It’s the beginning of Ramadan. You’ve been anxiously waiting for the moon to be sighted. The decorations are up. Your Pinterest feed is loaded with Ramadan crafts and activities that you can’t wait to do with your kids. You have already downloaded a series of lectures on your Spotify or ITunes account. You look forward to taking snapshots of your children and husband listening to said lectures, and thus, solidifying your role as the perfect Ramadan-mommy.
How many of us have started the month of Ramadan on this high? How many of us have started listening to lectures with the kids, only to find them whining, complaining, having to use the bathroom or (in my case), scrolling through their phone while these lectures are on? Many of times, we have to ditch our Ramadan goals of doing some version of Islamic studies because we need to focus on the cooking, the cleaning and then more cooking.
I’m not one to lecture any Muslim mommy on how to prioritize our Ramadan goals. If anything, the times I spend in the kitchen or cleaning gives me a few minutes of solitude. I would just like to help you achieve one of those goals, which is to conduct three easy, Islamic studies lessons for the entire month.
The lessons, the worksheets, and the presentations are already done. You don’t even have to prepare ahead of time. Just pick the unit that your kids would be most interested in learning this month and open your laptop. As you move through each slide, just read the sections corresponding to the slide and have your kids fill in the corresponding worksheet. It’s that simple.
The reason I do my lessons in 3-4 units is because
(a) I’m obsessed with finishing things. Give me a goal and I WILL finish it and
(b) kids lose interest after a few lessons. Case in point: I taught a series of lessons on tafseer series for a group of 15 tween boys and when the boys came in and saw that we were covering (yet) another surah, they all groaned. Seriously??
Here are the different unit plans you can work with. They’re all free of charge. I only ask for one thing (actually two): please let others know where you got the lessons from and please send me pictures! I’ll share them!!!
Elementary Age
Names of Allah Unit – 4 lessons
Allah is Al-Ahad, Al-Khaliq and Al-Muhyi
Allah is Al-Aleem, As-Sami’, Al-Baseer
Pillars of Islam Unit – 3 lessons
Angels in Islam
Belief in the Angels Notebooking Pages by Iman Homeschool (supplementary)
Salah Unit – 5 lessons
Seerah for beginners – 4 lessons
Early life of RasulAllah (saws)
Tweens
Shukr (thankfulness in Islam) – 3 lessons
The First Prophets of Allah (swt) – 1 lesson per Prophet
Story of Prophet Musa (as) – 3 lessons
Lesson 2 – Musa faces the Pharaoh
Teens
Sahabah Series
The Life of Omar bin Khattab (RA)
Tafseer of Short Surahs (one lesson per surah)
A Study of Surah Fajr – 4 lessons
A Study of Surah Takwir – 2 lessons
A Study of Surah Alaq – 2 lessons
As I mentioned earlier, these lessons are FREE! All I ask is that you share the lessons with others that might benefit from them, mention where they came from (of course!) and contact me with your reflections.