99 Names of Allah - 07 - Al-Mu'min - The Inspirer of Faith

[07] اَلْمُؤْمِنْ (Al-Mu'min): The Inspirer of Faith

[Download resources here]

Allah can make people be a Muslim. I can do an example and then people want to copy me but a good example like reading Quran or praying or maybe like say things in a gentle voice.

Sing 99 Names (5min)

Play PowerPoint of the first 33 names, 2-3 times. Sing together and do the actions so far plus:

Action for Al-Mu'min: Touch your finger to your forehead then bring the hand down to chop the open palm of your other hand.

Today’s focus is on the name Al-Mu'min which means The Inspirer of Faith.

Story relating to today's name (7min)

Read a short story to the children: story of Umar (RA) converting to Islam (e.g. from a book such as Goodnight Stories From The Life Of The Prophet Muhammad).

Emphasise how the Muslims were practising Islam in secret before then, in fear of being hurt by the Quraysh. Point out how strong Umar (RA) was and how angry he was people were becoming Muslims - would the children feel scared of him if he was their enemy? How did his sister react when he came to their house? Was she brave? Did it seem likely Umar (RA) was going to accept Islam? But Allah can do anything and put faith in anyone's heart, even if we don't expect it. How do the children think the Muslims felt knowing that Umar (RA) was on their side now?

Discuss meaning, apply to children's lives (20min)

Al-Mu'min means The Inspirer of Faith. It has other meanings too, such as "The One Who Believes" and "The Giver of Security", but we're going to focus on how He is The Inspirer of Faith today.

Do you know what "faith" means? In Arabic, we call it "imaan". (If children have covered the 6 articles of faith, link to that aspect). Having faith in something means to believe or to know that it's true, even if you can't see or hear (or use any of your senses!) to prove it. It's easy to have faith in things we can prove or have experienced before, e.g. do you believe it will be dark tonight and the sun will go down? Yes? Why? Because it's happened before and you've seen it? Do you believe that you used to be a baby? Yes? Because you've seen photos of yourself? Do you believe you'll be an adult one day, insha'Allah? Why? Because you've seen how babies grow up?

It's harder to believe in things you can't see - that needs more faith to do. Play falling back game for parent to catch child, i.e. child stands in front and closes eyes, then needs to fall backwards and trust their parent won't let them fall on the floor! Do a couple of times. Did it become easier to have faith each time? Why? Because you didn't fall the first time so you found it easier to trust you wouldn't fall the next! Just as the more we learn about Islam, remember Allah (SWT) and the more we practise the things we should do, e.g. praying, reading Quran, making du'aa, etc., the stronger our imaan becomes.

What does "inspire" mean? It means to make someone else want to do something or give them the idea to do something. We can feel inspired by other people by what they say or do, and our words and actions can inspire others to do good or bad too. Watch an inspirational YouTube clip or one which gives an example of inspiration, e.g. Animation- Never give up (What did the dog inspire the boy to do? Go outside. Why? Because they were both missing one leg) When we inspire others to do good, we get reward for it too. If someone does something bad because of it, then we're to blame for their bad actions too. (If children are familiar with the story Have You Filled A Bucket Today, remind them of this; or save to do as an activity another day).

Allah is Al-Mu'min, so only He is in control of who believes in Islam or not. You might see people e.g. in the masjid who pray a lot or recite beautiful Quran - but you don't know what's in their hearts or if they might go astray, so you shouldn't be jealous but just make du'aa for them: MashaAllah. You might see someone who never prays and is rude - but you don't know if/when Allah might guide them and they may become an even better Muslim than you! So you should never judge other people but instead focus on yourself. You should do your best to just be the best Muslim you can and try to inspire others to want to copy you.

Craft activity (15min)

Complete the page for the book.

Colour in the titles and the picture - it shows a person covering their ears and closing their eyes but is still happy and full of love, to show having belief even when you can't hear or see something. Stick shiny paper/use glitter on the rays of light in the background and introduce idea of "nur" (light) as a representation of imaan.

When to use this name (8min)

When you're feeling sad or maybe even unsure about Islam (maybe reading the Quran is difficult or you don't like stopping playing to pray, it's ok to have these feelings sometimes) - trust in Allah. Remind yourself of all His blessings and the reason you're obeying Him. Make du'aa to Al-Mu'min to make your faith strong again.

When you're feeling happy about being a Muslim and everything is going well (e.g. you've just learnt a new surah!), don't take it for granted. Thank Allah for guiding you to Islam and giving you the chance to fill your book with good deeds. Make du'aa to Al-Mu'min to inspire others to feel closer to Him too.

On the back of their page, help the children write a few thoughts about the name Al-Mu'min and their feelings.

