Talking to kids about Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala

After my last post, I shared the link to this blog with my family and friends. Jazak Allah khair to all you wonderful people for your duas, love, and encouragement. May Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala guide us and our children in our missions, passions and quests.

Please do share the blog with others who might benefit, especially Muslim mommys with young kids. And do share your own experiences of teaching your kids. I would love to hear them. We can all benefit from learning through different experiences.

Though the next class is still three days away, I wanted to write a short post about how to introduce Allah to the kids. By introducing, I don't mean the first time you talk to them about Allah. I mean giving them a fair understanding of who Allah is. Knowing and familiarizing ourselves with Allah, I believe, is a life long process. With every act of worship, we grow closer to our Lord and love Him even more. Just dwelling on the meaning of a single attribute/name of Allah can take us closer to Him.

Your kids will, in shaa Allah, experience this beautiful process in their own time. But the foundation for this relationship needs to be built up carefully. I have heard people teaching their kids to 'fear' Allah. Fear of Allah has been given such an important platform in teaching Islam that, unfortunately, love for Allah becomes secondary. Our kids need to know that Allah loves them more than their father and mother can ever love them. They need to know that, no matter what Allah, is always going to be there for them. They need to learn to love and trust Allah completely. Talk about fearing Allah can come much much later when the child is already close to Allah and will inherently not wish to do anything that would displease his/her Lord.

In my class we spoke about a mother's love. I told them that even though you might be naughty sometimes, your mother never stops loving you. She might get angry with you occasionally but only because she wants what best for you. So it is important to make your mother happy by showing her how much you love her back. Be kind to her, talk sweetly to her, be good, help her, etc.

I let this soak in for a while and then went on to speak about Allah's love for us. In shaa Allah, every class I hope to reinforce this fact and talk about at least one attribute of Allah. The last class we went over Tasmiya again (Bismillah hir Rahman nir Raheem) and we spoke about the words Ar-Rahman (The Most Giving) and Ar-Raheem (The Most Forgiving). I know most translations will prefer the words Beneficent and Merciful, however those are pretty heavy words for little kids; Giving and Forgiving are easy to explain and pretty much mean the same thing.

Being as young as they are, they need practical examples to help them understand concepts and new words so I give them plenty of that. Like talking about Mom forgiving you after you've done something bad. Also I asked each of them if they wanted to say sorry to Allah for something naughty they had done. They all giggled, not wanting to own up to anything naughty. But I coaxed further, saying we all sometimes do things we aren't supposed to, like getting angry with someone, or being rude, or not helping someone. But if we realise what we did was wrong, we should say sorry to Allah and promise not to do that wrong thing again. That was called asking for forgiveness. And even if you had done something really naughty, Allah would in shaa Allah forgive you. Because Allah is Ar-Raheem, The Most Forgiving. Even more forgiving that your Mom.

The kids seemed to understand now what Ar-Raheem meant. One boy said he doesn't pray. One girl said she had been rude to her mother. One said she fights with her little sister. So I repeated what I said about asking for forgiveness and how pleased Allah would be with us for being sorry for what we did. Because saying sorry makes us better people.

Do comment and let me know your experiences on talking to kids about Allah.

A nervous, exciting and blessed beginning

I've been procrastinating. I should have written this post 4 weeks ago. Truth be told, we have completed 4 successful Sunday Islamic classes for young children. Woohoo! I wanted to document our lessons and activities for each class but now I'll just have to compress the first 4 sessions into this post and then, In shaa Allah, from next week I'll follow a weekly post plan for each class.

Let me first begin by telling you all about why we started this class, what it is all about and what we plan on doing.

For over a year now I have fretted over how to begin teaching the Qur'an to my daughter Zainab. She turned five this year and I've been beating myself up about not having regular Qur'an or Islamic learning sessions with her. My husband and I discussed getting a 'Maulvi' to come home and teach the kids but we realized that we, as parents, would probably be able to do a better job of introducing and teaching Islam to our kids. After all, Islam is our Deen, our way of life. Shouldn't parents be the ones teaching life skills and instilling the fundamental values of life in their own young ones?

That is when we decided that we HAD to start now. We decided to begin teaching them at a fixed time each week. Since my husband only has Sundays off, we decided Sunday morning as the ideal time for the class. I say class, even though it was initially just supposed to be us, because that is what was needed. Not just a talk or a few scattered teachings. A proper class that would cover what we wanted our kids to learn.

