Crayon Physics!
Cool isn’t it?! Its actually one of the best introduction to Law of Physics– Newtonian Mechanics? (the fun way!) for our children. The actual game above (deluxe version!) is yet to be released but you can try the original Crayon Physics here.
Some snapshots .
Believe me its not easy , but my kids had fun playing it. 
Sabrina and Alysha
It’s nobody’s birthday that day but seemed that the “only” song that’s Sabrina knew
Here another version.
Status update Dec 07
I’ve been busy lately – workload is increasing but I think still manageable -thanks to GTD the 2 minutes must do concept worked well with my daily tasks. A new project roll-out just started for our new customer ,(new boxes are coming to be installed so I have to do a lot of RTFM ) , Hajj preparation is ongoing and also the daily cases created by customer always kept me busy.
At home, the two youngest daughters are growing up fast and need more attention than ever. Sabrina started playing PC games –I am not sure how, one day she played around with the laptop and ended-up at this games for girls website. And that was history, since that moment ummi’s laptop has been a subject of quarrel between all the females at home (yes it does include the youngest Alysha and Ummi too!) . Sabrina would spent hours in front of the laptop dressing up her “princess” later print them on papers.
Alysha was in a stage of discovery with her very minimum vocabularies (she just turned two last month!) – she would try everything from jumping off from the bed or painting the wall with crayons. She’s now officially declared as the most wanted mess-maker in the house , changes clothes every hour and also started calling herself as “Baby”
Alysha did her “singing” act.
Father and Son – Ronan Keating featuring Yusuf Islam
Father
Its not time to make a change,
Just sit down, take it slowly.
You’re still young, that’s your fault,
There’s so much you have to go through.
Find a girl, settle down,
If you want you can marry.
Look at me, I am old, but I’m happy.
(son– away away away, I know I have to
Make this decision alone – no)
Son
All the times that I cried, keeping all the things I knew inside,
Its hard, but its harder to ignore it.
If they were right, Id agree, but its them you know not me.
Now there’s a way and I know that I have to go away.
I know I have to go.
(father– stay stay stay, why must you go and
Make this decision alone? )
Do read Cat Steven‘s journey into Islam here .
p/s NO my sons are not getting married anytime (this) soon
Education worthy of my children?
It is not easy being a father and being a father of four is another complicated story to explain .Looking back for the first 5 years, it was nothing more than mess, shouts , cries but yet full of fun, so far I think I still can "manage" it – everybody in the family knew how I love kids . But when my children started growing up (believe me it was so fast!) and suddenly madam wife reminded me that the kids need to start schooling or in a proper words "getting an education" – I am totally lost.
There were many reasons –
*First was due to the fact that my eldest son Ammar is autistic , among many questions that I had were – should he go to mainstream ? Should I send him to a government school or a private school? How much would it cost ? I know it is not cheap.
**Secondly, for Imran who was back then 5 years old, we need to find him a good kindergarten – which one is the best (and suit our budget too) ? Kumon? Smartreader ? Genius Gym? You just name it , (I am clueless!) but one thing I knew parents nowadays would spent $$ to this so called "best" school for their kindergartner! I bet all the parents now want their children one day to be as brilliant(and someday rich?) as Bill Gates or as genius ah hmm maybe Einstein? ( though I think Feynman is a more interesting character )
The other dilemma was, the endless issues regarding our education system in Malaysia, I am no expert to discuss about it but the fact that it kept on changing, makes me wonder if there is "something" wrong with the system and where its heading to (which is yet unclear at least for me).
Yet, another one – is a religous school the best choice for my children? It could be the easiest choice of many Muslim parents to play safe by sending them to a religious school – I am not against it infact being a Muslim, I am strongly agree the importance of religous education in shaping the akhlak (moral), ibadah and the faith – indeed thats the reason at least 17 times a day we’re praying to Allah "Guide us to the right path" AlFatihah:6 . But somehow, I also believe that with a proper guidance from parents (though not easy), sending to a normal public school would prepare them with a better immune system against today’s social influences. — thing that does not kill you makes you stronger!
All this complexities lead me to a new adventure , a new challenge, a new subject to search (I Google a lot finding answers!) in seeking the definition of education worthy my children.
For a start I made myself a few guidelines which I believe to be a basic foundations of my "research" .
i) Maintain the right path – Quran 1:7
(ii) school (s not equal to) education – school is no more than a place to stimulate and encourage learning process.
Later I found myself relearn a lot of stuffs :-
About what does it means of being Muslim ? – so that I hope I can explain Islam better to them . Once my son asked my wife why do we have to raise our hands during dhua? We are totally clueless- and I thought am I just a "blind" believer all this time ? I bet the question will get even tougher later – so I better get prepared ! I hope I can explain Islam to my children as good as Dr. Jeffrey Lang did
to his daughter
Teach the children to read was not easy so I did some research (bought few books on reading skill eg:- this and this ) and found out indeed I was never taught on how to actually "read" a book – its not a plain simple process.
Learning autism – I found myself reading new yet strange subjects like neuroscience in my journey to understand Ammar better Believe me learning about how mind works is like exploring another complex universe of its own. (darn! its been ages since I last open ETX-105 telescope)
What about the thinking process?
This is indeed very important to make sure my children knows how to analyze or evaluate statements or problems . Looking at the list at Wikipedia , I was again totally lost.
In short, I haven’t found the exact answers yet to all those "education" stuffs, indeed I found myself (lost in a sea of data )- educating myself before I hope I can educate my children
Allah please guide me!
* Ammar went to IMC for a year before we moved to Riyadh and now in SEN at Multinational School of Riyadh
** My little Imran went to CEC and learnt Chinese for a year – like me before at Grace Kindergarten, Batu Pahat . Now he is in PREP class at Multinational School of Riyadh .
Interesting video from TED.com from Sir Ken Robinson "Do schools kill creativity?" . Really? Just check it out.
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