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.