Workshop and Tour at the Museum of Islamic Art - Doha

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

Museum of Islamic Art - Doha

Alhamdulillaah we are slowly starting our out of home activities. Yesterday we booked a workshop and a tour at the Museum of Islamic Art. These workshops are free of charge and makes it easy for homeschoolers as we are able to book sessions during the day.

Museum of Islamic Art inside the building!

Every now and the Museum of Islamic Art announces workshops and other Kids activities. And we hope to participate in workshops that are suitable for us inshaa Allaah. If you are in Doha, keep an eye on these workshops and kids activities and book via emailing the Education Centre at MIA.

Our homeschooling group here in Doha attended the following workshops.

Kids Ages 3 - 5  had Roll and ink workshop. The children were taken to the Museum and shown patterned plates with floral designs.


Then they carved their own floral prints into styrofoam. Using rollers, children rolled paint onto their strofoam and made prints of their design on coloured paper using blue and black. The little ones really enjoyed the whole session.

 

Kids ages 6 to 10 had the 2D Geometry Science in Art Workshop. The kids were taken to the Museum and shown different Islamic Art and explained as to what is Islimi, Calligraphy and Geometry. It was very interactive that even we learnt about the different shapes and what it means in using them in Islamic Art. The collections were beautiful too. 

The kids also learnt the number of sizes of each shape such as octagon, hexagon,  etc and how each shape is used in Islamic Art displayed at the Museum.

Then they were taken to the workshop room which was so lovely and they were taught to use a compass and draw. This was indeed a great experience for the kids and I have not used the compass with Maimoonah yet. So this introduction really made things easier for me.


The very talented enthusiastic instructor taught the kids about how the Muslims those days used the stars and found their way and how precisely they used these Islamic Art.


Kids using the compass followed instructions and made different geometric designs. She taught them what is Intersect and Vesica and how to use all this and draw this shape.

Kids did each circle using the compass and following instructions.

 

 Then they were taught how to use the points and draw a hexagon and complete the design.

After the workshop kids were taken on a short tour of the museum and with that the session ended. This workshop gave the homeschooled kids a nice different learning environment and all of them enjoyed. We hope to book more suitable workshops in the future too Inshaa Allaah. We sincerely thank the dedicated Staff of the Education Centre of Museum of Islamic and Art and the management for having us and welcoming us. 

My Heart is a Pomegranate: A Youth Anthology - Our First Print Publication

       بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

Alhamdulillaah, if you've been following this blog for over a decade, you'll remember how our homeschooling journey began with Maimoonah, who was almost two years old. You can find posts here detailing the day we officially started homeschooling and documenting her journey over the years. Today, she is a 17-year-old young lady, Alhamdulillaah. Time has flown by, and Allaah has blessed us with countless blessings.

Maimoonah never attended school, but she completed her IGCSEs, earned a Higher Diploma in English, and is now in her final year of a BA in English and English Literature. She hopes to begin her Master's soon, bi idhnillaah. 

One of the beautiful blessings of Allaah for us is living in Doha. Alhamdulillaah! We started our homeschooling journey in Doha, and Maimoonah has grown along with the places that nurtured and encouraged her writing skills. When we first came to Doha, there were no libraries, museums, or major activities for children.

Qmuslimah a community of expat sisters came together to create a library and we were blessed to be part of it and Maimoonah benefitted a lot from that initiative too. 

Alhamdulillaah, Qatar has advanced rapidly over the years, focusing more on literacy and building spaces catering to children's development. Maimoonah was one of the few homeschooled children who loved attending workshops at the Museum of Islamic Art and participating in Maktabah story times at the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art when they first opened. She continued to flourish with them as she grew, and when the Qatar National Library opened, she was thrilled. It has become her second home, offering incredible resources and state-of-the-art facilities. May Allaah bless the rulers and authorities for creating such safe, enriching environments that align with our values and morals and for continuing to support us. Aameen.

Why am I sharing all this? What's the connection between this introduction and the title of this post?

Today, I want to share a beautiful milestone of a homeschooled child. At 17, Maimoonah has published her first book on Amazon. But what I love most about this achievement is how she managed to gather like-minded youth, providing them with a platform to showcase their talents, too. From the start, my intention with blogging was to share beneficial resources and experiences with other families. This anthology that Maimoonah published aligns perfectly with that original purpose.

We've published many digital books for children over the years, but I never intended to venture into print publishing. While many advised me to do so, the nature of our work and the community we serve made it impractical, especially with Amazon's high costs for print publishing while living in the Gulf. I didn't explore that avenue for these reasons and the other complexities involved.

However, Maimoonah took the initiative and was determined to make her dream come true with the permission of Allaah. This entire project was her's. Since she is not yet 18, she couldn't publish the book independently, so it went through me.

