Aqeedah for kids

Bismillah

Alhamdulillah we started on our Aqeedah lessons and made 2 lapbooks so far. Yusuf is 3,5 years old, so they are designed for his age group. 

Alhamdulillah we have lots of materials to use for our Aqeedah lessons, thanks to our Ummi bloggers for sharing and making those materials available for our children and us (parents). May Allah swt bless them and their families immensely, ameen.

We will be using following materials that we have available in our hands:

1. Allah our Creator book by Sajda Nazlee and other children's Islamic books from www.goodwordbooks.com.

2. Umm An-Nu'man's Islamic Studies Mini Books (preK).

3. Musulmon bolaning kitobchasi - it's Q&A book on Aqeedah in Uzbek for small children.

InshaAllah we will be adding more materials as we find them. 

Allah is our Creator:



Allah swt created everything: day and night, sun and moon and stars, Earth, mountains, trees and flowers, animals and fish, houses, cars, etc.

Learning the 5th pillar - Hajj

Bismillah

Assalamu alaykum,

Alhamdulillah the most blessed days are upon us. May Allah accept the Hajj of the hujjaj and make it mabroor inshaAllah, ameen. 

We are learning about Hajj this week. Alhamdulillah so much available on the internet to use and get the inspiration and ideas from, thanks to the technological advances. MashaAllah Muslim Ummi Bloggers input is amazing and may Allah reward them and their families with all the goodness for their hard work, ameen! 

We started with a Hajj mobile, we copied the idea from HERE. May Allah swt reward the sister Umm Sayang and the team at Smart Ark. The coloring pages are taken from Smart Ark, Yusuf colored the pictures (I helped him a little too with few of them), we added extra pictures of air plane and sheep to our Hajj mobile. We used cardboard, hole punch, few pipe cleaners and stapler to make the mobile. Yusuf was really interested in knowing more about the Hajj rituals, was asking questions, so I thought we should not stop here, but continue learning as he is eager to learn more. He likes when we do craft work, he always comes up to me and says Mom I love you, when you do crafts with me. (smile)

The next thing we did was Hajj Bulletin Board, we got all of our materials from IBB. May Allah reward sister at talibiddeenjr and sister Umm AbdulBasir for all their work, ameen. 

I explained more about the Hajj rituals using the map and Hajj day by day cards. To help him understand a little more, I thought of making a Hajj rituals display on the little table. We started off by making mini paper tents.

Our Mina tents:

They were supposed to be white in color, I only had yellow construction paper at hand, hence they are yellow looking. I went ahead with yellow, just to give him an idea of how tents may look like.

We made palm trees using construction and crepe papers, have a look HERE for step by step pictures on making a palm tree. Our Mount Arafah model is not yet finished, but I took a photo of it anyway. I need to add more layers of construction paper to make it look more mountain like. 

Finished mount Arafah:

We also looked through few Hajj related books, the one I liked was "Hajj and Umrah from A to Z" by Mamdouh N. Mohamed, it is uploaded at http://www.kalamullah.com.

We will inshaAllah be doing Hajj theme activity packs designed by sister Umm An-Numan. We also looked through mini books made by Umm Sara, may Allah swt reward the sisters with Jannah, ameen. 

Ramadan Lapbook

Bismillah,

Assalamu alaykum,

This Ramadan lapbook is ideal for toddlers. Bright pictures and no text. I didn't write anything on it, when I designed it. But I do think it would have been better with some text in it. We made this lapbook for our dear sister Umm Sara's Ramadan Giveaway in 2011. 

I pasted the pictures of the main acts of worship/ibadah that we do during the month of Ramadan, which includes fasting, reading Qur'an, praying, giving sadaqa, adhkar, going to Masjid for 5 daily and taraweeh prayers.

Ramadan crafts (Part1)

Bismillah,

Assalamu alaykum,

Ramadan is fast approaching, alhamdulillah. My son is almost 3 now. Alhamdulillah now is a great time to do some crafts with him for the Ramadan. MashaAllah so much is available on the internet nowadays, jazakumAllah khayran for our Ummi Bloggers, who shared their Ramadan materials, ideas, thoughts and experiences. InshaAllah I'm planning to make/set up a Ramadan Bulletin Board and do some crafts with Yusuf for Ramadan.

