I bought them the book 365 Days with the Prophet Muhammad as an eid gift, with the intention to read through a chapter here and there every other night or so. This didn't happen lol. So I'm using it now as a basis for them to create a timeline of the Prophet (SAW)'s life, which we'll do together over a couple of months as a large wall display, adding to it as we go. I split the Prophet (SAW)'s life into 12 key sections and we're looking at one per week:
1) Birth
2) Childhood
3) Young adult
4) Revelation
5) Secret preaching
6) Open preaching
7) Year of Sadness
8) Isra & Mi'raaj
9) Hijrah
10) Battles
11) Spread of Islam
12) Death
The hardest part of this for me is cutting out the detail... 🙈 Don't want to overwhelm them! The purpose of this exercise is to organise the key events in their heads and to relate them to set dates / the Prophet (SAW)'s age so they can appreciate the timescale between events. I'm sure more detail can be added over the years, insha'Allah!
This is what we have so far:
The format we're following is for me to read select chapters from the book over the first half of the week, then write some questions as prompts on the whiteboard (e.g. "What happened when he was 6?").
They then have to write a fact about that part of his life onto a mini post-it note and when they're done (meaning they've covered what I wanted them to!) the post-its are arranged onto the card strip (I used 4 different shades of green A4 card, split into thirds) and stuck on the wall.
This has been good in a Literacy sense too as we covered the difference between fact and opinion and have also honed our notetaking and summarising skills.
When our whole timeline is complete insha'Allah, I'd like them to revisit it from the start and illustrate each section using different art methods / mediums... So hopefully that will act as a way of revising the important information and help them to remember it better in the long run, rather than illustrating each piece as we go along.
Birth
We revisited the concept of family trees and the related vocabulary in Arabic. We also had a good discussion on milk siblings in Islam.
Childhood
Something which stood out for me this week was the part where Aminah died, all of us ended up with tears in our eyes. We talked about this afterwards and continued to talk about the meanings of the words sympathy and empathy.
Young Adult
We talked about the meaning of trustworthy. Were they trustworthy? I thought they were! So as an illustration of this, I left a big box of sweets open on the living room table and told them I trusted them all not to take any sweets. They could look (and even smell lol) but I trusted them not to eat any - my 6 1/2 year old twin and almost 4 year old girls. I said I wasn't even going to check because I trusted them so much... and besides, Allah would be watching and He would know if I was right or not. Come dinnertime, I asked if they had eaten any and they all said no (MashaAllah! And I'm confident they didn't either) so I gave them some after dinner as a reward for being so good. And, of course, the real reward is with Allah because all their good deeds are being recorded and helping them get closer to Jannah, insha'Allah!
When recounting the story of the black stone, we reenacted lifting something all together using a blanket and moving it from one place to another. This also served as a mini lesson on teamwork!
Revelation
We linked this to the tafseer of Surah Al-'Alaq and also the meaning behind the names of the surahs Al-Muzzammil and Al-Muddatthir as other names for Muhammad (SAW). We also had lots of hugs and talked about how being wrapped up makes us feel safe!
They drew in pencil and painted in watercolours a picture to show some of the things Allah has created - to help them reflect on our blessings similar to how Muhammad (SAW) would reflect on Allah's creation in the cave. Their pictures didn't need to make sense (I drew a panda on the beach! And the perspective didn't matter either) but it could only contain things from nature.
Secret Preaching
I don't think we did any particular activity with this, just lots of discussions on the different sahaba and some more focused work on summarising information, since there was so much covered they couldn't fit it all on one post-it per fact!
1) Birth
2) Childhood
3) Young adult
4) Revelation
5) Secret preaching
6) Open preaching
7) Year of Sadness
8) Isra & Mi'raaj
9) Hijrah
10) Battles
11) Spread of Islam
12) Death
The hardest part of this for me is cutting out the detail... 🙈 Don't want to overwhelm them! The purpose of this exercise is to organise the key events in their heads and to relate them to set dates / the Prophet (SAW)'s age so they can appreciate the timescale between events. I'm sure more detail can be added over the years, insha'Allah!
This is what we have so far:
The format we're following is for me to read select chapters from the book over the first half of the week, then write some questions as prompts on the whiteboard (e.g. "What happened when he was 6?").
They then have to write a fact about that part of his life onto a mini post-it note and when they're done (meaning they've covered what I wanted them to!) the post-its are arranged onto the card strip (I used 4 different shades of green A4 card, split into thirds) and stuck on the wall.
This has been good in a Literacy sense too as we covered the difference between fact and opinion and have also honed our notetaking and summarising skills.
When our whole timeline is complete insha'Allah, I'd like them to revisit it from the start and illustrate each section using different art methods / mediums... So hopefully that will act as a way of revising the important information and help them to remember it better in the long run, rather than illustrating each piece as we go along.
Birth
We revisited the concept of family trees and the related vocabulary in Arabic. We also had a good discussion on milk siblings in Islam.
Childhood
Something which stood out for me this week was the part where Aminah died, all of us ended up with tears in our eyes. We talked about this afterwards and continued to talk about the meanings of the words sympathy and empathy.
Young Adult
We talked about the meaning of trustworthy. Were they trustworthy? I thought they were! So as an illustration of this, I left a big box of sweets open on the living room table and told them I trusted them all not to take any sweets. They could look (and even smell lol) but I trusted them not to eat any - my 6 1/2 year old twin and almost 4 year old girls. I said I wasn't even going to check because I trusted them so much... and besides, Allah would be watching and He would know if I was right or not. Come dinnertime, I asked if they had eaten any and they all said no (MashaAllah! And I'm confident they didn't either) so I gave them some after dinner as a reward for being so good. And, of course, the real reward is with Allah because all their good deeds are being recorded and helping them get closer to Jannah, insha'Allah!
When recounting the story of the black stone, we reenacted lifting something all together using a blanket and moving it from one place to another. This also served as a mini lesson on teamwork!
Revelation
We linked this to the tafseer of Surah Al-'Alaq and also the meaning behind the names of the surahs Al-Muzzammil and Al-Muddatthir as other names for Muhammad (SAW). We also had lots of hugs and talked about how being wrapped up makes us feel safe!
They drew in pencil and painted in watercolours a picture to show some of the things Allah has created - to help them reflect on our blessings similar to how Muhammad (SAW) would reflect on Allah's creation in the cave. Their pictures didn't need to make sense (I drew a panda on the beach! And the perspective didn't matter either) but it could only contain things from nature.
Secret Preaching
I don't think we did any particular activity with this, just lots of discussions on the different sahaba and some more focused work on summarising information, since there was so much covered they couldn't fit it all on one post-it per fact!
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