Ramadaan Prep 2018 - Useful Things To Do in Advance!

I feel like I've not prepared as much this year as last - actually, I know I haven't because most of it is just a repeat/re-using what I did last year. 😂😅

Things for me:

1) Batch cook and then freeze individual portions of onions/garlic/tomatoes to save cooking time during Ramadaan. I started this around a month before Ramadaan last year and actually have just continued doing it ever since! I'll buy one bag of onions, one garlic and two packs of salad tomatoes during the weekly shop and cook them all at once one day during the week. I'll take out the extra mix and keep in individual freezer bags in the freezer (so one bag per meal) then cook whatever dinner I'm making that day with what's left in the pan. Then later on in the week when I don't have time to cook from scratch, I can just defrost one bag in the pan (or two if I plan to cook a larger amount to last for two days!), add the relevant salt/spices/meat/veg and dinner is done in less than half an hour. 👌 In the weeks before Ramadaan, I'll make sure I have enough in the freezer so that I won't have to do any cooking from scratch for the whole 30 days, insha'Allah. Alhamdulillah, Ramadaan is not all about the food in this household... And I'm grateful my husband prefers a proper meal at the end of the day instead of the usual fried foods which take much more time and energy to prepare!

2) Clean the house! Change all the bedsheets, scrub down the kitchen and bathroom, mop the hard floors, vacuum the carpets (including behind sofas, those nooks and crannies, etc.) If I know its all been done properly just before Ramadaan, I'm happy just wiping down and vacuuming visible surfaces until the month's over. 😊

3) Have a general tidy up/declutter. All those sideboards and shelves which somehow accumulate junk... Old clothes and toys, ready to give away to charity... This process takes a good few weeks as I don't have time to do it all in one go otherwise! Then one final sweep through the house in the days before. 💪 Similarly, any odd jobs around the house which need doing but have been put off (e.g. DIY things, filing paperwork, the garden, etc.), we try and get those done before the month starts, too!

4) Plan Eid outfits. At least get the clothes bought and the outfits decided, even if I don't iron them - I did that before and somehow they ended up creased in the wardrobe anyway, so now I've decided to just do them the night before Eid instead, insha'Allah. 😅

5) Buy and wrap Eid gifts. Another thing I don't want to waste time thinking about or doing during Ramadaan itself!

6) Set a Quran goal. I made a list last year with how many pages I'd need to read a day in order to complete the whole Quran within the month - I'll admit I'm not the most fluent of readers, so it was useful for me to have a concrete benchmark each day to work towards. I also worked out how long it would take me to read that many pages and planned a suitable time each day to fit it in. Last year, it happened that I'd have some time after Fajr and some between Maghrib and Isha (i.e. when the kids were asleep!) so I could split my reading between then.

7) Set a Hifz target. I'll also admit my strengths definitely don't lie in memorisation! A manageable goal from before was to memorise one ayah from Surah Al-Mulk each day, which meant the whole surah could be completed by the end of the month. 💕 This year, I think I'll make the effort to concentrate on Juz 'Amma - with the added goal of being able to help my children with their hifz more easily too, insha'Allah!

Things for the kids:

8) Get the decorations ready! Previously, I've put them all up myself the night before as a surprise for the kids... Now they're a bit older, I'll let them help out and it'll reduce my workload too. 😂 Same goes for Eid decorations - some of them are pre-bought (e.g. tinsel, balloons, etc.) but others we can make together during the month as an activity in itself, insha'Allah.

9) Prepare a Ramadaan calendar. I've seen lots of beautiful ones (but expensive or time-consuming to make! 🙈) online, but last year I simply printed out the numbers 1-30 (in both English and Arabic numerals), mounted it on a piece of coloured card, they coloured it in and decorated the edges. Each day the twins would take it in turns to stick a sticker in the morning to signify which day we were on and a sticker in the evening to show the day had ended... (I also prepared a small container with pre-cut stickers for them to choose from, so will be re-using that, insha'Allah!) Not sure how we're going to do it this year with three kids lol - just more taking in turns! Maybe when they're a little older they can have individual calendars, especially if they're going to try and keep the odd (whole/half) fast here and there, but for now we don't have the wall space or desire for clutter. 😂😅🙈 You can download our calendar template here.

