I always thought I’d be teaching Qur’an to Ammarah starting with a basic alphabet book which moves on to short vowels (fat-ha, dhamma, kasra) and helps her to read Arabic. I actually never imagined that she would know some of the shorter surahs in the Qur’an at nearly age 4 -alhamdulillah, may Allah preserve her. Ameen. Our motivation or actually Ammarah’s motivation began when we attended a Qur’an party where family and friends were celebrating their chidren’s memorisation achievement. The party was awesome and since then Ammarah wanted a Qur’an party too :). So when our homeschooling officially began – we incorporated Qur’an learning through memorising short surahs. Now on the surface this may sound way too much for a young child, but actually it’s the perfect time as children love to sing at this age – a lot!

It took some getting used to for Ammarah though, so we tried to keep it as creative as possible, including activities and meanings linked to the Surahs. I also used a lot of sign language or actions to help with memorisation – children tend to remember better this way too. After memorising Surah Asr – which is now Ammarah’s favourite Surah, Ammarah asked a lot of questions related to the actions I’d introduced. For example, Why are we pointing to our wrist when we recite the first verse? I told her it was about time and we wear watches on our wrist. She became super excited and decided it was time she needed a watch! We later made a time plate craft with our sign actions and translations of the key points from the Surah.

With other Surahs we were lucky to have had such amazing resources. For example, with Surah Feel we had the awesome pop-up book “The Story of the Elephant” by Shade_7 which became a really exciting Qur’an session for all the children.

Sometimes where possible, we were able to make our own resources. For example for Surah Quraysh, we used the meaning to help understanding what we were memorising through pictures that symbolised the phrase or verse. This worked really well with accompanying actions too. You can download the resource here – Surah Feel. We also made a resource for Surah Quraysh which you can download here – Surah Quraysh

Alhamulillah by the end of our homeschooling year – Ammarah had her Qur’an party. She and her friends recited 3 Surahs (although they had learnt a few more than 3) that were well remembered in front of everyone and even added those actions – it was a proud moment for us mashaAllah.  To keep that momentum going and to continuously encourage her with Qur’an – I have to use creative and exciting ways. So for Ramadan and her interests in mind, I was able to combine a working towards our goals in the form of a memorisation chart. She has started to take an interest in Space now…

We are hoping to use this chart as a way of re-capping the surahs we have memorised and even learning a few more! In sha Allah!

On a final note, you can begin with this awesome resource – perfect for Ramadan (which I actually did with Ammarah last Ramadan) called – Ramadan 30 Day Activity: ‘Let’s find a word in the Qur’an’  created by a Parenthood: Muslim Style – click here for the link that takes you straight to their site to allow you to download the flashcards!

I hope this has been useful to those unsure on how to begin Qur’an learning with their little ones. I, myself was reluctant to start with memorising short Surahs but now I highly recommend it! Feel free to share any ideas you have or that have worked for you in teaching Qur’an to your children. 🙂