My Son turned 3 last weekend and even this year we could have eco celebration! His birthday was celebrated in his nursery with his friends.
Superheroes or cartoon character themes are not yet on his mind for birthday celebration, so when I told him we are going to have garden theme birthday, he was very excited. Mainly because he just wanted cake, decoration and his friends singing, clapping for him. But I would like to believe, may be other reason can be he is been exposed to nature early on.
To keep our birthday tradition, even this year we had DIY décor and best part was, this year the birthday boy helped me making the decoration!
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| Garden themed birthday in his nursery |
My little gardener has planted seeds and seen how things grow before, but this time I took opportunity to make him aware how plants survive and why plants are so important. Some plants and trees give us food, we can eat either leaves or fruits. (Roots and stems of plants was a bit difficult for him to understand at this age). So plants are very important, we need to take care of them. If they give us food then what food they need? Soil, Sun and Water! We made a bunting to keep in mind, what thing plants need and how to take care of plants.
When I told Ruhaan's teacher in nursery about our birthday theme, she liked the idea too. But because of lack of time, we couldn't have planting activity with his friends, so instead I decided to give potted edible plants to his friends as return favors. In search of edible plants in kids friendly small pot, I ended up exploring UAE's hidden gem for garden lovers, Plant Souq in Warsan. I couldn't help but bought few herbs for my window garden.
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| Return favors potted rocket plants |
From there I could manage to get Rocket/ Jarjeer plants for all his classmates and even teachers. We wrapped the plants at home and wrote a message for their parents on how to take care of this plant, mentioned it's edible. I even put a tag of each child's name in plant, to make it personalized. I have seen, when we write his name on any plant, he is more caring and feel responsible towards that plant! I really hope the kids and parents would have liked our natural/eco and educational gift!
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| Potted plant chocolate cake |
To complete our theme, we even got made the chocolate cake looking like potted plant, I planted clean mint stems on top of it, just before cake cutting. The mint even tasted great with yummy chocolate cake! My little gardener was so delighted to have birthday celebration in nursery, specially when everyone sang happy birthday song and clapped!
On the day of his birthday, which was on weekend we took him to Emirates Park Zoo, to meet his favorite animal Elephant. But at the end of our visit, his favorite animal changed from elephant to monkeys! No surprise, monkeys were jumping, hanging from branches and were drawing attention from all kids!
Ruhaan was very happy to feed animals, we fed grass to monkeys, chickens, camels, zebras, deer, sheep, goats and many different animals but giraffe was our favorite. I never fed giraffe before, it's tongue is quite long, it touches you when you feed them, as they grab food from your hand with their tongue. I don't know if that is the reason but I felt lot of love for this majestic animal! :D
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| Emirates Park Zoo |
Ruhaan loved cuddling cute lambs and feeding them milk from bottle. We even watched lioness and a lion fighting over food provided to them. It was thrilling though. I personally don't like to see wild animals in captivity but the animals in emirates park zoo seem to be well looked after. And zoo is great place in urban area, where we can make our kids aware of wild life and their conservation. So it's very important to keep animals in captivity in best possible condition. A roaring lion in another zoo, kept in a very small cage is such injustice and I have even seen people teasing that poor king of jungle. It is a very bad example and if we don't respect wild life our kids will unfortunately learn the same from us.
Till now we have celebrated each of Ruhaan's birthday with animals, it is always lot of fun for whole family and we are hoping to raise an animal lover and eco conscious child! I am sure next year, he will have his own plans but I'll definitely try to make the celebration eco friendly. :-)
We spent a great time at one of the bird watching tower, it felt very peaceful and serene watching a few black winged stilt birds that close and in their habitat. In center my son had fantastic time, learning about different birds. He still talks about the tall bird standing on one foot. The facility is so educational and equipped with state of art technology, you can find deatailed information about every bird species displayed. The interactive education children games kept in facility are great way to develop kids interest in birds and their conservation. 
We spent a great time at one of the bird watching tower, it felt very peaceful and serene watching a few black winged stilt birds that close and in their habitat. In center my son had fantastic time, learning about different birds. He still talks about the tall bird standing on one foot. The facility is so educational and equipped with state of art technology, you can find deatailed information about every bird species displayed. The interactive education children games kept in facility are great way to develop kids interest in birds and their conservation. 
