A Prophet and A Craft

Nowadays, we are making activities from this book with my son. In the book, there are short stories of some prophets and there is a craft for each. After you tell your child stories of prophet or reading together from a book, you can make these activities.

This craft is about Prophet Dawood who made the first armor. After telling his story you can make this craft with your child. First from a construction paper, you make something like vest. Then glue on it some metal beads.

This craft is about Prophet Moosa who was carried in a basket on the Nile. Using a small box, first you made a basket and cover with a brown construction paper every side of the basket. Then you glue nutshells on the paper.

This craft is about Prophet Shu'aib whose people did not give just measure and weight. You can make a scale after telling his story. Make three holes for each plastic bowl. Tie them to a child clothe hanger. You can show him how to measure with the scale and try to balance it. (You can measure his small toys, some pulses etc.)

This is Prophet Nooh's ark. First on a blue construction paper draw a boat shape. Then glue some spaghetti on the shape and cloth buttons. For the clouds glue some cotton.

As we make crafts about prophets I will go on publishing them insa'Allah.

Tasbih for Kids

Abu Huraira reported: The Messenger of Allah said,

"He who recites after every prayer: Subhan Allah (Allah is free from imperfection) 33 times; Alhamdu lillah (praise be to Allah) 33 times; Allahu Akbar (Allah is Greatest) 33 times; and completes the hundred with: La ilaha illallahu, wahdahu la sharika lahu, lahul-mulku wa lahul-hamdu, wa Huwa `ala kulli shai'in Qadir (there is no true god except Allah. He is One and He has no partner with Him. His is the sovereignty and His is the praise, and He is Omnipotent), will have all his sins pardoned even if they may be as large as the foam on the surface of the sea.''

(Muslim).

You can make a small tasbih (Muslim rosary) with your child. Let him/her to paint the beads and string on the rope. We used different types of macaroni for this tasbih. There are 33 beads here. You can paint them 11 beads in one colour, 11 beads in different colour and 11 beads are in another colour. So your child can easily distinguish dhikr "Subhan'Allah, Alhamdulillah, Allah u Akbar" and say 11 times each after performing salah.

Memorizing Mosque

If you want your child, first, to start with "Ta'awwuz ad Tasmiah", climb the stairs with "Takbir, Tahmid and Tasbih", open the door with "Surah al-Fatiha" and go on like this, you can prepare a sheet like this.

Put it on the fridge, after your child finish memorizing a dua' or surah let him to color the parts of the mosque.

Model of Qaaba

First you glue 6 squares (from bristol paper) on a magazine paper and make it a cube. Then cover the cube with a black thick paper and decorate. That's it!

You can see kids' models below...

Letters Memory Game

What a nice game... Memory Game can be used for everything!

Illustrated Letter Cards

You can prepare letter cards like that. There is a letter on one side and there is the picture reminding the letter on the other side of the card. I found these pictures at http://www.elifba.org but for English, you have to use different pictures of course :) The video below may help you...

Week by Week Calendar

When I made this calendar I was inspired from here. Original one is here. I put two form of calendars. I used hijri months too. This calendar helps my son to learn

• types of calendars and name of the months belongs to them,
• name of seasons,
• name of eids and the other special dates, (Eidu'l Fitr, Laylatu'l Qadr etc.)
• that numbers are used when we say days of months,
• words of "yesterday, today, tomorrow"
• to observe and express the weather forecast.

For this calendar I prepared and laminated,

• month cards for both calendar (Gregorian and Hijri)
• cards for eids and the other special dates
• number cards for days of monhts
• cards for yesterday, today and tomorrow
• cards for weather forecast.

Some of special day cards... (Laylatu'l Mi'raj, Laylatu'l Baraat, Laylatu'l Qadr, Eidu'l Adha, Eidu'l Fitr, holiday, birthday, no school, new year etc...)

Weather forecast cards...

Journey Of Learning Qur'an

When your child is learning Qur'an, you can prepare a page like this. My son's book has 40 pages, so I draw 40 pages. When he finished a page, he painted that page on this table. He was very happy and excited to paint when he finished a page.

When he/she finishes learning book and starts reading Qur'an you should give him/her a gift. The pages that have star mark are also gift pages. You can choose small gifts for those pages to motivate them.

You can see my son's journey below.

Song: Alif, Ba, Ta, Sa

Letters with Playdough

When you teach the letters to a child who is a preschooler you can also have fun.

Teaching letters...

For similar letters you just make one shape. First you can put the dots by yourself and then you can ask her/him to put the dots on the right place. During this activity you can ask and help her/him: "What letter is this?",

"When I put the dot here what letter becomes is this?",

"What letter is similar to this one?" (I say "What is the brother of this letter?"),

"Where must we put the letter to make this letter 'ba'?"

Without making a new shape, you can make fatter the "fa" and put one more dot and make it "kaf".

You can show two forms of "ha" by putting a line on the "circle ha".

You can show "lamalif" by putting "alif" and "lam" together.

Teaching the combination of the letters...

You can cut tails of the letters...

You can show the letters with dots like this.

Teaching harakahs...

You can colour harakah...

Different Forms of Letters

It might be very complicated for a child to learn different forms of letters. To make it easier you can make letter cards like this. On each card you can put the whole letter and signalize main part of the letter. Generally we called this part as "the head" of the letter and the other parts as " the tail" of the letter.

Here is one more activity to teach different forms of letters (between the letters, at the end of the word etc.)

What you need? 60 word cards (48 of them easy, 12 of them more difficult. Difficult ones have star mark) and 28 small letter cards.

How to play? The child chooses a word card and tries to put the letters of the word in a seperate order.

I coloured the letters of the words so you can help the child by asking "What letter is the blue one?" etc.

Game: Recognizing Arabic Letters

I made this game to teach letters. It's very easy to prepare. It can be played with 2, 3, 4 children or into groups.

What you need? 4 letter charts -including 7 letters- and 28 small letter cards.

How to play? Every child has a letter chart. The teacher puts small letter cards into a bowl or bag. Picks a card and speak the letter loudly. The child who has that letter puts the letter on his/her chart. The child who finishes the letters on his/her chart first wins.

All materials are laminated.

Before giving the letter to the child the teacher may want children to pronounce the letter correctly.

If anyone needs these materials, I can send PDF forms of materials. Mail me please.