Laundry Letters

I hope all of you had a wonderful and blessed weekend. We surely did, alhamdulillah!

Thanks to the grace and mercy of Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, Sunday mornings are the highlight of our week. Gone are the lazy Sunday mornings. For the past 6 weeks, our Sundays are active and productive. Though we still try and squeeze in a relaxed and big, heavy family breakfast, post that, it's all about hurriedly cleaning up the house, showering and dressing, and getting the material ready for our class. Alhamdulillah, our class has given so much, not just to the kids who attend, but to me, to my husband, to my kids and to our family. I can think of no better way to spend quality time with my family. This 'team' effort is so precious to me that I cannot express gratitude enough to Allah for giving me this opportunity.

The kids had a fun, fun session this Sunday. It was more or less a recap session, where we just revised whatever we had learnt over the past weeks. Since, we had covered the five pillars of Islam last week, I went over them again with the kids. We sang the pillars of Islam song, but this time we stood and did it with actions. Let's face it, it's a Sunday morning and just listening to a woman talk and talk can tend to get boring. The mind is prone to wander. Especially if you are a child. So I needed to shake them up a bit and also get some action into the class. And it worked!

We resumed our recap session with energy levels magically multiplied.

We then had an interesting game called Laundry Letters. I found the game on this site where it's used for the English alphabet. There are lot of amazing resources out there which can be easily adjusted to your particular needs.

I started out by cutting out little dress shapes from different coloured chart paper.

Then I wrote an Arabic letter on each one of them.

We tied up a length of rope in the living room. Then I told the kids to hang the laundry out to dry alphabetically! :)

How many pillars of Islam are there? Count and you will see....

My daughter loves singing a song she learnt in school about the seven colours in the rainbow. One day when she was busy singing to herself and I was working on my lesson plan for the next Sunday class, I reflected on how easily children learnt things if put in tune and/or rhyme. So with my daughter's help we put together a few peppy numbers for our forthcoming classes.

This Sunday I introduced them to the Five Pillars of Islam.

I showed them the pillars I had made out of paper and explained what pillars were used for. Then I told them that there are five pillars that hold up Islam for each and every Muslim. The words were new to them so I just skimmed the surface in my explanation so that they get an idea of each pillar, but not necessarily a clear understanding. This was just an introduction to the pillars of Islam and the purpose was just to learn the names first. I plan to cover each pillar individually over the next five weeks, in shaa Allah.

I then gave them little squares which had the name of the pillars written with a picture that would help them remember what the pillar was. These were hand drawn and then photocopied.

I made them repeat the names as I passed them around - Shahadah, Salah, Zakat, Sawm and Hajj. Then I gave them a sheet of paper each on which they placed their palm and traced around it with a pencil. I went over the pencil drawing with my black marker and wrote Pillars of Islam in the center.

We then stuck the little squares, one above each finger. I did this with each child so that we said the pillars aloud while we were at it. So everyone got to hear and say the words quite a number of times.

Then I let them colour the whole thing in. Ah! Colouring is such a blissful activity. Every child busy creating a whirlwind of colours, yet with unparalleled calm and concentration. Even when I want to calm my own kids down or give myself some peace and quiet, I give them some colouring sheets. So, this peaceful activity gave me the opportunity to introduce our song. While they laboured with the crayons, I sang. Again and again and again. Till they were done. And by the end a couple of them were singing along with me.

This is the song we prepared for them.

How many pillars of Islam are there? (3)
Count and you will see.
Shahadah, Salah, Zakat, Sawm (3)
And the fifth one's Hajj!

There are five pillars in Islam (3)
Count and you will see.

To end the class, we had another Arabic alphabet recognition game. I stuck letters at different places around the room and had them find the letters in order - from alif to raa. Then I called out a child's name and a letter, and that child had to run to the letter. I did this till everyone had had a go. We all clapped and cheered each child. And alhamdulillah, they really knew their letters!

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.