Mother-Daughter Sehri
In line with making gatherings meaningful in Ramadan, here’s another idea! Last Ramadan, my 11 year old daughter and I held a joint sehri!
There were 6 girls and their mums… as they came in, they were given a sheet of questions to fill out – the mother sheet was different to the daughter’s one – and they weren’t allowed to look at each others! Here is a copy of the sheets.
They also filled out a little slip of paper each – for the girls, the question was: What’s one thing you find hard to discuss with your mother? and for the mums, the question was: What’s one thing you wish your daughter would talk to you about? No names were placed on these to allow safety for both parties to put down any topic they wanted! Here is a copy of the sheet.
We then put these aside and got to the fun stuff 🙂
First up was an obstacle course where each mother-daughter pair was tied together (literally), as if in a three-legged race. Each pair then had to complete an obstacle course which was timed, and the mother-daughter pair that did it in the quickest time, won! The course included bouncing a ball each 5 times, maneuvering the ball in and out of the cushions, lifting the hula hoop over and under the pair together and then running back to the start!
Next was a game where the mums were one team against the daughters. It involved a lot of skittles on a plate, a spoon, and no hands! Mums and daughters faced each other across the plate with only a spoon in their mouths, and the task was to use the spoon to lift as many skittles off the plate and on to a bowl in 1 minute. The group that got the most skittles at the end, were the winners. I am proud to say that the mums beat the daughters for this one 😉
The final game played was a lego communications exercise. Each person received an envelope full of lego pieces – each mother-daughter pair had an identical pack. They then had to put their backs against each other so they couldn’t see each other. The daughters then had 1 min to make a lego creation with what they had, then they had a few minutes to explain their creation (using words/description only – no visuals!) so that their mums could recreate their creation. The mother-daughter pair with the closest resembling creation won! Lots of lessons on communication were extracted from this – such as how simple words can be misunderstood, how communication needs to be as clear as possible, and how shouting to make yourself understood doesn’t help!
We then moved on to the highlight – foooood 🙂 – and while we ate we opened up the small chits they anonymously filled out right at the beginning, and started discussing the issues that came up – things like puberty, friendships, school, etc. Alhamd a fruitful and varied discussion was had!
Finally, last on the agenda was using the sheets they had filled out right at the beginning to see how well mothers and daughters knew each other! The aim was just to have fun and be lighthearted while we learnt about each other, as opposed to test the pair! Each mother-daughter pair took a turn sitting on the sofa and being the centre of attention. I then looked through their sheets and asked them random questions based on it – i would ask the daughters from the mum’s sheet, e.g. what’s your mum’s worst chore to do around the house? and vice versa, e.g what’s your daughter’s favourite movie? We only did about 3 questions each before moving on to the next pair. Each mother-daughter used their time on the hot spot well, cudding close and some very sweet photos were taken during this time!
And so ended a lovely evening where mums and daughters enjoyed quality time with each other, learning more about each other, as well as getting to know the other mums and daughters in the group too!
