عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Culture

Saudi Woman Creates Arabic Learning Game

Photo by SPA
Photo by SPA
TT
TT

Saudi Woman Creates Arabic Learning Game

Photo by SPA
Photo by SPA

Driven by her passion for the Arabic language, Lujain Abulfaraj embarked on a mission to make it more engaging for children. Witnessing her son's disinterest in Arabic, she took it upon herself to come up with a solution, SPA reported.
In 2015, Abulfaraj enrolled in a design program dedicated to exploring the beauty of Arabic calligraphy and its potential as an educational tool. Realizing its capacity to be both entertaining and instructive, she created a game featuring large Arabic letters that could be arranged into words and used for play.
This endeavor led her to establish a venture aimed at enriching language learning for children. In 2020, she introduced "Akwan" (universes in Arabic), a set of magnetic bricks inspired by Arabic calligraphy designed to make learning interactive and enjoyable for children.
During the Riyadh International Book Fair, Abulfaraj, speaking to an SPA reporter, highlighted the boundless creative possibilities that "Akwan" offers children. She commended the Ministry of Culture for its efforts in revitalizing Saudi culture, particularly the language, and for supporting young talent in the country.
Acknowledging her dedication, the Ministry of Culture nominated Abulfaraj for the 2023 Cultural Awards in architecture and design, where she emerged as one of the top three finalists in the Kingdom. Her work also received the "Designed in Saudi" seal.

Most Viewed

 
 
Culture

Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
TT
TT

Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)

Thousands of tourists, pagans, druids and people simply yearning for the promise of spring marked the dawn of the shortest day of the year at the ancient Stonehenge monument on Saturday.

Revelers cheered and beat drums as the sun rose at 8:09 a.m. (0809 GMT) over the giant standing stones on the winter solstice — the shortest day and the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere. No one could see the sun through the low winter cloud, but that did not deter a flurry of drumming, chanting and singing as dawn broke.

There will be less than eight hours of daylight in England on Saturday — but after that, the days get longer until the summer solstice in June.

The solstices are the only occasions when visitors can go right up to the stones at Stonehenge, and thousands are willing to rise before dawn to soak up the atmosphere.

The stone circle, whose giant pillars each took 1,000 people to move, was erected starting about 5,000 years ago by a sun-worshiping Neolithic culture, according to The AP. Its full purpose is still debated: Was it a temple, a solar calculator, a cemetery, or some combination of all three?

In a paper published in the journal Archaeology International, researchers from University College London and Aberystwyth University said the site on Salisbury Plain, about 128 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of London, may have had political as well as spiritual significance.

That follows from the recent discovery that one of Stonehenge’s stones — the unique stone lying flat at the center of the monument, dubbed the “altar stone” — originated in Scotland, hundreds of miles north of the site. Some of the other stones were brought from the Preseli Hills in southwest Wales, nearly 240 kilometers (150 miles) to the west,

Lead author Mike Parker Pearson from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology said the geographical diversity suggests Stonehenge may have served as a “monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos.”