Five Fun Tips to Teach Kids Arabic
I have been teaching Arabic at my local mosque’s Sunday school for a couple of months, and it has been a rewarding experience thus far. I am teaching 17 kindergarteners the Arabic alphabet and vocabulary. It has been pretty challenging to find useful resources online to teach Arabic to little kids so I have been coming up with my own ideas for lesson plans and activities. Here are some tips to make teaching Arabic fun and enjoyable for kids:
5 Fun Tips to Teach Kids Arabic
- Visuals- Make posters and hang them up around your classroom with the Arabic letters and examples of words that begin with those letters. Print out coloring sheets of an animal or a fruit that begin with the letter you are teaching that day and have the kids color them.
- Movement- Kids don’t like to sit down for a long period of time. So standing up and teaching the kids the letter “alef” and having them repeat the word “arnab” (bunny) after you 100 hundred times might be slightly boring. Try doing “heads, shoulders, knees and toes” in an Arabic version like in this video. Or try playing “Duck, Duck, Goose,” but with two different animal words in Arabic; they absolutely love this game!
- Singing- Kids love to sing. Singing actually helps kids recall different words. I found some neat Arabic alphabet songs (or nasheed) on YouTube, like this. Play it a couple of times at the beginning of class and have the kids repeat it. They can use this at the end-of-school event or Eid party, too!
- Creativity- Be creative and think outside the box. You know how kids love to play “Pin the Tail on the Donkey”? I had my students play “Pin the Tail on the Wolf” a couple of weeks ago, and they loved it! We were on the letter “thal” (equivalent to “th”) and tail and wolf both start with that letter in Arabic. Each child had to say those two words before getting blindfolded to pin the tail.
- Have fun- Kids don’t want to come to Sunday school and sit down for three hours straight to listen to lectures. They already go to school five days a week and have all sorts of homework to do. One must be careful to not make the kids hate coming to Sunday school and hate learning Arabic. Make your lessons fun. Find good English lesson plans and try to modify that to an Arabic lesson plan.
A little creativity goes a long way. What are your creative tips to get your kids to love learning Arabic?
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Category: Islam
This tips are very useful. I been teaching English Language at Chuang Lua school. It’s been a hard time for me but yet challenging one. Kids may adopt quickly than of those younger age.
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Hi Aya! Teaching kids is a big challenge indeed. They have the tendency to get bored easily. Putting your lesson in a visual aid would be a great idea. Kids love drawings, they can learn faster if it’s visualize than just reading it.
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I teach Arabic at a Sunday school too! These tips definitely look like they’ll help me out! Thanks
I’ve also noticed–kids love writing on the board! Calling them up once in a while will keep them awake and excited.
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Indeed it is fun way of teaching. I will try this with other subjects I hope that this will work.
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I could not find a fun poster that kids would enjoy looking at that had bright cheerful animals on it, so I created one! Please visit my poster and let me know what you think of it. It’s only been on the market for a few months on Amazon and seems to be doing well, al’humdulalah. You can see it here:
http://www.zibbet.com/acraftyarab/artwork?artworkId=284676.
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Pin the tail sounds interesting. I am still thinking of alternatives. I am currently using a lot of songs since the kids really loves singing.
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I’m teaching a class that has kids from 9-15 years for an hour. I need an activity that can be used to teach them about being prepared. Preferably one that has up out of their seats and moving.It doesn’t have to deal with preparation specifically but it does need to tie back to it.
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Asalaam ‘Alaikum:
I have struggled with a lack of decent materials for helping my children learn Arabic (there were way less more things available in the beginning than there are today). Anyway, I decided to fill that gap by creating my own learning materials and sharing it with others who also struggled. You can find them here:
http://www.yemenlinks.com
Asalaam ‘Alaikum,
Sumayyah Umm SAAK
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Asalaam ‘Alaikum:
I also forgot to mention that you can find different strategies for using these materials on my blog at:
http://www.yemenlinks.com/blog
Asalaam ‘Alaikum,
Sumayyah Umm SAAK
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just now i have started teaching kids,its a great challenge and a superb experience, these methods are really useful…
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