Sticker chart (5min)

Ask individually: Which of Allah’s names did we learn today? What does it mean? Give children a sticker each for their chart.

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Other activities:

- Different levels of faith in Muslims - stronger believers are called "mu'mins" - someone who not only listens to Allah's commands but acts upon them too. When you truly believe in something it should affect your behaviour and the way you act, the decisions you make, etc. too. It's being happy when something good happens and knowing it came from Allah, "Alhamdulillah"; it's also being patient when something bad happens and understanding it also came from Allah, "SubhanAllah" - it's having faith that Allah is the best of planners and all things happen for a reason. Activity: On the front of a small piece of coloured card write something good which happened recently and the word "Alhamdulillah" underneath in colourful writing. On the back of the card, write something bad which happened recently and the word "SubhanAllah" underneath in colourful writing. Draw a picture on each side too, if they wish. Holepunch the top and holepunch a piece of A4 card then tie the two together using a piece of ribbon.

- Read a story such as "Have You Filled a Bucket Today" and do a related craft activity, e.g. filling their own bucket (A4 card template or decorating an old jar) with stars (coloured card cut-outs, either stick on/put inside bucket) - on each star, write a way in which you could fill someone's bucket, e.g. acts of kindness, smiling, helping with something, etc... Things which would inspire others to do good, too. Discuss potential ways of emptying someone's bucket, i.e. things to avoid doing as they can upset people or inspire others to do bad things too. Finish on a positive by reading through their stars again and praising them for trying their best to do good. 

The Angels

For our next article of faith, we looked at belief in the angels.

We talked about what the girls already knew about angels, e.g. what they're made from and how some were given special jobs (such as the ones who record all our actions) and some are named in the Quran, such as Jibreel (AS). I showed them the top half of the worksheet and we discussed it together while they filled in the blanks from the options given.

Then we looked at the four examples of some angels and their jobs. They guessed what each picture showed, with me clarifying (the Quran, a trumpet, the hellfire, a mound of dirt/grave), then we read through the four boxes and I gave some brief information on each (Jibreel: the best of the angels, he taught the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad (SAW); Israfeel: blows the trumpet on the Day of Judgement; Maalik: keeper of the fire; Angel of Death: takes people's souls when they die). The girls then matched each picture to the correct box by cutting and sticking, then coloured them in.

You can download the worksheet here.

As an extra activity (because one of them wanted to do painting and I thought it would help them remember all the new information!), we then turned the worksheet into a poster.

I showed them this picture as an example of a background to paint. (Taken from a Google image search which came up with this website) Why? Because angels are made from light but are we allowed to draw pictures of the angels? No! But we can draw light, e.g. from the sun, to remind us of what they're made from.

I gave them a piece of yellow card each and set them up with the paints they thought they needed: yellow, orange and white. I showed them how to start from the bottom of the page and use long brushstrokes to paint the beams of light and we reminded ourselves of how to mix different shades. We also talked about whether it would be better to start with the dark colours first or the light colours and why, then I left them to it.

We also talked a little about light sources, e.g. the sun, light bulbs, fire - just as their painting always started from the same spot for their rays of light, light always comes from a source and spreads out.

Once their background had dried, we used the worksheet from before and they copied the sentences using gel pens onto colourful pieces of paper to then stick on. They also cut out the 4 boxes and stuck these down too.

The Holy Books in Islam

Our next article was the holy books, so understanding Allah sent revelation/divine scriptures to some of His prophets and being able to name the four mentioned in the Quran. If they could remember which book was sent to which prophet, that would be a bonus at this stage!

First, we recapped who the prophets were, i.e. messengers from Allah to teach people how to behave, guide them away from wrong and towards good deeds instead. I asked them to name me a couple of prophets then I explained to them that there are two different Arabic words for the prophets in Islam:

Nabi (نَبِي) = prophet
Rasool (رَسُول) = messenger

So all the prophets are nabi but only some of them are rasool... I didn't expect them to remember this at this age, it was just a precursor to the point: so Muhammad (SAW) was both a nabi and a rasool. He was a nabi because he's a prophet and he's a rasool because he was given which book as a message? The Quran!

There are 3 other holy books mentioned in the Quran: the tawraat, the zabur and the injeel; these were given to the prophets Musa (AS), Dawud (AS) and 'Eesa (AS) respectively. So were these three prophets rasool as well? Yes!

The activity was a simple cut, stick and colour to consolidate this new information.

You can download the worksheet here.

KS1 Book Reviews

The twins had a go at writing their first book review, using the pictured template as a guide. There's space for the title and author, a box for a picture, a summary of the plot, what was liked and disliked about the story and a star rating out of five. I think that's enough detail in a review for them to think about at this stage! I plan to use this template for the rest of their Reception year and into Year 1, insha'Allah.

