One of the best pieces of advice I ever received about teaching your child was also the simplest. You need enthusiasm and consistency. It was given to me at the start of my homeschooling journey but I’ve seen it proven true time after time. If you are enthusiastic AND consistent, it feels like riding a bike downhill versus huffing and puffing uphill. The trouble is….it isn’t easy to be those things when you have a lot to juggle and manage. This blog post is about the one thing that has helped me the most with maintaining enthusiasm and keeping going on tough days specifically for Islamic studies, resource series.
Series harness the power of habit
Habits are very powerful. You will find lots of popular books published recently about habit building such as ‘Atomic Habits’ and ‘the 5 am Club’. However, Muslims have always known about the importance of habits from our Messenger (may Allah raise his rank and grant him peace)
Narrated `Aisha:
Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) said, “Do good deeds properly, sincerely and moderately and know that your deeds will not make you enter Paradise, and that the most beloved deed to Allah is the most regular and constant even if it were little.”
(Bukhari 6464)
When you start a series with your child, for example, the 40 hadith An-Nawawi or the 10 Promised Paradise it creates a habit for you and your child. Habits no longer require lots of willpower or remembering, they become natural and easy.
Islamic Studies series allow you to create habits as they are normally a lengthy program of study. They allow you to get into a rhythm and routine. You likely already do this, most families have time reserved for Qur’an such as after fajr or after breakfast. Habits for Islamic Studies are vital for building momentum and preventing the ‘breaks’ that end up lasting much longer than you expected.
Their importance generates enthusiasm
When you choose a series, it naturally is a topic of importance. You wouldn’t undertake an entire unit if it wasn’t worth dedicating the time. The importance of the topic generates enthusiasm for you and your kids. Children are natural learners and prioritise what they feel is useful to them. When you explain for example that Allah sent the Prophet(may Allah raise his rank and grant him peace) to us to show us how to live a life that will lead to Jannah, it makes learning the seerah interesting and significant.
They give a sense of progress
Motivation is hard to come by when you don’t feel like you are getting anywhere. By contrast, it’s genuinely thrilling when you feel like your efforts are paying off. Series give you that sense of progress, you’ve learnt about 5 of the Mothers of the Believers, 6 more to go! Simply put, you can see how far you have come and how far you have left.
Series give an opportunity for kids to make connections
This is honestly one of the most rewarding aspects of teaching when you see students make connections between topics or lessons. It’s evidence they have really absorbed the information and contextualised it. This happens so naturally when you teach a series. They notice that the message of the prophets was the same, they all called to Tawheed and warned from shirk. They observe that whilst the 10 Promised Paradise or the Mothers of the Believers have differences in characters, they all share some fundamental characteristics such as truthfulness and piety.
These connections take time to make and they are made easier when a series is consistent in its layout. An example would be that in each biography of the 10 Promised Paradise, you highlight when they became Muslim. After a while, the students notice that they all became Muslim before the hijrah and were therefore all early Muslims who supported the Prophet during his hardest days.
Series make planning easy (and success more likely!)
The old adage, if you fail to plan you play to fail is true. Planning isn’t always a simple quick task though. I’ve spent longer planning a lesson than the lesson actually took before! If you have a series of resources on a topic, it really does make planning easier. You can also have the same format and structure for each lesson. Parents often worry that it makes it boring for their kids but the consistency is reassuring and it allows them to focus on the new information rather than the new format.
Free resources to help you teach kids about Islam
I hope you have found this post about the benefits of an Islamic Studies series helpful. If you would like to get FREE resources such as the first in a 10 Promised Paradise Series then join the mailing list here to gain access to the free resource library.
Here are some other blog posts you may be interested in:
Ways to Teach Your Kids About the Ten Promised Paradise
The Impact of Well-Designed Resources on Your Muslim Homeschool