We started with Ramadan Good Deeds Tree. Idea belongs to Umm Sayang. She made a 3D tree, we loved the idea and made one too. There are some other variations of good deeds tree done by other Ummi bloggers that we liked (by Umm Abdul Basir, Lifetime learning at home, Umm Adam, Raising Sahabas). I'm sure there are more of good deed trees/charts done by other Muslim Bloggers on the internet, I only provided few examples above.

We made the tree out of cardboard and we chose craft foam for the leaves. We will most likely staple the leaves on the tree. Leaves are big enough to write the good deeds on them. We also made some apples. For each good deed, Yusuf will earn a leaf or an apple. We will inshaAllah post a photo of our good deeds tree after Ramadan.

Traveler with the Qur'an

Assalamu alaykum,

Recently I came across very-very inspirational video series. Its called Traveler with the Qur'an, it's in Arabic but comes with English subtitles. Every episode goes for 15-20 minutes and it is series of 30 episodes. The host of the show (Sheikh Fahad Al Kandari, who is huffadh himself) travels around the world to meet various huffadh and they share their experiences. Lots of tips/recommendations are given in the show mashaAllah and each and every episode will leave you teared and so determined to be from among the ahlul Qur'an.. I have only watched 2 episodes, but hurried to share and post the video here.

Click here for all 30 episodes, inshaAllah.

May Allah swt make us and our children from among ahlul ilm, ameen!!

Reclaim your heart, Yasmin Mogahed

Assalamu alaykum,

"Reclaim your heart" by Yasmin Mogahed is the book everyone should read. Although it was published last year, I got the book on my hands 2 weeks ago. MashaAllah sister Yasmin is truly inspirational, she talks from her experience, thoughts/reflections. There is much to be gained from this book for every truth seeking muslim.. May Allah swt reward our sister Yasmin, bless her and her family, ameen.

New masjid

Assalamu alaykum,

Few weeks ago I have remade our little masjid. It was getting little dirty and in the past I saw my son using the masjid for different purposes. I mainly saw him getting on top of it to get the things out of his reach, if he didn't find any chair around. As I didn't fill the box with anything, it was slowly getting wrecked. Then I thought it was time to remake it. So the first thing I did was I opened the box and filled it with recycled paper, so it would last Yusuf for awhile, if he decided to climb on it again. He doesn't do it anymore though, I explained him that it was not a good thing to do. After I sticky taped the sides of the box, it was ready to be covered with felt fabric. I thought I would use felt for it this time, as I did it with the Kaaba. So I used the felt that I had in hands, the end result looks pretty much like the old masjid, except for the colors and here's the finished result:

From this:	To:

Ramadan in the new house..

Assalamu alaykum,

Alhamdulillah we are witnessing another Ramadan, may Allah swt accept it from all of us, inshaAllah. Alhamdullillah we have been busy this Ramadan, we moved to a new house a week before Ramadan started and have been staying busy since then, alhamdulillah. Our new house is 3 minutes walk to the masjid and it's highly populated with muslims, alhamdulillah (smile).. We are very happy about the location!!

Yusuf was and is still excited about Ramadan, when it comes to iftar he usually comes and joins me at the table, we make dua and break the fast together. He also wakes up in the morning for suhoor time. His sleeping schedule have changed since the start of Ramadan and inshaAllah it goes back to normal.

These are some of our Ramadan decorations that we managed to do with my son. He was really excited being involved in the decoration process, he became a little helper, mashaAllah. InshaAllah he helps me out more with the festive decorations as he grows.

I made two wall decorations, first one is made from felt fabric and the second one is very easy to make. I just cut out masjid, minaret, moon and stars shapes out of paper and glued them on blue cardstock box..

Our miniature Kaaba is ready now..

Assalamu alaykum,

Alhamdulillah I have finished making a little Kaaba for my son. It probably took me 3-4 hours in total.

For this project I used box, felt fabric in 3 colors, thread and needle. (smile)

My apologies for the blurry images, I used my phone and didn't change the resolution.
I filled the box with some paper, so that it was hard and sturdy and would last a long time. I sticky taped the edges of the box. Took out the black felt and took the measurements around the box. I cut out long and shorter strips, rectangular shape for the door from yellow felt and sewed them onto the black felt. Then I joined the sides of the black felt and sewed the sides together. For the roof of our miniature Kaaba I cut out the square shape out of grey felt. Then I put the black felt piece on the box, placed grey felt on top of the box and joined the grey felt with the black. And ta-da, DONE, alhamdulillah. 

Yusuf and his animals..