10) Decide on 30 Good Deeds. We did this last year and it worked well - the girls have requested to do it again this year! So with the lack of time, I'm re-using what we prepared last time lol. We decorated an old container with tissue paper mache and stickers; I printed out 30 flower shaped templates onto coloured card (you can download the Word file here) and cut them out, then we talked about the kinds of good deeds we could do and I wrote 30 of them out, one on each flower, for them to then decorate the petals with glitter glue pens. Aside from needing a little touch up (as some of the writing has faded, especially with the paler glitter gel pens!) these are fine to use again this year, I think! So the cards go in the container, they take it in turns to choose one at random each morning, then they have the day to complete/focus on that good deed. We couple this with reminders on gaining reward and how the month of Ramadaan is blessed with the chance to get even more reward than usual! Here's our list of 30 deeds, for reference:

1. Smile at people outside.
2. Feed the birds.
3. Listen to Mama and Papa straightaway.
4. Give salaam quickly.
5. Share my things.
6. Say "Bismillah" before doing things.
7. Say "SubhanAllah" 100 times.
8. Say "Alhamdulillah" 100 times.
9. Say "Allahu akbar" 100 times.
10. Make dua to Allah.
11. Make dua for someone else.
12. Help Mama with some chores.
13. Tidy up after myself.
14. Give some toys to charity.
15. Tidy up my bedroom.
16. Say "please", "thank you", "sorry" and "excuse me".
17. Call Nani for a chat.
18. Make a card for Dadima.
19. Speak in a soft voice.
20. Let someone else go first.
21. Learn more Arabic.
22. Read extra Quran.
23. Pray sunnah prayers.
24. Not waste water.
25. Not waste colouring pens.
26. Help look after our little sister.
27. Bake food for someone.
28. Donate to a food bank.
29. Give people compliments.
30. Make Eid decorations.

After they chose a deed each morning, we'd put Blu-tac on the back and stick them around the fireplace as both a reminder and to create a wall display of flowers. After the month was over, we left them up for a short while then took the opportunity to discuss them as we took them down.

11) Prepare 30 Hadith to read through together! I think we'll just use this book again this year, as all the work's been done for us: 30 Hadith for Kids by Zanib Mian. We used this a discussion prompt in the evenings just before bed, like a bedtime story replacement. The girls used to look forward to it, and the book's been put away since, so I'm sure they'll look forward to it again this year, insha'Allah. 💕 Maybe when they're older, we can concentrate more on hadith specific to Ramadaan and fasting, but just introducing the idea of hadith and familiarising the girls with the idea of them is enough for me at this stage.

12) Have a Quran routine ready. Alhamdulillah, we already try and have daily Quran sessions but admittedly these are sometimes missed on particularly busy days or cut short for one reason or another... So I need to ensure more priority is put on the Quran - and Ramadaan is a good boost for doing so. Many people say that first thing in the morning is the best time to do it, so I think I'm going to try having a half an hour slot blocked out after their breakfast. Once we get into the routine of it, I'm hoping it will then stick even once Ramadaan is over, insha'Allah! Within this month, though, I want to spend 5 minutes at the end of each session reading through some translations of surahs they know... Ideally, this should be planned out already! But honestly, I've not had the time to do it so will just have to wing it each day. 😅 The idea being to strengthen their bond with the Quran, especially if we can pick out Arabic vocabulary they know within ayaat, too.

Simple Paper Mobile

To finish off our topic on the six articles of faith, I thought it'd be nice to make a craft to summarise what the articles are... So we made some paper mobiles. 😊

We used A4 coloured card cut in half lengthways for the main body. Along the top they used a medium star-shaped holepunch (0.6 inches) and along the bottom they used a large heart-shaped holepunch (1 inch) to cut out 6 hearts - one for each article (around 4.5cm between each one). I bought our holepunches from Hobbycraft since they were on sale, but I'm sure you can find similar for cheaper online. 👍 In the centre of the strip of card they wrote "The Six Articles of Faith", then decorated with glitter gel pens and stickers.

