Alhamdulillah, this year we have been learning the life of the prophet Muhammad (saw) in more detail. We have two books to use for our seerah studies. I use the following book during our study time. We read one story at a time and do a follow up activity. So far we read the following: The Prophet’s birth; Nursed in the Desert; A visit to Yathrib. I read the story and summarize it to the girls. Thereafter, I ask them to narrate the story back to me whilst doing a follow up activity. They narrated the 1st story like this: The prophet was born in Arabia many many years ago. There were three towns in Arabia at that time: Makkah- a barren valley where people used to come to pilgrimage of Hajj; Madinah- an oasis famous for its palm trees and dates; Taif- mountainous refuge place during hot season famous for its grapes. Muhammad (saw) was born in Makkah. His mother’s name was Aminah, father’s name was Abdullah. The prophet’s father died when he was a still baby.
Then Sumayya did the following activity. I asked her to do some drawing based on her narration and she did this
Last week we read the next story. Nursed in the Desert. Here is their narration: The prophet (saw) was nursed by Halimah in the desert outside Makkah as it was a custom among Arabs at the time. Prophet stayed with Halima until he was 3. Halima was very poor but when baby Muhammad (saw) arrived in her family Allah (swt) gave them lots of barakah and they became richer. Girls had hard time to understand why his mommy Aminah wouldnt breastfeed him and collected all the babies they have seen from their memory: I feed baby Ibrahim, hala Hazel feeds baby Ali, hala Fahra feeds baby Hiba etc. Anyway, some things dont make sense to them as yet. They dont understand what a custom is and they couldnt understand why people had such a custom where someone else feeded someone else’s baby lol.
Then we watched power point presentation about desert and learnt about desert habitat. We did lots of arts/crafts on deserts and desert animals in the past so it was kind of a revision.
Today we read a Visit to Yathrib. And here is Sumayya’s narration: When Muhammad (saw) was 6 he travelled to Madinah with his mommy Aminah. They had relatives in Madinah and they really liked it there. Muhammad (saw) played with his cousins, learnt how to swim and ate dates. They were travelling back on camels but his mommy became ill and died. He came home with his mommy’s friend Barakah. And his grandad Abd al Mutalib looked after him. Again, Sumayya was so touched and kept asking me how Aminah could die when Muhammad (saw) was still a small boy. SubhanAllah, she was so upset.
Then we decided to do the map of places the prophet (saw) was born and went. I took two stock paper, the girls wrote their names on top. Then I drew outline of the map of Arabia. They did red dots for 3 major towns and wrote the names: Makkah, Madinah and Taif. They cut out ka’ba and palm trees from a construction paper after I drew the outlines. And then they sticked ka’ba near Makkah, palm trees near Madinah. They colored and marked places in their map of Arabia. They drew a lake near Madinah as in their book, colored it blue and said ‘That’s where baby Muhammad learnt how to swim when he was in Madinah with his mom Aminah’ :).
Then we used egg carton to use as a mountain near Taif. I helped them cut out the egg carton and together we sticked it to a place they marked as Taif. They coloured it brown at the end. Again, all the time they are busy making this map, I summarize the stories we have read so far and pose a couple of questions for them to answer to check their reading comprehension.
Sumayya’s map. I wrote some sentences for Sumayya to read and fill in the blanks. Alhamdulillah she is so fluent in reading now and was reading my Charlotte Mason companion book the other day. So she read and easily fillied in the missing words (in italics here) in the sentences:
The prophet’s name was Muhammad. The prophet was born in Makkah. The prophet travelled to Madinah when he was 6. In Madinah he learnt how to swim. On the way back his mom Aminah died.
Safiyya’s work. Alhamdulillah she tries to copy anything her sister says and does. At the age of 3, I dont think she is grasping all the details of the stories like her sister but Alhamdulillah she is more and more interested to learn. Especially if we do more hands on arts/crafts activities like painting, cut and paste etc. She loves making things and you can see her handwriting is just coming along. She didnt want me to write sentences in her map. She recognizes all the letter sounds of the English alphabet but doesnt know how to blend them as yet. InshAllah I will start using Montessori 3 set cards and Doman flesh cards with her soon.
Then they played with world map playing mat. It is excellent resource I bought for £1 ages ago. Good thing about it is that it is easily cleaned if they spill things over. They can mark places with a marker and draw routes like they did between Makkah and Madinah in their map and we can wipe it off afterwards.
Identifying places, Arabia, Read Sea, Egypt on play mat, world map and globe to finish off.
Alhamdulillah it was good fun. As there is so much to learn in seerah, I am taking it easy and learning in a slow pace. We read plenty of stories from the seerah during the week but we only do 1 focused story with a planned activity per week. They get to watch the cartoon “The Last Prophet” every now and then. And it reinforces their knowledge alhamdulillah