Adam Wa Mishmish: How it all started

When my son, Adam, was around a year old, he started saying his first words. I was ecstatic, like all mothers are when their child first starts speaking. After a while, though, I realized that his first words were in English. ‘Why?’, I wondered. We are a bi-lingual Arabic-English house, using both languages in our day to day lives speaking house. Then, I realized: often we put on English songs for him, since the Arabic ones were not as fun and engaging.

So, I began my search for Arabic content for children his age. I wanted him to love Arabic, so I searched high and low for content in Arabic, be it songs, books, or anything else I could find. But, there was nothing that he liked, nothing that would grab his attention. Teaching my son to choose Arabic was not going to be easy. But, instead of giving up, I decided that I would do something about it!

My sister sings, and my husband plays the guitar. Together, we started coming up with songs for Adam. Just basics, an updated Alphabet song, a numbers song, things that he could follow. To our delight, he quickly began singing and dancing with us, in Arabic! We were so excited and quickly thought ‘we can’t be the only household that is going through this’. So, we decided that we would record the songs, and we did.

Next, we thought that our songs needed a platform so that they could stand out. Something colorful and attractive, with characters that my son could relate to and want to play with. We thought, who better to create such a world than our friend Lutfi Zayed.

When all those elements came together, our first episode was born: The Alphabet song. Arabic learning will not be difficult when our kids learn while singing and dancing and enjoying themselves.

You can watch it here: