Color Tablet Words

Do you remember these color tablets from Montessori? They are a wonderful manipulative and easy to make too! A piece of wood, paint samples and some modge podge makes very inexpensive color tablets, read more on Living Montessori Now

Bookmarks & Log- Updated

When we went to the RIS conference in Toronto this past winter, we came home with gifts for friends. Two of our gifts were that of books. I love books, do you remember our bookshelf from our schoolroom post.

I like the smell of books, the feel of books, the pictures in books, and the language used in books. I like having them in my home, in my purse, in my bookbag and not having to drive to a library or a store to read it. I have not moved into the era of Kindle and ibooks, I still enjoy visiting small businesses that sell books especially old used books. We have a wonderful used dictionary from 1936, one of our most cherished books.

It's almost like the song, "Make new friends, but keep the old, one is Silver and the other GOLD"

Books, real books, made out of paper are Gold. . .

So we gave the gifts of books, two books to one family, our gold with some extra special gems added to it.
Humble Dad gave the dad of this family a special book written by a wonderful Scholar of our time, Imam Zaid Shakir: "Treatise for the Seekers of Guidance" The gem: Imam Zaid signed the book.

Their children are named after the four greatest women in Islam, so we gave them  Noble Women of Faith: Asiya, Mary, Khadija, Fatima



The gem: we included our popular bookmarks with the book.

These bookmarks and booklogs are free as everything on our site, be sure to download and read. Even if you own a ipad or kindle, don't forget what is gold and read a real book once in a while.

Free Downloads
Noor Janan Bookmarks & Booklogs

Love Letters

I recently started a pen pal in another State, sending real letters with a real stamp. It not only provides a genuine pleasure to receive a letter in the mail, but also there is so much pleasure and personal reward in sitting down to write someone. This motivated me to start my Beloveds on letter writing. We had many thank you's we wanted to send, so I went searching the web for Thank you templates. 

Arabic Vocabulary

After learning the Arabic letters, we can learn how to write words. If you have not visited our post on Arabic letters, please do so now as it has the information about the Movable Arabic letter cards.

Arabic Letters

I am publicly releasing our Arabic Letters and Arabic Vocabulary pages. This has been an extremely hard project for me because I am not an Arabic speaker, I have never taken a class, and learning new languages has never come easy for me like it did for my mother who is fluent in Italian, and has working knowledge of the other Romance languages.

Playdough and Puffy Paint

We made Playdough and Puffy Paint to use for our Arabic Letters and Free play.

Mawlid

I am not here to argue the Mawlid, or love of the Prophet.
There are many who are more qualified who have written, talked, and argued about it.
Love of the Prophet for me is not something that happens just on one day, it should happen everyday.

Mawlid by Moonlight by my friend Hina Khan- Mukhtar is a good short read that begins:

The flickering flame of a candle casts a light on a child’s face, causing it to glow…and something magical happens.  The six-year-old opens his mouth to sing salawaat on the Prophet…and hearts soften.  An older sister takes her brother by the hand as they march off to the beat of a daff, singing nasheeds under a full moon, falling in line behind fifty other young ones…and tears spring to my eyes.

Why Mawlid? by Ibn Percy is also a good short read, one of my favorite quotes below: (link no longer available)

The mawlid is not fard, but what we do in a mawlid is fard. Allah commands us to send peace and blessings upon Muhammad (33:56). So whether you call it mawlid, dhikr, salawat, etc. Do it. Just do it. Your heart will be at ease and I guarantee you will feel better.

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf also does a video called  What is the Mawlid?

Update: After someone called their anti-Mawlid propaganda "Dawah" for the Muslims. I think more Scholarly information about Mawlid should be posted. Especially if you been harassed or called deviant as I have been called lately. I am not a big on debating, I believe "to you be your way and to me be mine", however this information is more for people who want to feel confident or reassurance in their traditional practices.