We made this picture around two years ago, when we were first learning about Allah and how He created the world - so when the twins were almost 4. I stuck down green and blue paper to represent the land and sea on dark blue A3 sugar paper (dark blue as it could be either day or night!) and drew some pictures of natural things created by Allah (this was before we owned a printer!). I tried to choose things which would be useful to know in Arabic. We spoke about how Allah created everything from nothing and how we were grateful to Him. Then I gave them the pictures to colour in and cut them out when they were done. Finally, I helped them glue the pictures in appropriate places on the A3 background.
After a break (as they were still only young!) we recapped what we had made and why (a picture to show some of the things Allah made from nothing). Then we continued the story of Prophet Adam (AS) - how Allah created the first man and taught him the names of each thing - and I labelled each picture in English as the girls told me what they were. We spoke about how the angels didn't know what each thing was called because Allah hadn't taught them. I asked the girls how they thought it felt not to know that the sun was called the sun and they laughed! So I asked them what the sun was in Arabic, which of course they couldn't do. 😏 Then we went through each thing on the picture and I told them what it was in Arabic:
the sun: ash-shamsu اَلشَّمْسُ
the cloud: al-ghaymatu اَلْغَيْمَةُ
the moon: al-qamaru اَلْقَمَرُ
the star: an-najmu اَلنَّجْمُ
the sky: as-samaa'u اَلسَّمَاءُ
the sea: al-bahru اَلْبَحْرُ
the grass: al-‘ushbu اَلْعُشْبُ
the mountain: al-jabalu اَلْجَبَلُ
the tree: ash-shajaratu اَلشَّجَرَةُ
the flower: az-zahratu اَلزَّهْرَةُ
the lion: al-asadu اَلْأَسَدُ
the horse: al-hisaanu اَلْحِصَانُ
the dog: al-kalbu اَلْكَلْبُ
the bird: at-tayru اَلطَّيْرُ
the fish: as-samakatu اَلسَّمَكَةُ
We stuck with the definite form for everything so as to not get confused with grammar, but my husband felt it was important to introduce the idea of word endings from the start (rather than e.g. just saying "shams" for sun).
The idea was to write out labels in Arabic for the girls to glue next to the correct picture, but we never got round to it and the project went forgotten until now. 🙈
----------
Fast-forward to today and our current work on the Prophet Adam (AS). I dug out this old poster for them and we recapped again about how Allah created everything from nothing and how everything in the world is only here because Allah allowed it to exist, e.g. who made the paper we were looking at? Did Allah make the paper Himself? No, people made it... But how did people make paper? They made it out of trees. And where did the trees come from? Allah made them! So the girls understood that everything in the world was either created by Allah or made out of something Allah had created. We also talked about the trees we can see today - did Allah create this particular tree in our garden? No, he created the first trees a long long long time ago which made seeds, which grew into more trees, which made seeds, which grew into more trees, which made seeds, and so on and so on until we get to today. Just like how Allah made us, not because He created us himself (they know about babies being in their mummy's tummy) but because Allah made the first man (and woman) and they're like our great great great great (too many "great"s to say!) grandparents!
Then we checked we could still name all the things in Arabic, using the definite/"the" form and then changing to the indefinite/"a" form.
No comments:
Post a Comment