The child's book
Twelve illustrated chapters, one a week.
Band B. Book one in the series
Standing.
A first term on the prayer
- Weeks
- 12
- Ages
- Ages seven to nine
- Books
- Two, as PDFs
- Price
- £19
Two books, and the things for the wall
Four files
The parent's guide
The lesson, word for word, with the pauses marked.
The twelve weeks wall chart
A3, for the wall. A square to fill in each day.
The cards to cut out
Twelve anchors, twelve door tags, one certificate.
The shape of a lesson
19 minutes, four evenings a week
- Wonder
- One question, or one strange fact, offered before anything is explained. It exists only to make your child lean forward.
- Story
- You read the passage aloud. Once. Telling them beforehand that it is only once is what makes them listen properly.
- Tell Back
- Your child retells it in their own words. This is not a test of the lesson. It is the lesson.
- Anchor
- One small thing to do, tied to something that already happens every day in your home. Then done daily for a week.
- Look Back
- Five quick questions. Three from this week, one from last week, one from a month ago.
The twelve weeks, in order
Contents
- 01
The gift that came from above
Isra and Miraj. Why this one command was received rather than sent
- 02
Clean before you come
Tahara. The two kinds of clean
- 03
Water, and what it carries away
Wudu step by step, and what leaves with the water
- 04
The call
The adhan, its words, and the first man to call it
- 05
Which way, and when
Qibla, the five times, and why they sit where they do
- 06
Allahu akbar
The takbir, and what it shuts out
- 07
What you are actually saying, one
Al Fatiha, the opening lines, and the answer to each
- 08
What you are actually saying, two
Guidance and the straight path
- 09
Down
Ruku and sujud. Why the body does this
- 10
Sitting
Tashahhud, the testimony, and sending peace
- 11
When it is hard
Distraction, laziness, a missed prayer, and returning
- 12
Standing together
Jamaah, the rows, Jumuah
Read a piece of it
The lesson, word for word
The whole opening of week two, exactly as it is printed.
Week two
Clean before you come
Everything you say is printed. Everything you do is printed in italic beside it. You are never asked to improvise, and you are never left wondering whether you have said enough.
20
Do you remember the last time we went to a wedding?
Let them answer, and let them tell you about it if they want to.
What did we do before we went?
Let them list it. Showered, new clothes, hair done, good shoes. Let them say it, not you.
Right. Now here is a question for you. Did the people at that wedding need us to be clean?
Pause.
Not really. They would have let us in either way. We did it because of what the day was. When something matters, you get ready for it, and nobody has to tell you. You just do.
Point to the clothes on the bed, and say nothing.
So. Five times a day, you are going to stand in front of Allah.
21
Two minutes at the checkout
The files are in your inbox before you have closed the tab.
Before you buy
The questions people ask
No. Where Arabic appears it is set out in full script so that your child sees it, with a transliteration beneath and an English translation beneath that. You are never asked to read the Arabic, and the guide says so in the front matter.
Everything taught is restricted to what the four Sunni schools hold in common. Where the schools differ, the difference is either set aside for a later book or stated plainly in the sources at the back, so that your family can follow its own practice. Nothing is taught as the only position when it is not.
Four short sittings a week, on whichever four days suit you. The first is the lesson itself and takes about twenty minutes. The other three are shorter, ten to fifteen minutes each. What matters is that the four fall on four separate days rather than being gathered into one long evening, because the spacing is the thing that makes it hold. The guide sets out a shape that most families settle into and then says plainly that the days are yours to move.
Begin where you left off. The term is built to be walked once, so there is no need to restart it, and squeezing two weeks into one removes the spacing that makes it work. Every week in the guide ends with what to do when that week did not go well, and it is there because most weeks do not go to plan.
No face is drawn on any human or animal, and no prophet is depicted in any form. What is drawn instead is architecture, sky, water, light, textiles, doorways and geometry, seen from the child's own eye height. We draw the place a thing happened, not the person it happened to.
Nothing ships without review by a qualified scholar. Every verse is referenced by chapter and verse and every narration by collection and grading. Weak narrations are not used, and where a well known one has been deliberately left out, the guide says so and explains why.