Recorded 12-14-2011

As you know we’re homeschoolers who love traveling the world, and as part of our Arabic studies here in Gaza, we choose to enroll the girls in a private school to see how much Arabic they can learn. So, we needed to establish a new routine to actually get them up and out the door for the bus without the typical pains of a rushed morning that we often hear (and witness here) in other school-kids.

What do you do in the morning to follow the sunnah of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (sallahu alayhi wa salam)?

• Sprinkle water on their face to wake them if they don’t jump up for fajr?
• Pray fajr as a congregation? Family? Do you know that praying together is better than praying by yourself? 27-times better?
• Morning dhikr  (remembrance of Allah) and du’a (supplications) [We have a blogpost where I share beautiful audios of these morning du’a]
• Read, recite, and memorize Qur’an?
• Eat a big, healthy, nutritious hot breakfast—the most important meal of our day?
• Anything special to have an upbeat, happy, let’s-get-moving routine, like playing nasheeds? Fixing hair? Having shoes, jackets, and bookbags ready at the front door from the night before? Kisses and hugs? Special nasheeds played as prompts for the next step in the day?
• Make the du’a when they leave the house for school and time apart from you?

[FYI: After nearly 3-weeks of 7-hour days apart, my girls are able to learn more much Arabic, yes—you guessed right—homeschooled by me and seeking tutors, extra curricular activities, monitored play, etc. More in a follow-up post, inshaAllah…]

We’d love to hear what your Muslim school child/ren’s morning routine is in the comments below. Every year, every day, we adjust and amend new things; while keeping the core solid. So, we’d love to implement any of your cool, fun ideas as well!

[P.S. As time allows, probably not until we return to the States, with dedicated electricity and net, we’ll follow-up with links to the quoted Sunnah and ayats in the Qur’an, inshaAllah Ta’ala. Ya Rabb, forgive me with I misquote anything in Your Glorious Name. Ameen.]

Audio Post: A Typical Muslim School Kid’s Morning Routine is a post from: American Muslim Mom Blog

Here’s a great find from a sister’s post (JAK):

Some schools in Palestine made electronic copies (PDFs) of most of their textbooks and posted them here.

From our sister:

The textbooks are written all in Arabic (they are written for Arab first
language learners), but they might be helpful even if you don’t know much
Arabic or for us second language learners. It has from grades 1 to 10 in
Arabic. It has books for all their subjects so if you only want Arabic, jump
down to the grade level and then hover your cursor over the links and you
can find the Arabic books (the link shows the type of book, in this case,
Arabic in the status bar (also, if you do know Arabic, the Arabic books are
titled “lugatatunaal jameelah (our beautiful language).

They also have Islamic studies books, which seemed neat as well, but of
course you’ll want to review the content.

Looking forward to digging (researching) into some of these, INS.

Please comment with your experiences below.

Free Arabic textbooks online is a post from: American Muslim Mom Blog

Learning Qur’an through transliteration and more!

Arabic is our second language, but I know a sister learning Arabic as her third language strictly from this website–and she’s doing great!

I have at least 100 websites I look forward in sharing here at this blog. So, I decided to share the resources as they come up in my daily use.

For example, a sister emailed me her discovery of Transliteration.org. Since her Qur’an recitation is fabulous (20+ years of being a Muslim, Alhumdulilah/Praise be to God), I didn’t think she’d need a site like this. But, that’s just it–one can learn Arabic as a second language, beyond Qur’an recitation via this website. And, every single Muslim even if Arabic is your first language should be working on their Arabic–period.

My girls and I love this site–primarily the Learning Pronunciation via illustrations. I will never forget our first time at this site–we spelt out all our names, played with our unused vocal chords, and had a grand time. It has been a while, so we gotta hop on right now.

Please share your experiences and thoughts of this site below. Or offer a recommendation if you have another one.

Learning Qur’an – Arabic as a second language is a post from: American Muslim Mom Blog