When we were done, I asked the girls how do we know this story? How do we know this happened to Nuh (AS)? After some prompting and discussion, the girls came upon the answer that Allah talks about Nuh (AS) in the Quran. I took out the English translation to find an example of where Allah speaks about the Prophet Nuh (AS) - after looking through the contents of all the surahs, Surah Nuh seemed like a good one to read through! The English was a little difficult for them to understand all the words, but they understood enough to see it was part of the story we'd just read. I explained that the rest of Prophet Nuh (AS)'s story is in different surahs in the Quran, not all in one place like in the books we'd just looked at.
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We were gifted some small toy animals from my parents when the twins were younger, and because they used to fight a lot over the same toy at that age it meant we have pairs of animals to play with. 😂😂 So we used these to practise our 2x table in the context of counting the animals walking onto the ark, and sang the song, "The Animals Went In Two By Two" (Hurrah! Hurrah!) as we played with them. 😁😁
We also had a conversation about why two animals were chosen, why not more (because there would be no space!) and why not less (because you need two to make more!). And about how a male and female animal (including humans as well as other living things such as plants) are needed to make a baby. We didn't go into the details of reproduction! Just that you need a male and a female pair. M noted that it wouldn't make sense to have two male animals or two female animals going on the ark, they must have been one of each. Then I gave them a quick explanation of how by starting with just two animals, they were able to keep multiplying to get lots and lots more after some time - so even though Nuh (AS) couldn't take e.g. all the elephants with him, by taking just two elephants it made sure that all the elephants didn't disappear completely (or become extinct) after the flood.
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After a couple of days, we revisited the story and I asked the girls to summarise it for me - which they were able to do, MashaAllah. Then I told them they were going to have a go at making their own boat. What did Prophet Nuh (AS) use to build the ark? Wood! So we were going to use wooden lolly sticks to make ours as a mini version. We were also going to use PVA glue to stick our pieces together... but do they think Prophet Nuh (AS) used glue? No! He used a hammer and nails.., But we were just going to use glue since we're just making a model.
I gave them all the lolly sticks we had left in our craft supplies, some PVA glue and a couple of brushes to spread it with. Then told them to work together to make a boat and we could test it in the bathtub later, inshaAllah!
This is the first open ended creative building kind of task I'd set the girls, so I was interested to see what they'd do... It was great to see them discuss ideas, try something out, evaluate as they went along, make mistakes and change their plans... I tried my best not to give them any input from myself but used comments and questions such as, "What are you going to do next?", "Did that work the way you wanted it to?", "It keeps falling down. Why do you think that is?", "How could you make it stronger?", etc.
They began by making a "floor" by gluing a row of lolly sticks together. It kept sliding apart so one had the idea of putting a stick perpendicular underneath to keep them in place, which then became a stick glued on top perpendicular to the rest and they glued some more in the original line to complete the length. They were still sliding up and down a bit, so the girls decided to glue another perpendicular stick on top at the other end - then decided to just fill in in between and have another long row of sticks on top but perpendicular to the ones underneath. They were happy this gave a solid structure so now wanted to put some "walls" on their boat. First, they tried gluing a stick on its edge, which took several attempts to get to stand straight. Then they tried gluing another on top to make their wall taller, but no matter how they tried it wouldn't balance right. So they decided to keep the wall only one stick high and make an identical wall on the other side. Then they wanted to put a "roof" on the boat by gluing a stick on top of the two walls to join them together - but the weight of the stick on top made their walls fall down. So they came up with the idea of making their walls thicker and, because they wanted them identical, made both walls three lolly sticks wide. They only had two sticks left now so glued them both across as the roof.
I think if we had more sticks they would have happily kept going! I was really pleased to see them so engaged and determined even when it was tricky to get the sticks to stay in place and the structure didn't work out the way they wanted it to. 💕
We left their boat to dry overnight (why? because the glue was still wet so if we tried to put it in the bathtub now it would just fall apart!) then took it in the bathroom to test.
We talked about the story of Prophet Nuh (AS) again and the girls remembered that it wasn't raining at all when he built the ark, so there was no way Nuh (AS) could test it would work! He just had to trust in Allah, which he did. So we put their boat into the bathtub without any water.
Then the rain came (turn the shower on!) which didn't stop for 40 days and 40 nights! The girls were excited to see their little boat float up on the water as it rose (I purposefully aimed the showerhead to the side of the bath rather than on top of their boat!) and watched it spin and float this way and that. Was there any way of controlling which direction the boat was going? No, it was just being carried away with the water, just like the ark was with Nuh (AS) on it. We turned the shower off and watched the boat float for a while. What happened next in the story, after the rain stopped? The girls said the water all went away and then Nuh (AS) and all the animals could come off again. So we drained all the water away from the tub.I asked if the girls wanted to do it again but this time with animals on their boat? Of course, the answer was yes! So we put a pair of animals on the boat and turned the shower on again. There was only room on their boat for one pair of animals - we talked some more about how large the ark must have been to fit in a pair of every animal, plus Nuh (AS) and all the believers! We tried squeezing another pair of animals on but their boat sunk and the other animals fell off... much to their amusement. 😂
Finally, we drained all the water away and retold how the ark stopped on top of a mountain for Nuh (AS) and the believers to finally disembark. By this point the glue on our boat was starting to get washed away and the sticks come apart, so we talked some more about the materials Nuh (AS) used to make the ark and what we could do next time if we wanted to make our lolly stick boat last longer!
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