Pen Marks

Just had suhoor – a cup of hot chocolate. For some odd reason, I can hardly eat anything at all these days. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing..

I’d like to think week has been pretty productive. I remodeled my room (to some degree) made a gem board (after planning on making one two months ago) finished reviewing Surah Yusuf and most of Surah Maryam (I have to finish by the contest day, September 4 inshallah) and I was also working on the plans for the Ramadan workshop.

Yesterday (Monday) was the last day of the workshop, and alhamdulillah I think it went a lot better than last week. I don’t think I caught any kids complaining this time, which was great (I hate it when kids complain that they’re bored) So here’s a summary of what we happened yesterday.

12:30 PM

I called one of the Khalas (in our community, all the ‘older sisters’ (anyone with kids) we call them ‘Khala’ which is aunt in arabic) I was supposed to ask her if she had gotten some of the materials that we were going to need later on that day. And as we were talking, I mentioned my mom being sick (make dua for her plz!)

1:45 PM

I was typing up last minute preparations for the workshop when the same Khala called me and said that there had been a Janazah, and since they were fasting, all the sisters who were in the masjid at that time were trying to find a sick person to visit (see above hadith) So she asked if they could all come over for a few minutes and visit my mom. We said ok and started to do a hectic clean up downstairs.

2:45 PM

At first I thought only a few sisters would be coming with her, but when I opened the door I saw that they had all carpooled and they took up three cars. Ever see a porch full of shoes?

3:30 PM

I got to the masjid and started to get to work. The workshop was starting at 4 PM and we had to get everything ready. At the last kids seminar that we had, we used a group system… We placed all the kids into small groups and tried our best to make sure that there was kid of every age in each group. Then we would have the groups compete and work together to finish their projects and activities. And since it went so well last time, we decided to do that again. Only this time since the workshop was only 3.5 hours we weren’t going to have them compete as much. Each group had a color name (ex. group red or group blue) and they also had a volunteer group leader. Last time we had the khalas be group leaders and that didn’t turn out that great because well, kids like younger people. So this time we had a few volunteers help us out.

4:00 PM

The workshop began and all the little kids started pouring into the room. They would look around, find their name on the group poster and sit down under it.

Here are the activities that we had for last week:

Story circle

• I was incharge of this one. It wasn’t really much of a ’story circle’ it was more of a learning circle actually. I did tell them stories like the ‘Bi’thah’ and how the Quran was revealed. And we also went over what Ramadan is, how you can benefit, what kinds of good deeds you can do during ramadan and so on. I saw that they got bored as quickly as I started probably because it was information that they already knew.
• Lesson: Don’t assume that the kids don’t know anything. They are a lot (!) smarter than you think mashallah.

Board Games

• We actually made them by hand. My friend and I got together at the library and worked on them. Hers turned out a lot better than mine though We got the idea from online, but instead of just printing out the game we drew it out. But we did print the game cards out. Then we cut them out and glued them onto cardstock paper.
• We got the idea from this  blog, http://ummabdulbasir.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/ramadan-game/ the file is at the bottom

Quran Circles

• We had Quran circles for both days. I’m not sure how it went on the first day (I was busy getting the next activity ready)
• We grouped the kids into two circles, Juz Ammah and Juz Tabarak but they were reading from the Quran though. The groups sat in two big circles (Juz Tabarak group had to move to another room since the younger kids in the other group were getting loud) and every kid had to read one ayah. For example, they would start with surah Mursalat, kid 1 would read the first ayah, kid 2 would read the second and so on.

Jannah ladder

• The idea was for them to list as many good deeds as they can and to stick them onto their ladders (that would help them reach jannah) The ladders were made of rope that we hung from the ceiling (I had a few teen volunteers help me with that while the kids were busy with their Quran circles) We wanted them to write the good deeds on sticky notes but forgot them so we had to improvise. How? We grabbed my friends notebook and started to cut it up. All the papers in it were taken out and cut into long strips (the ladder steps).
• The kids came up with a lot (!) of good deeds, and they did it so quick I was really surprised mashallah.

Here are the activities that we had for yesterday:

Dua Circle

• My friend organized this one she even had worksheets mashallah.
• Basically it was a circle (45 min) to teach them how to make dua, when to make it, the adaab of making dua, and the best times to make it. It was very very interactive and she had them do a lot of little activities. One of them was to list all the things that they wanted. Then she asked each group to decide on one thing that they think they all wanted the most. And the answers are in the above pic. Clearly one group was very smart and decided on Jannah. When they said that you could see the other kids thinking ‘Aw we should’ve thought of that!’

