Second Pillar - Salah

Today I gave an introduction to the second pillar of Islam - Salah.

Namaz is the word they are more familiar with but I tried to repeat the word Salah or Salat enough times throughout the class for them. Here's a summary of what we learnt:

1. There are five prayers (Salah) in a day.
2. They are prayed at certain prescribed timings which fall during the morning, noon, afternoon, evening, and night.
3. These prayers are compulsory for a Muslim because Allah had commanded us to perform them.
4. The names of the five prayers are Fajr, Zohr, Asr, Magrib and Isha.
5. We can pray at any clean place. (I showed them a prayer mat that we use to pray at home.)
6. To pray, we face towards the Kaabah (showed them a picture and explained)which is in Makkah, a city in Saudi Arabia.

7. We find the Qibla, or direction of prayer, with the help of a compass or Qibla finder (I passed around a compass for them to see the needle move).
8. Salah involves certain postures including the Rukoo and Sujood. (All the kids had a go at demonstrating the Rukoo and Sujood on the prayer mat).

We also spoke about how Salah benefits us:

1. To bring people closer to Allah
2. To keep human beings from doing indecent, shameful and forbidden things
3. To purify the heart, develop the mind and comfort the soul
4. To remind people constantly of Allah and His greatness
5. To develop discipline and will power
6. To guide people to the most upright way of life
7. To show equality, unity and brotherhood
8. To promote patience, courage, hope and confidence
9. To train people in cleanliness, purity and punctuality
10. To develop gratitude and humility
11. To show obedience and thankfulness to our Creator

We then sang the following song to learn the names of the five prayers (to the tune of Bits of Paper):

Fajr, Zohr
Asr, Magrib
And Isha
And Isha
I pray five times
I pray five times
In a day
In a day.


Then it was time for an activity related to these names. I found the activity sheets here.

The five daily salaat book ,illlustrates the position of the sun for each prayer.

As usual, we ended this wonderfully productive class with yummy, healthy dates!

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!