For the hanging part, we used shiny paper around 4cm wide (when it's time to repeat this for younger siblings, insha'Allah, I'll probably get them to write on different paper then stick on as labels, since the shiny paper was difficult to write on/smudged easily!) and used the star-shaped holepunch to cut out a star in the centre at the top of each. Then they wrote one article on each (singing our song from before to help - without any prompting from me! 😂)

Finally, they chose which coloured ribbon they wanted to put through each article, and which two colours they wanted for the top - then I had the (tedious lol) task of tying them all on. 😏 I used the first ribbon to measure out the length I wanted, then used that as a template for the rest. Same for the top ribbons - these, I threaded through opposite stars so the two ribbons made a cross in the centre, then tied all four ends together at the top.

I hung their mobiles on display in their bedroom (they have a piece of string going across the room for this purpose... paintings, posters, etc.!) using a mini wooden craft peg to keep them up. 💕

Planting the seeds...

Finally got round to planting this year's seeds... The girls have a little patch at the end of the garden which I dug up for them last year to plant flowers in - they wanted to do it again this year so we bought three packets of assorted (easy to grow!) flowers from Asda (they always seem to have a special offer on this time of year 😄) for them to sow.

I prepared the soil for them by digging up the weeds and raking it (they did pulling up weeds at the allotments earlier this week, and these weeds were quite deep rooted and tough! So I thought it was fine to let them just play in the garden while I worked... lol), they pre-watered the soil with their watering cans (again, from Asda! Kids-sized, metal cans for £2.50 - one pink, one orange, one turquoise), had a packet of seeds each to spread thinly over the ground (I helped the toddler 😁), I covered the seeds with the raked soil, then they watered the ground once more.

Finally, I stuck in the bird scarers (made from foam tulip heads and an old CD stuck onto a wooden lolly stick) the kids made at the allotments at the end of last year and which have otherwise just been cluttering our kitchen window sill. 😂

Now to wait... Insha'Allah they should flower by next month - so now the girls are responsible for watering them on all the days it doesn't rain, especially if it's hot and sunny!

Syllables

Self-reference post:

We looked at syllables in words, by saying words with different syllables out loud and clapping to the beats, then completing the pages from Letts Make It Easy… Maths & English (Age 5-6) and Letts Make It Easy… Maths & English (Age 6-7) independently.

Predestination

For our final article of faith, we began by reading the relevant pages in the Safar Islamic Studies Textbook 1 (kindly gifted to us by my sister-in-law!). We followed this up with a discussion into what it meant, i.e. Allah knows everything (when I asked them this morning, "What do you want for breakfast?" Allah already knew what they would choose before they'd even decided!) and that both good things are from Allah (e.g. sunny weather so they can ride their bikes outside) as well as things they don't like (e.g. it's raining so they can't play outdoors anymore) - but everything that happens Allah knows about and everything that happens is for a reason, even if we don't understand it.

Then we looked at the above worksheet: the first part is a fill-in-the-gaps activity (with an accompanying list of words/phrases to choose from as prompts, if needed). We did this together and continued our discussions to strengthen their understanding as we did it.

The second part looks at two ayaat from Surah Al-Baqarah. We did them one at a time; we read the Arabic together and the translation, then discussed its meaning in a way they could relate to. For the first, about liking a thing which may be bad for us and vice-versa, I explained it in the context of sweets (they taste good but if we ate too many of them it wouldn't be good for our health!) and used examples like playing outside (e.g. having to come indoors when it's raining, maybe they don't want to stop playing and it makes them sad but what about the flowers and the worms and frogs? Are they happy it's raining? And if they kept on playing outside in the rain, what might happen? They could catch a cold! So even though they don't like having to come inside, it was actually a good thing.). For the second, about the burden upon a soul never being too much, we talked about a "burden" being something really difficult and the word "bear" being something they were able to manage - so Allah never gives anyone anything too difficult for them to manage. If something bad happens to us, Allah knows we can manage, e.g. I might have to go to the hospital and stay there for a long time to look after the baby, so they wouldn't be able to see me for a few days,,, maybe a whole week! Would that be hard to manage? But if that happened, then Allah knows they could manage or He wouldn't let it happen. And would Papa be able to look after them and the house for all that time? If it happened, then of course he would be able to or Allah wouldn't have let it happen! We also talked about when they fell over and hurt themselves, it wasn't nice but they were able to manage the pain.

