The boys’ dad has just come back from Kuwait. I asked him to bring us plenty of Arabic children’s books, games and learning resources as the selection of Arabic books for kids available here in the UK can be a bit limited. As I mentioned before I’m focusing a lot on Arabic with Mr Z at the moment. Now that he can read well in English he is at the perfect stage to pick up Arabic quickly as he knows how to blend in English it’s not that different to blend in Arabic! I was pleased he came back with plenty of great resources. Have a look what we got:

These are from Jarir Bookstore, which is found all over the Gulf. These particular books are actually published by Jarir Book store as well as being bought from there. They are lift the flap books, and are great for children learning vocabulary as all the pictures inside are labelled up with the words, as well as having the main story text.

This page says “What did the hippo take with him to the beach?” – and behind the boat is the answer “his sun cream”

Another asks about what does the penguin make in the sand? The answer is…

A sand castle!

All quite simple sentences good for children learning, and with colourful pictures to help them out.

We also got a touch and feel book on horses

This is a little bit more challenging to read but even Mr R likes to touch and feel the texture of the horses and it will help him to get familiar with the look of Arabic words and sentences

We also got three sets of flashcards. This is one of them (above) with the alphabet, which will be perfect for Mr Z to practise and reinforce the letters, along with revising a simple word for each letter.

We also got fruit and vegetables in English and Arabic, and animals in English and Arabic.

We got a few workbooks too, I haven’t taken pictures of them all as they are quite similar to each other and similar to what we already have from Morocco. But I would definitely say, if you want to get lots of workbooks to practise Arabic handwriting, it seems much better to get someone to bring them if they are travelling as I don’t see so much available over here.

We got some telling the time books for daily routine in the school and in the farm. As Mr Z like’s numbers and time these should be good for him, and the interactive clock element will help to keep his attention.

These are just in Arabic but we also got a set with English and Arabic on all the pages:

The illustrations really remind me of Usbourne books but it’s marked as ABC publishers (their website does not seem to work unfortunately!) The boys’ dad was happy to spot some Arabic Disney Cars books in the shop. He knew the boys love Lightening McQueen!

The level of the books is actually quite tricky for them. but seeing one of their favourite characters will help to motivate them hopefully!

The last things we got are a couple of games:

I was really happy to see this, it looks great! I haven’t seen any like this in the UK. The cards have pictures for you to spell each word, and I like that they actually have the correct form of each letter required rather than just stand alone letters. When we had Arabic scrabble in the past, it’s all just the seperate letters so it won’t join properly to form the words like this! This is much less confusing for children.

The other game is a simple word and picture puzzle matching game to help practise reading words and building vocabulary.

Price-wise, it is not that cheap in Kuwait. 1KD is currently about 2.20GBP so you won’t necessarily find things extremely cheap, but there is definitely more variety. All the above came to 30KD which is about £70 – so not too bad. I do find the imported Arabic board books in some of the London bookshops can be ridiculous prices – I think I have paid about £18 per board book before!

So those are all the resources for now. I really hope they work well with Mr Z. If any of you have Arabic books and games from different countries I would love to see, so do let me know any recommendations or link me any blog posts in the comments if you have posted about Arabic children’s books and learning resources.

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