But as we discussed more about what we wanted to do I thought of all the other Muslim families around who probably went through the same feelings as I had been going through regarding bringing our kids up in an Islamic environment. You see, we live in a predominantly non-Muslim neighbourhood where the staples of my childhood, like the call of the Adhaan,living close to the masjid, attending eid prayer, being a part of a strong Muslim community, attending Islamic lectures, forums, classes, quizes, etc. are unheard of things. If I couldn't provide my kids with a Muslim neighbourhood, the least I could do was create a fun Muslim kids community, a group of peers, a set of friends who will have the same values, teachings, issues and questions that they would have as a young Muslim growing up in India.

And I decided that I wanted 'fun learning' to be the aim of this class. I wanted the kids to love coming to learn on Sunday mornings. So that called for innovative teaching and lesson planning. I started researching on the internet what other parents and teachers were doing with regards to Islamic teaching for young kids. Alhamdulillah for blogger moms! I found so many wonderful homeschooling muslim blogs who are doing amazing jobs with clear lessons plans and documented resources. In shaa Allah I will get down to listing and linking them for you soon.

Alhamdulillah, we began our class one beautiful Sunday morning in August with seven kids (including my own 2 kids). Over the last two weeks we had two more join. Now we have nine kids between the ages of 3 and 10 years. I have been trying to add to this number because there are so many Muslim children around the area but it looks like not everyone is jumping at the opportunity. It will probably take some time for some parents to realise the value of what we are doing. In shaa Allah. And of course, we cannot force anyone. Our job is to try. The rest is Allah's will. SubhanAllah!

So I have to admit I was a little nervous before the first class. I had very limited experience in teaching or even handling a group of young kids and I wasn't very sure if I could hold their attention and keep them interested. But alhamdulillah, once I began, Allah took over. It was great! The kids had fun and so did I.

I must add here that the confidence that Allah Subhanawata'ala and blessed me with through this class has been so amazing that I have realised another passion of mine. Since this first class I have begun doing story telling sessions for young children at a preschool nearby, where we try and instill the love for reading and books in kids from a young age. Again, a whole lot of fun, learning and blessed moments! But that is fodder for another blog. :)

Getting back to the topic, I'm following these textbooks (my faith...ISLAM, by Feizel Chothia and Naeema Desai)for the class. Masha Allah they are very well designed according to age. Right now I'm only using the Grade 1 book which is designed for a 7-year-old, but since I have kids younger than seven, I am not using the activities in the book and either thinking up my own or searching the web for them.

This is what we covered on Day 1:

1. I began by reciting Surah Al-Fatiha. I asked everyone if they knew what they were doing here. One said to learn Qur'an and another said to learn about Allah. I told them that they were both right and that we were also going to learn about Islam and a whole lot of things, and have a lot of fun in the process. I taught them the dua 'Rabbi zidni ilma' and its meaning 'O, Lord! Increase my Knowledge!'.

I gave them a print out of the dua with meaning, and we stuck little 'books' with the Arabic alphabet written on it, on the page, so that they associate knowledge with books. We discussed the word knowledge as well.

2. Who is Allah?
I first listened to the kids tell me who they thought Allah is. Everyone said that Allah is God and He lives in he sky. I then explained the words 'Lord' and 'Master' to them. I focused on the sentence 'Allah is one' and explained how much Allah loves us all.

I gave them a picture of the word Allah in Arabic to colour with crayons and made them repeat the word Allah as they were colouring. I wanted them to recognise this word and also I wanted them to picture this beautiful word in their mind every time we discussed Allah.

3. Arabic Alphabet
I asked them if they could sing the ABC song for me and we all sang it out loud. Then I told them that I know a song for the Arabic alphabet and if they would like to hear it. So I sang them the Alif Baa Thaa song and we sang it together about 3 or 4 times, as loud as we could and I could see the kids were enjoying it. I then introduced the letter Alif to them and they did some colouring. This is where I printed the alphabet flashcards from. Though they look really pretty in colour, I printed them in black and white, because, firstly it was cheaper :) and secondly, they could colour in the petals if they liked. THe flashcards really help in recognition through repetition and games.

4. Story time
I didn't want to introduce too much on the first day so I read them a book called the Golden Domes and Silver Lanterns - A Muslim Book of Colors, by Hena Khan. It is a beautifully illustrated book and is really nice to show preschoolers since it talks about colors within an Islamic environment.

5. Snack time
We ended with dates and water. :) I thought about making snacks or probably giving them some biscuits and juice as snacks at the end of the class. Not that it is necessary to provide food in such a class, but I thought it would be nice to eat something together and learn to say the meal duas too. I finally decided that giving them dates was probably the best option, since it would teach them the value of dates, get them to get used to eating them and also they would associate dates with Islam.