Pillars of Islam Scrapbook

My daughter, Samira has recently been working on this wonderful little scrapbook all about the Pillars of Islam.

I came across a file at the Talibiddeen Jr. Blog which contains all the elements needed to make this scrapbook, masha’Allah.

She completed a page on each of the 5 Pillars of Islam, which we cut out and pasted down onto black card, then we bound the book together with string.

The first page shows what the 5 Pillars of Islam actually are, with the names written on the columns. And the next page begins with the first and most important pillar – the declaration of faith – the Shahadah.

On the reverse side of the Shahadah page is a page all about the second pillar of Islam – Salat (prayer).

We discussed how important salat is and how it is the difference between being a Muslim or a disbeliever. We also talked about how the Salat is the first thing that Allah will look at on the Day of Judgement, hence the image of the Meezan (scales).

We also discussed how in Sujood, we are closest to Allah and that whilst in Sujood it is good to make lots of du’a (supplication).

We looked at the 5 daily prayers and we made a flower petal style mini book, that unfolds to reveal each of the names of the 5 prayers and how many rak’ah for each.

After the page on the Salat is a page dedicated to the third pillar of Islam – Zakat.

We discussed the two different types of Zakat – the annual zakat from one’s wealth and the Zakat ul Fitr, given during Ramadhan before the Eid prayer.

I explained how the Zakat ul Fitr must be given in the form of food so that even the poor people can enjoy the Eid day, and we discussed different kinds of food we can give, such as dates, wheat, barley, rice, fish, fruit, meat etc.

You may see the photo pasted to the bottom of the page with the warning that we must pay Zakat. This is based on the hadith of the Messenger of Allah, sall’Allahu alayhi wasalam, in which he said: The one who neglects to pay the (annual) zakat, while he has the means to, his wealth that he withheld from the poor will be turned into a snake on the Day of Judgement which will bite him on the face and neck.  

Then we learned about the fouth pillar of Islam – Saum ul Ramadhan – the fasting of the month of Ramadhan.

We made the flip circle mini book which breaks down the verses from Qur’an on the command to observe fasting during Ramadhan. I made a similar flip book with Yusef, my 8 year old, when he made his Ramadhan Lapbook. I originally found the template for this over at Umm Abdul Basir’s blog.

The pictures on each circle are originally from a colouring page available to print from the TJ Ramadan website.

We also put together the fasting cycle wheel, available courtesty of Raising Muslims blog.

As the wheel spins it shows the times of day when Muslims begin their fast, break their fast, when they eat and when they don’t eat.

We also included this element from the scrapbook pages which I cleverly managed to turn into a fan-wheel. It shows a typical day of fasting, which include things such as doing good deeds, and controling one’s anger etc.

When folded up, the fan-wheel is wedge shaped and fits neatly into the top corner. It can then be fanned out to form the complete circle showing a typical day in Ramadhan.

And the final page is all about the 5th Pillar of Islam – Hajj – Pilgrimage to the Ka’bah in Makkah.

We talked all about the journey of Hajj, making tawaf of the Ka’bah, performing Sai’y between the hills of Safa and Marwa, heading off to Mina and Muzdalifah, the stoning of the Jamaraat, the Miracle of the Well of Zam-Zam etc.

Then Samira put together this fold-out, 3D model of the Ka’bah. She has been desperate to make one ever since Yusef made one for his Hajj Lapbook.

As a separate activity a couple of years ago, I got the kids to make their own model of the Ka’bah from a cuboid net, which they decorated with gold glitter around the edging and the stuck on miniature photos of the Ka’bah door and the black stone.

I thought it would be nice to make something similar that could be contained in a lapbook, so instead of taping the cuboid together, I worked out a way to fold it so that it can lie flat when the lapbook is closed and can be erected when the lapbook is opened, masha’Allah.

And that completes this neat little project.

Masha’Allah, Alhamdulillah!

If you would like the files to make the 3D Ka’bah you will find them available to download for free from my file sharing widget. You can find it as you scroll down the menu bar on the right side of the screen (it’s a white box containing yellow file folders).

My Son’s First Lapbook ~ Pillars of Islam

My son, at 6 years old had a pretty sound understanding of the Pillars of Islam, masha’Allah. But I decided I wanted him to review and to present what he understood in a more creative form. I had recently learned about lapbooking from a friend, also a home-educator, who has been a source of great inspiration for me.  So I decided a lapbook would be the perfect way for him to present his understanding of the 5 Pillars of Islam. Lapbooking is creative, it’s fun and it really helps information stick in kids heads.

Although his first lapbook isn’t the more common style of lapbook filled with pockets and pop-outs and mini-books, it’s still effective and great for beginners. 

What is Lapbooking?

The first thing we did was to get two square pieces of card and glue them together with one piece slightly over-lapping the other. Then we made two folds as can be seen in the first photo.

With the topic of the lapbook being the Pillars of Islam, we thought it would be a good idea to make the pages look like pillars. So we chose stone-coloured card and drew pillars to decorate the top of the pages and the front cover as can be seen in Photos 2 and 3.

We discussed the First Pillar of Islam – SHAHADAH. What it is, what it meant and how to recite it in Arabic and English. Then he coloured in some Arabic Calligraphy that depicts the Shahadah with the English language equivalent underneath and stuck it down onto the page.

He then continued doing a page on each one of the Pillars, adding coloured drawings, a mini lift-the-flap and glitter to illustrate the pages. We would discuss each pillar and what he wanted to write about before he started each page. It took him two afternoons in total to complete the book.

Below are the three inside pages of the lapbook, the next Pillar – Ramadhan – continues onto the back of the page on Zakat and likewise, the page on Hajj continues onto the back of the page on Salat until the whole booklet looks like a fold out leaflet.

When planning the page on Ramadhan, we thought it would be nice to add in a symbol of the Crescent Moon to better understand the ruling on sighting the moon to mark the beginning of Ramadhan. My son thought it would be nice to decorate it with silver glitter. After deciding what he wanted to write about on the page he soon found out that he didn’t actually have enough space, so I suggested to him that we add in a mini lift-the-flap which covers the Sunnah of Iftar as you can see in the following photos.

We had quite a lot of discussion on the final Pillar – Hajj – and we had to break down the information into short snippets in order to include the important points but to be honest we could have done with another page to include all the finer details about the rituals of Hajj. But insha’Allah, perhaps we could make a lapbook dedicated to Hajj in the near future. My son illustrated the page with a coloured drawing of the Ka’aba and I mentioned to him that it might be a good idea to colour the faces of the people in different colours to show that Muslims come together in unity from all over the world (although this can’t really be seen in the picture below because it was taken at night time in poor light).