Recapping the 99 Names of Allah

Years ago, I had the grand ambition of going through each of the 99 Names of Allah together with the kids, in a very basic way, with the intention of them becoming closer to Allah by appreciating Him in different ways. I raised the idea to a group of fellow home educators so we could bounce ideas off each other for activities, games and crafts, and it was met really positively with the aim to cover one name a month.

Fast forward half a year or so and the enthusiasm from others had pretty much gone, with me feeling like I was talking to myself/forcing my ideas on the group... Life just got in the way, which is understandable, and this little project of mine wasn't a priority! At this point we were due to cover Al-Muhaymin next, and upon reading into its meaning as an adult, the depth of this name felt too overwhelming for me to explain in a way which did it justice - I had lost sight of my original goal of simply introducing the names to my children in a way they could relate to; it was never supposed to be about capturing every nuance, especially in the names which had multiple meanings or meanings which overlapped with others. But I'd forgotten that, and along with become pregnant again I decided to just put the whole thing on hold until I was ready to think about it all again properly.

Now that baby A is a little older (8 months have flown by, subhanAllah!) and I've got more time to think again, I want to restart this project with the twins and also for Z to join in where she can. The original plan was to go through them all on a basic level while the girls were young, so they would find it easier to memorise and so they could benefit sooner from a simple understanding of what they had memorised. As they grow older, inshaAllah, they'll have plenty of time to revisit the names and attributes in more detail and strengthen their knowledge. For now, it's just about introducing the concepts.

Writing this all down is a huge and much needed self-reminder!

So with this all in mind, I wanted to begin by recapping the work we'd done so far. We sang the song of the first 33 names along with the PowerPoint, looked at their folders for the booklet pages they had created and talked about what they remembered. Alhamdulillah they remembered more than I thought! At the very least, the gist of it was there and the idea of Allah having all these descriptions was there. 

Now we're ready inshaAllah to look at the next few names one by one. Ideally 1 name a week, but we'll see how organised I can be with research and planning each week InshaAllah!