Teaching our kids the Quran: Strategies and Resources

One of the priorities of many Muslim Parents is to teach their children the Quran. We all recognise its importance, and many of us having not learnt it ourselves hope that it will be our kids that will raise our levels and dress us in the crown that parents of Quran learners wear.

Not all the kids are the same though, so the question that many parents keep asking each other, ‘how much has your kid learnt?’ when they are only three can sometimes be more of a pressure question than encouragement. Some kids have an amazing ability to grasp sounds and letters.

But most kids are not like that. They may not be able to even articulate words at 3 yet alone learn whole surahs. So what should our Quran learning strategy be for our kids?

The first strategy is to understand what kind of learner your child is and to teach him in that way. Children may learn best visually, by doing things with their hands (kinaesthetically), or by listening (auditory) or by a combination of many techniques. My own daughter is a very visual learner. She loves to see pictures, read stories and imagine things in her mind. Teaching her to learn surahs from the Quran meant that I chose Surahs that could be shown through pictures. Naturally we started with Surat Al Fil. 

I want to share with you this great site that is dedicated to illustrating ayat (verses) of the Holy Quran using lego.

The blogger uses lego to ’illustrate’ scenes and incidents narrated in the Quran. He then takes a photograph of these scenes with the relevant ayah (verse) added in. This may help children to associate the verses with their meanings InshAllah. Helping children to recreate similar images will make the Quran much more alive in their minds.

http://readwithmeaning.wordpress.com  

Another way is the traditional method of listening to a sheikh and repeating after him. This software is one I particularly like because you can select from a variety of reciters and verses and repeat them for children to learn.

http://www.houseofquran.com/qsys/quranteacher1.html

For those of you who have ipads/iphones this is an app that I bought for my daughter for $0.99 that has all the surahs for juz' amma with the voice of Mishary Rashed. It highlights the words as they are read and is very easy to use.

http://download.cnet.com/Memorize-Quran-for-Kids/3000-20415_4-75361021.html   

Finally don’t forget to make it fun! Track your kids progress through a fun chart, and offer incentives every time they learn a new surah.

Looking forward to seeing other methods and strategies that anyone else is using :)