This was definitely the most complicated article of faith - and one even many adults still struggle to understand! - so as long as they just know that everything comes from Allah, then that's good enough for me at this point.

You can download our worksheet here.

The Day of Judgement

For our 5th article of faith, we looked at the belief in the Day of Judgement.

At this age, I don't want to go into too many details as I want to focus more on the positives of faith - i.e. jannah, Allah's love and forgiveness - as opposed to potentially scaring them with the punishment of the fire.

We began by recapping previous discussions on the Day of Judgement with me simply asking them what they already knew. Because of their hifz studies, and our method of becoming familiar with the surahs by watching YouTube videos which have the English translation, they were already aware of some of the basic points since reading the translations had led to them asking questions. Their understanding was that the angel Israfeel (which they remembered from last time!) would blow the trumpet, everything would break and all the people would die, then Allah would wake everyone up, look at their book of good deeds and bad deeds, and decide if they would go to the fire if they had more bad things or to jannah if they had done more good things. I then just filled in the gap by telling them about everyone waiting all together for a very long time and that it would be a very hot day.

We also talked about some surahs they're familiar with wherein the Day of Judgement is mentioned, (e.g. Al-Qariah, Al-Zalzalah) and talked a little about their meanings and descriptions of that day.

Finally, I gave them the pictured worksheet to complete in their own words (and colour in as an optional extra once finished).

You can download our worksheet here.

Instructions (part 2); Recipe: Nutella-Surprise Fairy Cakes

To complete our work on instructions, I helped the girls bake some more cakes (any excuse for cake!), taking photos along the way, then printed these photos off as a memory aid to help them write their own set of instructions.

I cut the photos out and mixed them up, so the girls' first challenge was to order the pictures. Then they stuck them down on the A4 template, filled in the ingredients list and wrote their instructions on the next page.

You can download our worksheet template here.

Here's the recipe we used:

Ingredients:
2 eggs (120g)
120g softened salted butter
120g caster sugar
120g self-raising flour
1tsp vanilla essence
1tbsp whole milk

6tsps Nutella
70g melted milk chocolate
2 Kinder Buenos

Method:
1) Preheat the oven to 180C fan, line a baking tray with cake cases and weigh out all the ingredients.
2) Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
3) Whisk the eggs, vanilla essence and milk in a separate bowl then beat into the cake mixture.
4) Sieve in the flour and fold it in gently.
5) Divide the mixture evenly between the 12 cake cases and bake for 14min until lightly golden brown.
6) Leave to cool on a cooling rack.
7) Cut out the centres from each cake, fill with 1/2tsp Nutella and replace the centre as a lid.
8) Spread the melted milk chocolate on the top of each cake and decorate with 1 square of Kinder Bueno.

Instructions (part 1)

Our next non-fiction text - instructions seemed like the logical thing to explore after lists.

We began by looking at different examples of instructions via comprehension worksheets (two birds, one stone? 🐦🐦) and I asked the girls what similarities they noticed between the different instructions... They noted that instructions are written in a list (How do you know? "Because the lines are underneath each other and they have numbers on the side" 👍) and they have another list of what you need, too (in recipes, this is the list of ingredients!). What are instructions for? "So you know what to do!"

After the girls completed a few comprehension sheets and so were familiar with a number of examples (we did 5 in total, from Letts Monster English – Reading (Age 5-6), Collins Easy Learning – Comprehension (Ages 5-7), Letts Make It Easy… Maths & English (Age 5-6) and Letts Make It Easy… Maths & English (Age 6-7)), they then had a go following a set of instructions of their choice: they decided to make Monster Masks, as in one of the comprehension worksheets, so I wrote the instructions on the whiteboard for them to follow and helped where needed (including the toddler!):

Adding two 2-digit numbers

The prerequisites for this activity were to be able to add together multiples of 10 in their head and know how to count on using a 100 square.

