Crescent Moon and Star Traveling Tic-Tac-Toe Tutorial

Crescent Moon and Star Traveling Tic-Tac-Toe by A Crafty Arab

Tic-tac-toe is a game for two players who take turns marking the spaces in a 3×3 grid.

The player who succeeds in placing three respective marks in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row wins the game.

It is a very easy game that can be played anywhere and with anything really. As long as you can make a hashtag symbol on something, you can play Tic-tac-toe. 

Supplies
Plastic cutting board
Ruler
Clear nail polish
Fabric marker
Canvas bag
Toothpick
Cardstock
Cutting blade
Sculpey clay

In the past, we have made a board from a metal tin and buttons, for traveling. This time I had some extra canvas bags that come with each Arabic Alphabet Game Cards that we used. When I got the bags last year from ebay, they were plain so I added purple striped butcher's twine to them to give them a pop of color.

Insert the cardstock into your bag so that the paint does not bleed through.

Use your ruler and fabric paint marker to mark four lines like the photo below..

Set aside your bag and start to work on your clay.  Begin by cutting it into six even squares.

For the crescent moon, roll the square between your hands and then on the plastic cutting board until it is a long thin shape (2).  Bend the ends to make a crescent shape (3).

For the stars, flatten the square with your hand (2).  Then use the toothpick to mark five V shapes around the edges of your shape (3).

Read the manufactures instructions on how long you need to cook your clay.  We put ours in the oven for 7 minutes to bake.

After your clay is cooled, add a coat of clear nail polish to give it a shine.  Our name polish had little glitter red, white and blue stars in it which made it even textured.

Wait a few minutes and play a game, or put everything in your bag for the go!

Arabic Ramadan Countdown Tutorial

We have never made a Ramadan countdown calendar before, but after I saw the 30 Activities for a Ramadan Advent Calendar over at Modest Munchies, I knew our time had come.

Today my oldest daughter and I looked around the house and came up with this.

We had the lattice wood pieces left over from our new fence we put in last year and the two side bars were from our kitchen remodel five years ago. Here is the rest of our list.

Supplies

We started by taking our newspaper and going outside to spray paint our wood pieces.

While we waited for them to dry, we headed back inside and cut washi tape to cover our clothespins.

We then punched out our shapes from the activities and numbers pages we printed at the library. 

Since the print outs are free at our local library, we went ahead and made two copies of our numbers to help us keep everything in order.

Opps, I forgot to add the double sided tape to the supplies photos above!  Sorry.

Tape your number punch outs and your activity punch outs to each other, back to back.

Now that your wood pieces are dry, staple the long pieces to the lattice pieces on the side.

Place one glue dot on the back of each clothespin and add it to the lattice board.

Add your numbers to the board.

For now, we used the Ramadan Kareem Wallies Tutorial, but we made the side wood pieces taller on the end so that we can add a new Ramadan banner later.

Now our countdown is ready, and we have already done two activities!

Ramadan Mubarak 1436/2015 & Perler Sheep Tutorial

What a magical time of year.

Yesterday my three girls had their last day of school, followed up by our annual Hello Summer backyard bbq party and today we go right into Ramadan!

For those new to my blog, I started a 30 Day Ramadan Crafty Challenge back in 2011 when we couldn't find any Arab or Islamic crafts to learn about the holy month at our local library or book stores. 

We continued the Crafty Challenge again in 2012, 2013, and 2014.

I am not a professional photographer and blogging isn't my full time job (being a mom and this is), so some of the posts were crude at the beginning, but they filled a void.  Now there are so many blogs devoted to Ramadan and Islamic crafts, it's so wonderful to see.

As a volunteer art teacher, I see the value of children learning with art at this age because they are visually stimulated.  Many have a hard time reading long lessons or sitting for extended periods of time.  It's been shown that at a young age, they should not be doing either, but rather exploring their world through play and fun.  Please share these posts.  They are also on Instgram and Pinterest.

For our fifth annual challenge, the girls and I have been researching craft books and websites the last few months to try to come up with fresh ideas that usually involved supplies found around our home. True, because of my volunteer job, I may have more art supplies then many, but with a little planning, you too can find most our diy tutorials at your local craft store or online.

We wanted to start today simple by pulling out our old favorite, the Perler beads, to make our greeting above.

Ramadan Kareem means Blessed Ramadan and is a greeting the 1.75 billion Muslims say to each other during this month.  Feel free to say it to any Muslims you know. I'm sure it will make their day that you know what time of year it is for them. The numbers are this year on the Islamic and Gregorian calendars.

Our supplies are our letters/number board, beads, ironing sheets and an iron.

We also made this little sheep and wanted to share how to make your own.

You will need 91 white beads, 9 black beads, and 6 beige beads.  Start by placing two groups of four black beads together, leaving six blank spaces between them for the legs. Place eight white beads above the legs and follow with working your way up like this: 10 white, 11 white, 11 white, 12 white, 13 white + 1 beige, 8 white + 2 beige + 1 white + 2 beige, 7 white +1 beige + 2 white + 1 black, 5 white, 3 white.

You sheep should look like this after you have ironed it.  If you had a great time making it, check out these other 99 creative sheep projects.

Make sure you come back to check out the rest of the month!