You can download the template here.


I also edited the template for a non-fiction book, with the only difference being a change from "The story was about" to "The book was about"... (Feel free to edit the above template yourself, or download the non-fiction version here.)

Greater than & Less than (> & <)

I began by leaving the above picture and sentence on the whiteboard for the first half of the day... The girls were intrigued: Why did I write it? What's it for? Why does the crocodile always want more?? I just told them it always did... SNAP! 🐊

When we were ready for our "lesson" later in the day, I asked them how many monkeys were on the left? 3, so I wrote it underneath. How many monkeys were on the right? 1, so I wrote that underneath too. Which side did the crocodile want to eat? The one with more, so 3 - and I drew the > symbol in between in the same colour as the crocodile. Then I read the number sentence out loud to them: 3 is greater than 1. This > symbol means greater than. So what if there was 1 monkey on the left and 3 monkeys on the right? I wrote the numbers underneath with a blank space in between. Which side will the crocodile face now? MashaAllah the girls understood and told me he would face the other way, so I filled in the blank and read this number sentence out too: 1 is less than 3. The < symbol means less than.

The crocodile always wants more! His open mouth will always go towards the bigger number. SNAP! 🐊

Leaving that on the board, we then got the toy animals out and I gave the girls a < card each (they could flip it over to make it >!). I laid out two groups of animals and the girls needed to decide which card to put in the middle. After each question, we "read the sentence" out loud, i.e. "5 is greater than 2". After a few of these, with the toy crocodile then without, I repeated the activity using the number pieces from their Melissa & Doug jigsaw (only because I didn't feel like writing out numbers if we already had some!).

I took the opportunity to practise their mental maths too by getting them to compare the total on each side rather than just a number. 👌

Finally, they were able to complete the top half of the worksheet they did the other day on adding/subtracting 1s and 10s to 2 digit numbers (Collins Easy Learning - Mental Maths (Ages 5-7)).

More work with 10s

Just another self-reference post to show progress...

We did some more work on 2-digit numbers and adding/subtracting 10s. One of the girls found this a little more difficult than the other (the other was fine with an explanation then onto the worksheet) - I needed to model it for her a little more both with the multilink cubes, the abacus and writing colour coded examples on the whiteboard - so she could see visually that when adding/subtracting by 10 only the Tens are affected and the Units don't change at all. (Letts Make It Easy... Maths & English (Age 5-6) & Collins Easy Learning - Mental Maths (Ages 5-7))

We also did some work on the 10x table, by which I gave them the worksheets (Schofield&Sims - KS1 Problem Solving 2 & Letts Make It Easy... Maths & English (Age 5-6)) and the multilink cubes sorted into sticks of 10, read through the first question together as an example then left them to it... MashaAllah they were finished both sides within 10 minutes and without using the cubes at all! One of them laughed at me that I thought it would take them longer and they both laughed at me for taking the cubes out. 🙈 I tested them orally to check understanding and yes, they had either memorised or could quickly calculate their 10x table up to 10 x 10. 👌 Out of curiosity, I asked them what was 11 x 10? They weren't sure until I wrote it down for them to see, at which one of them got it straightaway. So I continued, then what was 20 x 10? That same twin understood it was 200 and 30 x 10 was 300 and so on; the other didn't get it - but that was just extra for my own curiosity. Not really something expected of them at this age! MashaAllah, I'm still super proud of them both. 💕

Song: The 6 Articles of Faith

Another simple song I made up because I find it helps my girls remember things... and even the toddler joins in! The lyrics are just the simple facts, really, arranged in a way that rhymes as best as they can. It's more about being able to sing a catchy tune and having the words stuck in their head. 😂 I printed it out and stuck it next to where our Five Pillars song is, for easy reference.

The 6 Articles of Faith

(Sung to the tune of: She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain)

There are six articles of faith,

There are six articles of faith,

There are six main beliefs,

In Islam,

There are six articles of imaan.

We believe in Allah,

We believe in all His messengers,

His books and the angels,

The Day of Judgement,

We believe in the qadr of Allah.

You can download our mini poster here.

Who Were the Prophets?

For our second article of faith, we looked at belief in the prophets.

We started by recapping the difference between the pillars of Islam (things to do) and the articles of faith (things to believe in) then I got them to recite the shahadah and give a rough translation: "I believe in Allah" (which we did last time as our first article of faith) "and Muhammad (SAW) is his messenger."

But what is a messenger?

We talked about it in everyday terms first, i.e. the person who delivers a message/news/etc. to someone else, using examples they could relate to (e.g. Mama sending one of them as a messenger to tell Papa to wake up!) Then we talked about it in terms of religion, defining it simply as someone Allah sent to tell people not to do bad things and to teach them how to do good things instead. As we've covered Prophet Ibraheem (AS)'s story in detail already, we used him as an example - what were the people doing before he was sent? Praying to idols. What was Prophet Ibraheem (AS) sent to tell them? To pray to Allah instead.