I decided to focus on mental methods for adding 2-digit numbers as I feel it's important they understand the basics before moving on to the quicker (and arguably easier) standard written methods.

The method I taught them to use is pictured above, which I went through on the whiteboard using coloured pens for simplicity. First, I wrote out an example question with the Tens in red, the Units in purple and the equation signs (and subsequent answer) in blue: 14 + 48 =

I told them the first step was to look at the Tens. What are the Tens? 10 and 40. So what is 10 + 40? 50. I wrote this sum underneath in red, to keep the colour co-ordination.

Next, look at the Units. What are they? 4 and 8. Which Unit is bigger? The 8.

So keep the Tens total (50) and add on the bigger Unit (8) to get 58. I wrote this underneath, colour co-ordinated.

How many Units are left to add on? 4. So I wrote 58 + 4 =

They could then use their 100 squares to find 58 and count up 4 more squares to calculate the total. 62. So I wrote 62 as the answer to both 58 + 4 and the overall question of 14 + 48.

Reading through, this looks like it took a long time to explain! But it really didn't, and with a few more examples and me reminding them of the steps the girls soon got the hang of this method. This is my personal method of choice for mental addition, which is the reason I taught it to them. As they get older and their mathematical understanding strengthens, insha'Allah, then I'll introduce the alternative methods for them to choose from. 😊

After two examples using numbers of my choice (one where the Units total to within 10, another where they didn't), I asked the twins to choose numbers at random for me to use in the questions - otherwise I wouldn't have used 49 + 94 as an example since it goes into the Hundreds! But Alhamdulillah, this was the last example we did together and they understood it fine. 👍

The next day - while leaving the examples on the whiteboard for reference - I gave them the pictured double-sided worksheet to do (taken from Schofield&Sims - KS1 Problem Solving 2). We did the first side (5 questions) together, with me scaffolding their thinking by reminding them of the steps to the method, and I helped with the first couple on the next page too. Then I let them try the last few by themselves and they were both able to do the final two questions completely independently, MashaAllah. 💕

Recipe: Nutella-Stuffed "Cookies"

Based on this recipe from www.theperfectionist.co.uk

I didn't have enough flour to make a batch as in the linked recipe, so reduced the quantities accordingly... Nor did I have any baking soda so went without - I prefer a crunchier cookie to a soft one so thought I'd just see how it went! I also chose to leave them to firm up in the fridge before baking, so lengthened the baking time too.

INGREDIENTS
82g salted butter (softened)
82g white caster sugar
61g soft brown sugar
1 medium egg
3/4 tsp vanilla essence
100g milk chocolate chips
195g plain flour
13 1/2 tsps Nutella (refrigerated)

METHOD
1) Line two baking sheets with greaseproof paper.
2) Use an electric whisk to beat together the butter and sugars until light and fluffy.
3) Use a fork to whisk together the egg and vanilla in a separate bowl.
4) Add the egg/vanilla mixture to the butter/sugars and beat until fully combined.
5) Pour in the chocolate chips.
6) Sift in the flour.
7) Gently stir together with a spatula to make a soft dough.
8) Scoop the dough into small balls (my batch made 13) and flatten gently on one of the baking sheets.
9) Place about 1/2 tsp Nutella into the centre of each dough disc.
10) Carefully pinch the edges of the dough together so the Nutella is inside and roll between your palms to make dough balls.
11) Leave the dough balls to chill on the baking tray in the fridge for 20min. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 175C fan.
12) Arrange the dough balls across both baking trays so there is enough space around each for them to expand.
13) Bake for 25min, until the edges turn golden brown.
14) Leave to firm up on the baking trays for a few min before transferring to cooling racks to cool completely. Or enjoy warm with cold milk!

The crunch on the outside was exactly what I wanted, but the centre was still a little too cake-like (although delicious!) and maybe flatter discs and more Nutella would be better too - something to experiment with in the future. 😋😋