Arts and Crafts

• We wanted the kids to make Eid gifts for their parents so we also had arts and crafts. One of the sisters came up with the idea of having them decorate old cd’s and then wrap them up. She even went as far as buying all the supplies barakallah feeha.
• The kids (specially the girls) loved them. And while the activity was supposed to take up only an hour, they used up two hours (which had us canceling the last activity – skits) They did make a big mess though (not surprising right?) I was too busy helping kids to get some good pics of this activity (and my battery was dying) but I did manage to catch this one. It was made by a cute little boy – 6 yrs old – mashallah. He wasn’t done with it but I took a picture of it anyways.

The last activity we did was Quran circles, which we had from 7:15 to until iftar time. Last week, we had a hard time with the juz Ammah kids because they were so many, so this time we devided them up into two groups. So now we had 3 groups, and I was in charge of Juz Tabarak this time. The kids in my group were all reciting ‘normally’, but there was one little boy who had the nicest voice mashallah. I should get him to recite for me again and record him

Overall we had a lot of fun but I don’t think I’ll be able to do something like this for a while. School’s coming up and this is my senior year so I’m going to be pretty busy. But I’m looking forward to the next time inshallah

Subhanallah I didn’t notice how long the post was! Here’s two last pics. The last picture is of the iftar we had yesterday.

We organized a Seerah seminar for kids this weekend and one of the activities was to fill in a gem board. Basically we gave them a big poster board and a lot of Post-its and told them to write down anything and everything that they learned. This is what they came up with (not all of them):

Yellow group:

The Prophet journeyed from makkah to madina

They tried to kill Muhammed

The angels helped the muslims in the battle of badr

Abraha tried to break the kabah

Wahshi killed hamza

When the prophets son died their neighbors laughed

The muslims disobeyed the prophet and climbed down the mountain

Mohamed never rite any book

The Prophet told khadija to cover him

Hind was a bad lady and hated hamza

Blue Team:

Umaya ordered a stone to be placed on Bilal’s chest

Ali got beaten when the kafir saw he was in Muhammads bed and Muhammed left

Jibreel is huge!

The muslims had their back toward a mountain so quraish wont attack from behind

Wahshi killed hamza in uhud

3 Leaders in mutah: zayd bin Haritha, Jafar bin abi-talib, Abdullah bin rawaha

Abubakr bought bilal for 10 gold pieces

Angels had swords of fire

Utaybah got attacked by a lion

Ali battled a giant

Jafar got his arms chopped off

Green Team:

The prophet didn’t know how to read

People were reward 100 camels if they find prophet mohammed

I learned that abdulmuttalib was kufaar

The mom died when he was 6

Ali bin Abi daleb kild the big guy

I learned that the tribe khuzaa kicked jurhum out of makkah

I learned that Wahshi killed hamza

I learned that the prophet was an orphan

I learned when she cil hamza in uhud

I learned how to put the blacstone in the kabah

Red Team:

The first woman to become muslim is khadiga

Abu lahab the prophets uncle is mean

Hashim was the crusher of bread

Muhammeds best friend is abu baker

Khalid bin waleed never lost a battle

The muslims fought the romans

The angles cut the prophets chest open & cleaned his heart

Muhammed was born in the year of the elephant

Prophet muhammed visited Musa in jannah

Muhammed was an orphin

Purple team:

When he bilt the masjed it had leaves on top

Hashim got married in Madina

The cafirs tried to break down the kabaa

I learned how good the muslims are

Bilal was African

Hamza was killed by someone through a arrow sword through him

I learned how strong Allah is

Wahshi kiled hamza

Ali was fighting with the big man

In a war Jafar got both his hands chopped off

Pictures from the Seminar:

We hanged up Kabahs and Palm trees all around the place and gave them to the kids as a souvenir in the end

One of the Posters

The Art corner

Registration table

Our Kabah =) It was so much fun making this, only thing missing was the arabic text

We drew something that said Muhammed Rasulullah and then cut it up into a jigsaw kind of thing and had each group color it, when we put it together this is how it turned out.

It was a lot (!) of fun but very tiring at the same time. I’m losing my voice and have a slight headache but it was totally worth it. Inshallah I’ll post our procedures, materials, and everything like that sometime soon.