We then talked about other prophets they knew, e.g. from stories I'd told or read to them (we used to read from My First Quran Storybook as bedtime stories when they were 3-4 years old, paraphrased where needed) or they'd heard mentioned in the Quran... and briefly recapped one or two points about each one, e.g. Prophet Yunus was swallowed by a whale; Prophet Adam was the first man and was tricked by Shaytaan into eating from the tree, etc.

I asked them if we were allowed to draw pictures of the prophets and why not? They said no because it was rude - we didn't know what they looked like and we might draw them wrong. 💕

Finally, I showed them the worksheet and we read through it together, with me pausing at the blanks for them to give ideas of what should go there. They were amazed when they heard Allah sent thousands of prophets to mankind! I told them only 25 are mentioned by name in the Quran and we would insha'Allah learn about those ones one at a time, just as we learnt about Prophet Ibraheem (AS). I also checked they knew that no more prophets were going to be sent to us because Allah has already sent His final messenger - and that they knew this was Muhammad (SAW)!

We went through the picture clues together too, with them guessing which prophet's name should go where, then I left them to colour and fill in the sheet themselves. They just wanted help with spelling the prophets' names when they got to that part. 👍 They also noticed that they wrote (AS) after all the prophets' names except for Muhammad (SAW) so we talked about why that was too.

You can download the worksheet here.

Thank You, Allah...

After recapping what the 6 articles of faith were, I asked them which one they thought was the most important? Of course, it has to be Allah! We talked about some of Allah's blessings and all the things they like doing/have, which are only possible because of Allah - I suppose we could have read a short children's book to reinforce the idea, but I feel like we've done a lot of work on this already due to going through the 99 Names together...

I then gave them the pictured worksheet (trimmed so they could choose which coloured card to mount it onto) so they could write any words/phrases about Allah on the page then colour and decorate with pictures using pencils, gel pens, glitter glue, etc.

You can download the worksheet here.

Science/Arabic - The Sense of Sound

The Sense of Sound - اَلسَّمَعُ

I hear... - ... أَنَا أَسْمَعُ

I put the next pair of Arabic vocabulary on the whiteboard and the girls practised reading and repeating the words. We played a quick game: I would say a sentence in Arabic e.g. "I hear a cow", "I hear a car", etc. and the girls needed to repeat after me then make the appropriate noise/action.

We recapped the sense we looked at previously, i.e. sight, and reminded ourselves of the body part associated with hearing, i.e. ears - using both English and Arabic.

The girls closed their eyes so they couldn't use their sense of sight to help, then they had to guess which object I was using to make a noise, e.g. scrunching a packet of crisps, scissors snipping, tapping the wooden table, turning the tap on, clinking two glasses together, flicking through the pages of a book, etc.

We repeated the activity from before, making a mini obstacle course in the front room, except this time one girl was blindfolded and the other had to give directions to guide her to other side (this was also me sneakily checking on their Numeracy targets and being able to use the language of position/direction/movement 😏).

After reading about echo location and bats, we played a similar game (could do this in the garden next time if the weather's better, insha'Allah!) whereby the girls were blindfolded pretending to be bats and they needed to follow my voice to catch me. Afterwards, we talked about how fast they moved while blindfolded - fast or slow - and why that was - so they were less likely to fall over! - and then watched some videos of animals on YouTube which have poor eyesight and discussed whether they moved quickly or not. Why were they able to move so fast? SubhanAllah, because Allah created them that way, i.e. with super-hearing.

Finally, I asked them if they had a favourite sound/sounds and what it would be like if they couldn't hear anymore. We talked about how some people are born without being able to hear, or they might lose their hearing later on in life e.g. through an accident or an illness, and these people are known as 'deaf'. Alhamdulillah, we've been blessed with the sense of sound - to enjoy the world and also to keep us safe. How can being able to hear keep us safe? e.g. when crossing the road, hearing someone shout a warning if something dangerous is about to happen... So how do deaf people communicate if they can't hear what's being said? Many of them are very good at lipreading (we had a go at this with me emphasising the shapes of words slowly and them having to guess what I was saying) and they also have a special language called sign language! They were familiar with this already from watching Mr Tumble on CBeebies. 😂Then we played a simple game of charades taking it in turns to act out animals for each other to guess - then compared it to making the animal's sound and talking about which was easier!

Adding Multiples of 10

We spent the previous week or so recapping and strengthening their addition/subtraction skills by way of worksheets, number lines and mental maths - but always questions with 1-digit numbers (either +/- 1-digit, or +/- 2-digits).

