The Garden of Paradise

Since the story for Day 4 was about the creation of the first woman Hawwa (AS) and how Allah gave them the Garden of Paradise or Jannah to live in and enjoy, I began to look online for ways of explaining the concept of Jannah to the kids. Thats when I came across this blog post.

It was very insightful and gave a clearer idea of how to talk to kids about Jannah. When I told the kids that they could have ANYTHING they wanted in Jannah, their eyes grew wide with surprise. They said they wanted flowers and toys and balloons in Jannah. The boys of course wanted race cars. I told them to go wild with imagination and together we imagined chocolate rivers, cakes as big as houses, personal swimming pools, mountains of ice creams and much more. By the end of it they were giggling themselves pink and their eyes were bright with amusement and wonder. They were thrilled that such a wonderful place could exist!

I then gave them a sheet of paper each and told them to draw Jannah. I told them that their drawing had to have things that they wanted to see in Jannah. Yes, it was an exercise in creativity as much as it was an activity to learn about the promised garden of Paradise.

I learnt an interesting thing through this exercise. Children are inherently creative. Unfortunately, education sometimes kills that creativity along the way. The three primary level kids (between 7 and 10 years) drew a 'scenery' with mountains, sun peeping from between them, trees, a river and grass. When I pressed them further, reminding them that I wanted to see what they wanted in Jannah, one boy drew a car. A girl drew some fish in the river. I didn't push them any further, and truly their drawings were very good. But the lil ones... their drawings spoke of innocent and raw creativity, something that I believe every child has. Sparks that if nurtured young could do wonders. Their drawings had stars, multi-coloured trees, balloons, ice creams, toys. One even drew a mirror. Thinking outside the box is not a challenge when you are young, apparently.

Each of the kids explained to the rest of the class what they had drawn. Most seemed to be nervous and excited about sharing their thoughts in this way. We applauded and praised each and everyone of their precious work SubhanAllah. The whole activity was very pleasant and left a warm feeling of accomplishment on the faces of the kids.

Another fun activity we did was an alphabet recognition game.

I drew a tree for each of the kids, which they coloured. I then gave them a set of little 'apple' cutouts with an alphabet written on each one.

I called out a random alphabet and they picked it up to show it to me, before sticking it on their apple trees.