, it is Nabil's turn.

It was really impressive to see him art work being displayed at the gallery. Our discussion was around his artwork especially his history of Manchester project. He also has a lot of reading and catching up to do.

They learned about Earth and Space this term. They designed a space buggy.

Nabil's design:

These are the report in his book:

They also learned about Ancient Mayans this semester. I was surprised to know about this. This is a very good exposure for their age!

Nabil's ancient Mayans' mural made it to the gallery:

I am proud to see the comment by the teacher in his book. It is really good to know that they actually record everything, every artwork (scanned and printed), in the workbook. 

The kids will have a very good memory of the school, their teachers, friends and their study when they came back to Malaysia this year.

Winter 2016 : Snow in January

We are going to miss this view.

From my bedroom window.

Our neighbours asked us to join them to the Heaton Park (a large park with hills covered with snows and you can sledge there) at 7am but I need to study. I am one day away from my final exam. 

Kids are having fun around the house, playing with what's left from yesterday's evening. So it doesnt matter if we dont go to the Heaton Park. Nazran went inside after 10 minutes because he cant stand the cold.

It was really hard to roll the snow to make a huge ball. I gave up half way. It was painfully cold working with a wet snow. Someone wore my snow gloves and I ended up with thin wool gloves. It got wet pretty quick.

They made these. 
They rolled the snowball at other area with thick snow and put the parts together in front of our house. I have a bowl of warm water ready for them if their fingers started to feel painfully cold.

The snowmen were still standing later that day (and the next day). I keep checking every 10 minutes because I was studying by the window. I saw passers-by took photographs and selfies with these snowmen. lol.