This week, I want to focus on questions involving 2-digit numbers.

We began by getting the multilink cubes out and sorting them by colour into lines of 10. We did some simple addition sums using each stick to represent 1, e.g. 2 + 4 = 6. Then I asked them how many cubes were in each stick? 10. So what we actually did was 20 + 40 = 60. (The girls are already confident counting in 10s, which I think is a prerequisite for this activity). As we did each example in multiples of 10, I wrote the sum on the whiteboard using different colours to highlight the 0 as a placeholder.

Once they seemed like they had the hang of it, I wrote a question on the board without the colour coding and asked them to use the Multilink sticks to help them calculate the answer. MashaAllah, this whole bit of teaching took them less than 10 minutes to grasp.

Finally, I gave them the above two pages to complete. I sat with them as they did the first sheet (CGP Key Stage One Maths - The Question Book) then left them to do the top half of the second sheet (Letts Make It Easy... Maths & English (Age 5-6)) individually. For the second half of the sheet, I guided them in how to answer the first question, showing their working out, then let them answer the rest themselves.

The 6 Articles of Faith

Taking a break from stories of the prophets, I decided to cover the 6 articles of faith with the girls, i.e.

1) Belief in Allah
2) Belief in the angels
3) Belief in the prophets
4) Belief in the holy books
5) Belief in the Day of Judgement
6) Belief in predestination

At this age, I just want them to have an understanding of the basics - insha'Allah there will be plenty of time to go into the details as they get older. (You can download our Reception targets for Islamic Studies in this post.)

We recapped the idea of the 5 pillars in Islam and what they were, by singing a simple nasheed (see this earlier post!) then quizzing them on what the pillars were. The 5 pillars are things all Muslims need to do.

I then explained that as Muslims we also have the 6 articles of faith, i.e. 6 things all Muslims need to believe in. This belief, or faith, is called "imaan" in Arabic.

I showed them the pictured worksheet, with Post-It notes covering each cloud, then asked them to peel off each Post-It note one at a time as I briefly explained what each thing meant. When we were done, they then coloured in the sheet.

You can download the worksheet here.

For "predestination", we linked this to Literacy and knowing about prefixes and root words. I covered the prefix pre- with my finger and we read the word "destination" together. We talked about the meaning of destination as the end point of a journey, or where you're going to end up. Pre- means it happens before/already, or in this case it's been decided already by Allah. So everything that happens and everything we do, Allah already knows about and Allah has already planned for us. It's a little tricky to understand, even for adults! But they just needed to know that Allah is the best of planners and everything that happens, good or bad, is for a reason.

Science/Arabic - The Sense of Sight

The Sense of Sight - اَلْبَصَرُ

I see... - …أَنَا أَرَى

After a quick recap of what the 5 senses were (in both English and Arabic), I asked the girls which sense they thought they used the most - after some discussion we agreed it was the sense of sight because when we go to a new place, the first thing we do is look around and that's the first bit of information we get about a new place. We also reminded ourselves of which body part we use to see with.

I had the Arabic vocabulary on display on the whiteboard, so we could refer to it throughout the day and the lesson. They had a go at reading the words and coming up with sentences using the verb "I see". We needed to take care with word endings here (teaching the actual grammar point is a little difficult for them to understand at this age, so I'm hoping they'll begin to pick it up naturally through lots of practise in context), i.e. the noun being described needs to end in a fatha (أَنَا أَرَى القَلَمَ، أَنَا أَرَى بَقَرَةً)

To understand how important our sense of sight is, and how blessed we are to be able to see, we did a couple of activities to highlight this.

I cleared the front room, got the girls to stand at one end and they needed to walk to the other end. Easy! Then they had to repeat it, this time with their eyes closed. It was manageable, since it was just walking in a straight line, but still a little harder than being able to see. Next, I put some soft obstacles on the floor, e.g. cushions, cuddly toys, beanbags. With their eyes open, they needed to get to other side of the room without touching any obstacles - still pretty easy. Then they had to try again, but this time wearing a blindfold so they couldn't see... If they touched an obstacle it wasn't so bad, but they needed to try not to fall over at least! Then we tried it again with both of them blindfolded at the same time, so they had the added obstacle of not bumping into each other!

We talked about how they knew where the objects on the ground where even though they couldn't see them - they could still feel them - and how they knew where their sister was even though they couldn't see them - they could hear them. So when one of our senses isn't working, we can use our other senses to compensate/help us instead. We talked about other examples, e.g. when it was dark in their room at night or when it was too noisy to hear each other talk they could use actions instead. I then explained about how some people can't see and it's as if they're blindfolded all the time - they're blind. They sometimes use a long stick, a bit like a walking stick, to help them "see" by feeling obstacles in the way, or they might have a guide dog to help them! I then gave the girls a stick each (for one reason or another we had a hand pointer in the house so used that!) so they could get an idea of what it was like and they agreed it was a little tricky! Alhamdulillah we've been blessed with both eyes working fine.

