I want to read Quraan

Alhamdulillah, this evening I experienced a tantrum of a beautiful kind.

You're probably wondering what kind of a tantrum that might be which deserves to be called beautiful and that I am showing gratitude for.....?

Well this evening my 5 year old Nur decided she'd throw a big wobbler for not being able to read the quraan.   She stormed out of the room whilst I read quraan with her elder sister and then cried unconsolably, with big, wet, innocent tears dripping down her face all because she wanted to be able to read from the big quraan like us.  I can't remember her crying this much for anything else.

Nur has just turned 5 recently and is just beginning to read qaida.  I tried to teach her earliar like I had done with her sister but being the active child she is, she just wasn't ready to sit still or take it seriously.   Since then we have pretty much just let her play and roam free.

The worst thing a parent can do is force a child to learn or to expect that every child is the same and therefore put them through the same lessons,materials and experiences. This can have a detrimental effect on how children then approach education and view their learning.  With regards to quraan or other islamic learning it can have dire consequences where children begin to hate reading quraan instead of loving it, which in turn defies the whole purpose of teaching them!

When I realised how different my children are, I knew a time would come sooner or later when Nur actually wants to learn and is ready to learn.  During the past few months she has shown greta interest in other aspects of learning and has made excellent progress in her English reading and maths.

And alhamdulillah judging by today's tantrum I think the time has arrived for us to delve deeper into learning to read quraan.

It took a good 30minnutes or so claming her down and trying to explain how she needed to get through qaida before being able to read the quraan but at the moment the desire to read is so great and I think the task is appearing quite daunting to her.  There are just too many pages in the qaida and it seems too long away for her for her to reach her goal.

Now it's my responsibility to take this desire to learn and to teach her, using the best materials for her learning style and activities which will stimulate her further and help her grow in her ability and confidence andinsha'allah.

Sadly, qaida learning/teaching has not developed that much over the years and the shops are still full of those plastic coated alphabets and noorani qaidas. We are currently using the 'Simple Steps in Quraan Reading' 3 part qaida books which I used whilst teaching Rahmah.  These were quite unique in their style and layout and worked okay for Rahmah  but I have come to know of another product which I feel will be better suited for Nur and am trying to get my hands on.  I am also going to need to be quite creative in how I  teach her so I will be doing some research on the best online resources to utilise and supplementary worksheets etc.

I am quite excited about it all and I can't wait to help her reach her goal of reading from the big quraan.

So I say alhamdulillah once again for such beautiful tantrums, for what can be more beautiful than a child's desire to learn the word of Allah (swt) and what greater honour is there than raising a child to love Allah , his book and the deen of Islam.