Free Download: Kabah Eid Bag

For the previous Eid ul Fitr, I had my prekinders make these masjid Eid bags. The children really loved it and were so excited. For this Eid ul Adha I thought we'd do something similar. So instead of the masjid, I designed it to be the Kabah.

Free Download: Eid ul Adha Sheep Card

Eid ul Adha is coming around again and to get children excited, here is another Eid ul Adha card to colour in.

We made this Eid card today and usually, half of the children rush through and just scribble. But this time, I did something that had the majority of them slow down and carefully colour in each pattern or shape.

Free Download: My Dhul Hijjah Journal

The best ten days of the year are here so we must make the most of them as the Prophet, peace and blessings upon him,  said: “There are no days during which the righteous action is more pleasing to Allah than these days (i.e., the first ten days of Dhul-Hijjah).”

To make it easy for you to teach your children to do as many good deeds on these days, I've created this 'My Dhul Hijjah Journal'. It's free to download.

Tips for Reading to Your Child

Before children can read by themselves, they must be read to. If you want your child to love reading then you must read to her when she is young. Not only will your child grow to love reading, she will also develop other skills such as listening skills, language skills and story structure. 

If your child has never been read to then it is unlikely that she will sit still long enough for you to read to her. If she cannot sit still then she will not be able to listen to the story. This is what I’ve noticed. 

The Importance of Reading Everyday

Reading is one of my greatest passions and I’ve written about it many times before. I cannot stress enough how important reading is in this age of information. 

There are so many skills involved in reading with understanding. It includes decoding, fluency and comprehension. Within these, there are sub skills of phonics, sight words, punctuation, spelling, vocabulary and others. This is not to make it daunting on parents and teachers but to highlight the importance of reading. Every. Day. 

When children are at the various stages of learning to read, they need to practice it every day. This is the advice I give to parents of the children that I tutor. Make sure that your children are reading every day. If not one book then one chapter and if not event that then one page would do. 

Letter of the Week: y

The letter y is one of the hardest letters to work with as there are not many things that start with y wait until next week when we learn the letter x!) So we've made yoghurt an a yak craft. I ran out of ideas so I've resorted to my foam eyes and mouth stickers.

Book Review: I Will Not Clean My Room

Title : I Will Not Clean My Room

Author: Saharish Arshad

Illustrator: Elsa Estrada

Publisher: Prolance

Ages: 3-5

Musa’s mom asks him to clean his room. Instead, he decides to imagine all the wonderful things he’s going to do in Jannah. Join him as he dreams away and learns that good deeds are really worth the effort.

Cleaning their room is probably the number one thing that children are reluctant to do and I'm sure many can relate to Musa. He is a cheeky little boy who can't stop jumping and sit still long enough to clean his room. 

Phonemic Awareness Activities to Prepare Your Child to Read

Reading starts with the ability to hear sounds in words. This is phonemic awareness. It is being conscious to the fact that all words are produced from different sounds and being able to hear all those sounds in each word. This may sound obvious because we hear sounds when someone speaks. But children who are not phonemically aware cannot hear individual sounds in words because they hear each word as a whole, as a single sound.

In my prekindy classes I teach children phonics. I teach them each sound of the letters of the alphabet. This is to help them to read but I don’t teach them reading yet until they have a phonemic awareness. What is the difference you might ask? 

Letter of the Week: v for vase

This week's letter of the week was v. We've made vans, vultures, volcanoes and vases. The picture that you see in the title image is the vase that prekinders made. No, I didn't give them a precut v to glue onto their paper but I gave them two strips of coloured paper. The had to form the v themselves - which is pretty easy, all of them could do it by themselves.

How to Teach Children Within Their Perfect Zone

The Zone of Proximal Development is an important concept for teachers to understand. It was first put forward by Vygotsky and basically it is the difference between what the learner can do by himself and what he can do with help. This is the area that teachers, parents, tutors, siblings and others work in when they help someone to learn.

You may have seen this when you help children to learn or even yourself when you're learning something. You don't know what you don't know so you will keep doing things the way you have been doing it; until someone helps you to do it better.