Since the room was clear, I decided to make the most of it and play a simple game while they practised their Arabic: they had 2 cushions each, one to sit on and one to hold. Each time they said a sentence correctly along the pattern of, "I can see [noun]" (e.g. أَنَا أَرَى كِتَابً، أَنَا أَرَى البَابَ) they could throw the cushion in their hands forwards, jump onto it then pick up the cushion from behind, i.e. in this way move across the room to the other side. Then they repeated it as a race but standing up. 😁

To calm down again, we watched this Sesame Street video about service dogs (and this related song), followed by this short video of kids meeting a service dog for the blind.

We also talked about glasses and how they help people to see who would otherwise have blurry vision. They named all the people they knew who wore glasses then I smeared some Vaseline on a magnifying lens for them to look through. Could they imagine always seeing the world blurry like this? Would it give them a headache? I cleaned the magnifying glass and we talked about how it can help us to see things better by making things bigger, then we used the magnifying glasses to look at things around the house in more detail. Throughout this activity, we kept on practising the Arabic vocabulary and making sentences along the pattern of "I see [noun]".

Recipe: Chocolate-chip Vanilla Sponge Cake

INGREDIENTS
For the sponge:
3 eggs (60g x 3 = 180g)
180g caster sugar
180g salted butter at room temperature
180g self-raising flour
1 1/2 tbsps milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
100g milk chocolate chips

For the filling & decorations:
100g salted butter at room temperature
200g icing sugar
1 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
300ml double cream
3 tsps icing sugar
1 bag of Smarties
1 Crunchie

METHOD
1) Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees (fan) and line two cake tins with greaseproof paper.
2) First, make the sponge. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, e.g. with an electric hand whisk.
3) Whisk the eggs, milk and vanilla essence together in a separate bowl with a fork.
4) Beat the egg mixture into the butter/sugar mix a third at a time until completely combined, e.g. with an electric hand whisk.
5) Sift the self-raising flour into the mixture, a third at a time, folding in gently (with a spatula or wooden spoon) until completely combined.
6) Pour the half of the mixture (around 360g) into 1 of the cake tins.
7) Fold the chocolate chips into the remaining mixture then pour into another cake tin.
8) Bake for around 20min, checking with a toothpick to check when it's done (i.e. when poked through the centre, the toothpick comes out clean).
9) Run a butter knife around the edges of the tins. After leaving to cool for 10min, tip out onto a baking rack to cool completely.
10) With a large serrated knife, carefully slice each sponge in half.
11) Make the buttercream by beating together 100g butter with 200g icing sugar, the milk and vanilla essence until light and fluffy, e.g. with an electric hand whisk.
12) Add 3 tsps of icing sugar to the double cream and whisk until it forms soft peaks.
13) Starting with the chocolate-chip sponge and alternating with the plain vanilla sponge, layer the cake with just under 1/4 buttercream and 1/3 whipped cream between each layer. Spread the remaining buttercream on top.
14) Crumble a Crunchie onto the centre and decorate the edges with Smarties.

The twins helped choose the flavours and design of this cake, and we had it for their 5th birthday. 😋😋

Odd/Even Numbers

Introducing the idea of odd and even numbers through a mini maths investigation!

Handwritten because I had the idea at night and was too lazy to put the laptop and printer on. 😂😅 [EDIT: You can download a typed version of the worksheet here.]

We used the multilink cubes for this investigation as a nice, simple guided activity.

I gave each girl 10 cubes then used that as the example: how many cubes are there altogether? 20. We can divide 20 fairly into 2 groups, so each person gets 10 each. Half of 20 is 10. So if a number can be halved fairly then it's even. If it can't, then it's odd.

I modelled how to fill in the first line of the table, using 1 as another example. Can you halve 1? Can it be shared fairly between 2? Why not? Show me using the cubes... So they wrote "no" in the first column and ticked the "Odd" column.

I then modelled how to fill in the next line of the table, i.e. Can you halve 2? What is half of 2? Show me using the cubes... So they wrote "Yes, 1" in the first column and ticked the "Even" column.

After watching and prompting them for the next couple of lines, to ensure they knew what to do, I left them to complete the rest of the table themselves using the multilink cubes to help them.

