As a Muslim Parent, are you looking for ways in which to begin teaching your children about Islam? There are some amazing resources, syllabus available now alhamdulillah, but where do you actually start and when? In this post I will be sharing my own journey with Teaching Islamic Studies at home to my kids (who I homeschool), how we got started with our Islamic Studies learning and what approach we take to ensure its fun and consistent. You will also find more details in the Tuesday Teaching Tips video below. But for now here’s the summary and additional details and links as to what I spoke about!

Where to start?

In the Home

Naturally your children’s Islamic learning will begin at home with you as their parent. Create an environment where Islam is visible and felt in the home. Some suggestions could be to have the adhan playing at home at Prayer time, recite Quran aloud and allow your children to see you when praying, or even pray together. Stick up prayers/duas around the house, you can buy the lovely dua posters by Learning Roots, this will be a reminder for you and a visual aid for your kids.

Islamic Children’s Books

There are now some superb hard back books available for Muslim children by new and upcoming authors such as Shabeena Rehman, and long loved Learning Roots. For more on my Muslim Book recommendations, click the post here and here.

At the Masjid

Do try to take your children to the Masjid, just immersing them in the Masjid connects them with the faith. It is a hands on experience that I highly recommend from a young age. My children have benefited a lot from visiting Masajid in England of now in Makkah and Medina. Yes it may be a little tough at times but in the long run it really is worth it.

When to start?

We found Ramadan being the ideal time to begin our Islamic Studies learning. In fact the whole month is completely dedicated to all learning linked to Islam. You can find some of my previous posts on Ramadan below:

What’s inside our Ramadan Box?

Ramadan Good Deeds Calendar in English and Arabic

The 2 festivals of Eid are a perfect time to include your children in the celebration and excitement related to it. Take them to the Eid Salaah, decorate the home with them, make Eid cards and wrap presents together. More on our Eid preparation with the kids here.

What to start with?

Ramadan

As mentioned Ramadan being the ideal time to start for us, we also focused a lot of our learning around good deeds, the 5 pillars of Islam. I finding the month long projects we focused on by doing one activity a day to be highly effective for my girls. Each day they looked forward to the new activity for the day, including doing a good deed for Ramadan. Below are a few of our plans for previous Ramadans for you to look over.

Ramadan Planning – ideas and activities for 2-4 year olds

Weekly Ramadan Planning for 4-5 year olds

99 Names of Allah Project

One of the most important things for us as Muslims is to develop a close relationship with Allah, and the best way to do that is to KNOW Allah. So this project felt like the right place to start. We take our ideas and inspiration from the book: The 99 Names of God: An Illustrated Guide for Young and Old. So each week we focus on one or 2 names of Allah, discuss what they mean, and what craft we can make for it to help remind us about Allah. This project was inspired by @kitabkids, more on my interview with Stephanie here. It’s a really lovely way to combine arts/crafts with Islamic learning. My girls look forward to this project each week and sometimes have requested to do a few times a week.

Stories of the Prophets Project

As my eldest turned 5 years old, we began looking some more at the stories of the Prophets. We use Zanib Mian’s excellent book Migo and Ali: Love for the Prophets. I find that the book covers the stories in easy to read English, child friendly language covering some big concepts. We use our Prophet’s Timeline by amuslimhomeschool to slowly but surely cover learning about each prophet a little at a time. We summarise the key aspects of the story and make a craft and rewrite what happened. For the 3-5 yr olds, we also did the following crafts linked the Prophet’s stories when the girls were younger, focusing a little more on the animals mentioned in the Quran and Stories of the Prophets.

Seerah of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) Project

This is a brand new project we have started after our visit to Medina in January 2019, alhamdulillah. Whilst we covered some areas of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) life, we wanted to focus our time and attention to a detailed Seerah Booklet. As my eldest turns 6 in a few months, this was the ideal time to begin this project, so we can include writing and understanding the story with ease. We are using the Migo and Ali: Love for the Prophets book as our reference point for this project too.

So, we are focusing on key significant events in the life of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), missing out concepts that may be difficult to explain to younger children. Of course these can be covered again and included as the children grow up in sha Allah. More on this project and the resources we create for it will be available on the blog soon in sha Allah.

Quran & Arabic

For more on Quran memorising and teaching your children at home, click on my blogpost here. You can also read my review of the book My first Quran with Pictures here.

For more on how to get started with Arabic learning, click on my previous blogposts here and here. You can also read my interview with Gambian Mommy who makes some fab Arabic resources for non-Arabic speakers here.

Watch my Tuesday Teaching Tips Video below for more details:

I hope you are motivated to start your Islamic Studies journey with your kids. Don’t wait to buy the prefect syllabus or study programme, unless you have them already. What I really mean to say is seize the moment and don’t put it off until they are older. Teach them through fun and easy projects you can do at home and learn so much more along the way and together. Our simple yet consistent projects have become something my kids and I look forward to each week alhamdulillah. May Allah give us the tawfeeq to teach our kids about Islam iA. Let us know in the comments below, any other projects we could start in the future or any have tried and would like to recommend to us. Thank you for reading and stopping by :).

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