It’s been a while since I posted, and it’s been a longer time since my last project…

One of my friends and I thought of doing some kind of project for the kids in our community this summer. We decided to do a Seerah Seminar/Workshop for kids ages 7-12. In our community, when ever you want to make an event you have to send in a proposal to the masjid board, so we typed ours up and gave it to them last month. I received the reply just today and they told us that we can hold the workshop at the masjid on the 26th and the 27th of June. So now we have to rush to finish everything in less than two weeks.

If you want to volunteer send me an email inshallah or leave a comment below

April 15 (today) marks the end of the first Pen Marks Competition and we have a winner:

Pen Marks Magazine by NUR

Congrats! I’ll be emailing you your prize inshallah

The deadline for submitting in names for the Pen Marks Competition was on Thursday. To figure out what name would work best with an Islamic magazine for kids, I decided to let some little kids decide. Every Saturday there’s a Quran and Arabic class for the kids at the Masjid. I went there this morning and waited until they finished before asking them to pick their favorite names. After that, I took the top five and made a poll.

*I have to admit the kids were trying to pick the names that their friends picked lol so it may be a little inaccurate or biased or whatever. Sorry!

Now you get to decide which name is the best

*Update: I’ll close the poll on the 15th inshallah

Assalamu Alaykum,

Welcome to Pen Marks’s first competition/contest

What: Send in a list of up to 5 names for an Islamic Kid’s Magazine

When: Deadline is April 8 2010

Where: Post your submissions by commenting on this post

Prize: To be announced (Don’t worry its going to be great and not one of those lame prizes lol)

Basically a couple of us are working on an Islamic Magazine for Kids ages 7-12 and we need some suggestions for some names. So get your thinking Kufi’s/Hijabs on!

Assalamu Alaykum,

The Masjid Makeover Project will be next Saturday inshallah. We have a google group up and running for ideas and brainstorming, if you haven’t received a link to it, email me inshallah, or just leave a comment here..

Also we’ll be having a bake sale on Friday after Jumuah to raise funds for some of the supplies that we may need. Right now everyone is bringing cleaning supplies from home but there are somet things that we’re going to have to go buy.

If you think you can make it to help us out with the bake sale on Friday let me know! If you can’t then see if you can donate a dish or something like that.

More updates coming up inshallah!

I have a term project due this Monday and the teacher told us we could present the project as a Word document, a booklet form, or as a scrapbook. I have three more days to finish it – well she gave us the project a month ago and told us to get started but I procrastinated till the last week lol.

So I got an idea for this month’s project: an Islamic Scrapbook

We’re still in the begginning stages for last month’s project but I love multitasking. And I think this one should probably take less time. A few Jumuah’s ago, the khateeb was talking about how we can become true Mu’mineen, believers. He said something like, in order to become true Mu’mins we have to do what the believers do. And we can figure that out by going back to the Quran and looking at all the verses that start with ‘Oh you who believe…”

So inshallah I’m planning on doing two scrapbooks.

One has all the Oh you who believe verses, along with reflections, visual aids, quotes and things like that.

The second has all the Allah loves those who… and all the Allah doesn’t like… verses, with reflections, visual aids, quotes, and things like that.

For the scrapbook album I got two of them (one red, and one light lavender) from the Joann Fabrics store. That store is really pricey though. The really nice albums are like 25 dollars. I just got two simple ones for 9 dollars each. You can make your own album too with cardboard and things like that, but I didn’t feel like doing that.

For the verses, I can always ask Sheikh google and find some list, but if I really want to benefit from this, I think I should go and find the verses for myself. This way, I’ll be inshallah getting ajr for reading the Quran and it’ll be more of a challenge.

If anyone else wants to try this out, you’re welcome to use my ideas Send me the pictures if you ever make one!

Assalamu Alaykum,

Remember last month I said I was going to post up my projects every month? Well I didn’t do much on January – just a bulletin board acutally maybe I’ll post up the pictures Anyways for this month and probably the next one too, I want to take part of the Masjid Makeover project that is being conducted by 1000GoodDeeds.com

The aim and intention of the masjid makeover project is to beautify and clean up our masjids. To promote team work. Develop project management and negotiation skills. Encourage going green and earth friendly behavior. The most important of all is to learn to do deeds selflessly for the pleasure of Allah.

The deadline is April 30. Just a heads up to all the Portland Sisters that read my blog, make sure you reply back to your emails!