When they were done, we discussed what the pattern was. MashaAllah, one noticed towards the end of filling in the table that the ticks were alternating and the other got the first sentence ("They take turns to be odd and even") by being prompted to read the table out loud. 💕 I then asked them to read just the even numbers out loud. Did they notice anything about those numbers? Yes, it was counting in 2s! So they wrote that sentence too. 👍

Finally, there was another table at the bottom for them to fill in with any other examples of odd and even numbers they could think of. They noticed that even numbers always end (i.e. the units) in the number 2, 4, 6, 8 or 0. After they wrote a few of their own, I challenged them by saying a random number and they had to tell me if it was odd or even. MashaAllah, I ended up going on to 3-digit numbers and they understood it was only the units which were important in deciding if a number was odd or even! One of them didn't want to stop, but unfortunately it was dinnertime so we had to. 😂😂

Juz 29 / Tabaarak - Poster

A simple homemade poster to keep track of hifz progress. 💖

I printed out the list of surahs in the juz and some pictures to represent the basic meanings:

67. Al-Mulk: hands making du'aa to show blessings from Allah
68. Al-Qalam: quill pen
69. Al-Haaqqa: sun peeking out from behind clouds to represent truth
70. Al-Ma'aarij: stairs
71. Nooh: an ark
72. Al-Jinn: fire
73. Al-Muzzammil & 74. Al-Muddathir: cloth to represent a cloak
75. Al-Qiyaama: mountains to represent the plains of Arafat
76. Al-Insaan: outline of a person
77. Al-Mursalaat: wind

We read through the list together, looking at the Arabic spellings to help with pronunciation, then I laid all the pictures out and we went through the meanings one by one while the girls had to find which picture matched with which surah.

They coloured in the pictures then we stuck everything down onto an A3 coloured sheet and decorated it with stickers.

This poster will then go on display and as they memorise each surah we can colour it in on the list, insha'Allah. 😊

You can download our template here.

Prophet Ibraheem (AS) - 07 - Building the Ka'bah

This is the last part of Prophet Ibraheem (AS)'s story I wanted to cover in the Reception year: how he and his son, Ismail (AS), built the ka'bah.

We read pages 40-44 together in the Migo & Ali book followed by pages 125-127 in the My First Quran Storybook, discussing the story as we went along.

I decided to do a few activities relating to this part of the story.

First, we reminded ourselves of which 3D solid the ka'bah is, i.e. a cube, and what the properties of a cube were: 6 square sides/faces all the same (thinking about other examples of cubes around the house, e.g. dice, boxes, to help). Then we talked about how we could build a model of the ka'bah using our Duplo blocks. Which blocks would we need? Which part did Prophet Ibraheem and Prophet Ismail build first? What shape would the base need to be? How tall should we make our model? How could we make the roof? I watched them work together to build their cube, prompting with questions along the way.

When they'd finished, I showed them some photos of the ka'bah and how its outside sometimes looks different, i.e. the design of the covering and how the cloth is sometimes lifted up, but in all the pictures the ka'bah is the same cube shape. I also pointed out where the black stone (hajar al-aswad) is situated, on the Eastern corner next to the door, and where the Station of Ibraheem (Maqam-e-Ibraheem) is, i.e. the stone Prophet Ibraheem (AS) stood on to build the upper walls. They remembered our recent Umrah trip and mashaAllah could link the experience with our lesson. 💕

I found all the images on Google, but you can download the pictures we used here.

I asked them how we could make our model look more like the real ka'bah and we talked about the covering being made from cloth... So we used a small black cloth to cover our model. (While I went upstairs to find some, I gave them the task of adding the Maqam-e-Ibraheem to their model; what colour/size/shape block could they use and where should it go?) After draping the black cloth on top they said it was still missing something: gold decorations! So we tied some gold ribbon across the top. We'll leave this model ka'bah for a few days for them (and their younger sister!) to include in their imaginative play - until they want to build something else. 😂

The other activity I did with them was to introduce the idea of 3D solids being built from 2D nets. I found an old cardboard box (food packaging is good for this) and asked them what shape it was: a cuboid/rectangular prism. Was it 3D? Yes! Then I showed them how to carefully open it out flat. Was it still 3D? No! How many faces does a cuboid have? Can you see the six different faces? Two smaller rectangles, two medium rectangles and two larger rectangles? I highlighted the pairs of faces in different colours and showed them how to fold it back into a cuboid again, then explained that we could do the same thing for a cube and this 2D pattern is called a "net".

I asked them how many faces a cube had and what 2D shape they were, so what might they expect the net of a cube to look like? Then I gave them a pre-drawn net of a cube each to cut out. I decided not to include the flaps at this age as I thought they might complicate things/be too fiddly for them. We talked about which lines they needed to cut across (not all of them!) then I highlighted the edges as a guide.

Once they'd cut the net out I helped them crease along the lines then asked them to try and fold it into a cube...

We compared our paper cubes with the cuboid from earlier... Which was stronger? Why? How could we make our cube stronger and how could we make it look like the ka'bah? After some discussion they decided they needed some black card. 💪 (This was our Science link and thinking about different materials 😀)

They stuck their paper templates (new vocab!) onto the black card and cut their net out again. I helped them fold the edges again, then we used sellotape to stick the sides together and decorated our models with strips of gold paper.

You can download our net of a cube here.

I was going to leave it there, but they wanted to put something in their folders... 😂 So I printed out a couple of the photos so they could summarise that part of the story and what they did!

You can download our worksheet as a template here.

Juz 30 / 'Amma - Poster

A simple homemade poster to keep track of hifz progress. 💖

I printed out the list of surahs in the juz and some pictures (clipart from online) to represent some of the basic meanings:

86. At-Taariq: a star
90. Al-Balad: a city
91: Ash-Shams: the sun
92. Al-Layl: a night sky
95. At-Teen: figs
100. Al-'Aadiyat: a horse running
103. Al-'Asr: a clock
105. Al-Feel: an elephant
113. Al-Falaq: a sunrise

We read through the list together, looking at the Arabic spellings to help with pronunciation, and we talked about what the pictures were of and why I chose them - some of them they could match with surah names themselves since they knew the Arabic words, i.e. sun, night, fig, elephant. The rest, they told me what the picture showed and I told them which surah it went with.

I trimmed the list and stuck it onto a coloured A3 sheet of paper. Then we glued the pictures around the edge and decorated with some stickers.

As they were able to read each surah we coloured it in on the list, with them choosing which colour to use each time. Since the surahs at the end of the Quran are short, it was a nice visual for them to see the colours fill up quite quickly as we started; by the time we got to the longer surahs, they had a good portion of the chart coloured and looked forward to colouring the next one in. 😊

You can download our template here. (I didn't notice the Arabic text had gone funny until after I'd printed it - some of the letters at the ends of the words aren't joined properly in the picture above; goes to show how basic my Arabic was at that point! But it's all been fixed in the download link.)

Literacy/Numeracy/Science Targets - Years 1 & 2

Home educators are under no obligation to follow the National Curriculum; however, I like having that benchmark and to know what children of the same age are expected to know by the end of each academic year. So I've used the Primary National Curriculum (last updated 2015) and the Primary Framework for Literacy and Mathematics (last updated 2010) to put together a list of targets for Year 1 and Year 2, in preparation for our next academic year insha'Allah - the year my girls would be in and the year ahead in order to see next steps.

Year 1 - Literacy
Year 2 - Literacy

Year 1 - Numeracy
Year 2 - Numeracy

Year 1 - Science
Year 2 - Science

Feel free to edit the Excel files to suit your own needs! Obviously, I have two columns to show progress as I have two children to assess. 😊 I use the triangle method to record attainment, i.e. one side to show basic awareness, two sides for some understanding, three sides for solid understanding.

I hope someone else finds these target sheets beneficial. 👍

Synonyms for "small"

Another non-inspirational, personal-reference post. 😂

A repeat of this activity, this time thinking of and using synonyms for "small" for the week. This time, I wrote some simple sentences at the bottom for them to fill in the gaps and then they had the task of writing their own sentence which described something small.

Science/Arabic - The 5 Senses

We continued our topic by reading about the 5 senses in a non-fiction book ("My Senses" from this series), which I then left in their book box so they were free to explore it whenever they felt.

We talked a bit about the 5 senses and how we use them to understand the world around us, then I quizzed them on which body part they thought they used for each sense (with them reminding me what each sense was!).

I then gave them another cut-and-stick worksheet to do, wherein they needed to match the sense with the body part (recap) as well as the Arabic translation for each sense (new vocab):

You can download the worksheet here.

This episode of Iftah Yaa Simsim is all about the 5 senses, so we watched it together as a recap. At 6:35, they sing a nice song about the 5 senses - even if, like us, you don't understand a lot of what they're saying, the chorus is simple enough and catchy! They use the indefinite form of the nouns, as opposed to the definite forms in our worksheet, but the words are definitely still recogniseable. 😊

The plan for the rest of the topic is to reinforce this new information by looking at one sense per day in more detail, through an activity/mini-experiment, insha'Allah. The Arabic vocab will also be reinforced on each day, too, as well as the associated verb (e.g. "I see ..." when doing about sight); so only two new words to focus on a day but they've already had the overview of all five nouns from the above worksheet.

Once we've looked at all 5 senses, I plan to take the kids out to a variety of different environments (e.g. the Botanical Gardens, ThinkTank, etc.) so they can link their 5 senses to Literacy and writing detailed descriptions. Insha'Allah a separate blog entry will follow for each thing!