The idea, the design, the front and back cover, formatting, calling for submissions, preparing contracts, communicating with contributors, marketing, and the entire process of publishing on Amazon were done single-handedly by her. May Allaah bless her. She also wanted Ustadh Abu Afnan Muhammad Abdullah to review the book, who graciously agreed and completed the reviewing and editing process. May Allaah reward him immensely. All of this was accomplished within just a couple of months, which, at her age, is truly a remarkable achievement and a blessing of Allaah to proclaim. Alhamdulillaah. 

My Heart is a Pomegranate: A Youth Anthology features nonfiction prose, poetry, short fiction, beautiful artworks, and thought-provoking musings from young Muslims. Maimoonah carefully handpicked each submission, maintaining the standards she aimed to produce while providing a platform for these talented young artists. In an era where AI-generated content is often misused, she ensured the originality of every piece, Alhamdulillaah.

We thank our young Muslimahs for their excellent contributions and hope they are pleased with the end result.

Alhamdulillaah, we have many resources for young children. But there's a considerable gap in catering to preteens and youth. While it's natural for us to focus on nurturing our children when they are small, it's equally important to continue supporting their spiritual, emotional, and intellectual growth as they mature and become responsible adults.

It reminds me of the statement of Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī when he would see a young Muslim:

  "Welcome to the individuals that the Prophet ﷺ  had advised us regarding. Make space for the youth in the gatherings and explain the narrations to them. You are the ones to inherit from us, and you are the people of ḥadīth after we pass away." 

I am glad that this anthology has provided a much-needed safe space for young Muslimahs to express their thoughts and showcase the outstanding talents Allaah has blessed them with. It also allows the community to witness that our Muslim youth are truly the shining stars of the Ummah.

Please support them by purchasing the book from Amazon. The links are provided below. And please remember to leave a review on Amazon once you've read it. Share this with youth and families; it would make a wonderful Eid gift for a special Muslimah.

Purchase here

The Amazon UK link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0F223QNRH

The Amazon US link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F223QNRH

The Amazon Canada link:

 https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0F223QNRH

Nature Challenge - March 2014 & Keep it Green Family Day

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

The topic for the month of March - Nature Challenge conducted by Tasawory (Qatar Museum Authority) was Wild Animals of Qatar. We did not have any books on this so we looked up on the internet and Maimoonah came up with this poem and submitted.

Wild Animals of Qatar

Brown long sand snakes
moves through the sand dunes,
looking for its prey.

Fork Tongue Desert Monitor,
a metre long aggressive lizard,
ready to eat with a bite.

Ethiopian Hedgehog,
hiding in the rocks,
ready to fight a big snake.

Arabian Gazelle,
with a long pair of horns,
shows its thin frame.

A Kangaroo Cat,
comes out in the night,
to throw sand at the enemy.

Nocturnal Fox,
with bat like ears,
roaming the dunes in the dark.

Lonely Sand Cats,
living in the sand caves,
dig deep into the dunes for prey

One day I hope to see them all,
and praise the Lord of all.

With this the Nature Challenge Contest ended. They organized a wonderful Keep it Green Family event at  one of the beautiful parks in Qatar - MIA Park and held some activities for kids. They also handed over the prizes for the winning contestants.

The winning entries were displayed!

At the Family day they had three stations, one was planting a seed and watching it grow. they were asked to decorate their plastic bottle pots and plant a seed, take it home and see it grow.

 

They were also given a small activity pack at this station by the Quraanic Botanical Gardens - Doha which had details about the trees mentioned in the Qur'aan and some fun matching, finding the difference, finding the way activities and a puzzle.

 

The next station was doing some crafts using recycled paper and materials and storytelling at the Mangroves.

The final station had a sensory activity. Exploring the under water shore animals. There was a sand box in which some sea creatures were buried under the sand and the kids were asked to find them.

Finally Maimoonah picked up her prize and certificates. Alhamdulillaah, they were very well thoughtfully chosen valuable gifts for these winning entries, Baarakallaah Feeha

Winning Poetry Entries

The Gift pack had a set to plant seeds and watch them grow.

A Junior snorkeling set!

A beautiful huge kite!

And the most valuable of all I guess a set of Qatar Nature Explorers Encyclopedia. They are so wonderful!

 

 

 

 

We thank the Qatar Museum Authority and Ms. Angela Ruggles for such a wonderful initiative and providing our kids a great opportunity to contribute for this. We hope they would continue to have many such challenges and events Inshaa Allaah.

Nature Challenge and First Poem!

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

Qatar Museum Authority has invited us to participate in their Nature Challenge that would be going on for the next 4 months and we are hoping to participate Inshaa Allaah. Each month they give us a topic or a challenge and the participants Ages 4 - 12 residing in Qatar can submit (online) a poem or an artwork based on the monthly theme. A child can submit any number of entries. A winner will be selected for each month. Winners would be awarded a Nature Kit in April 2014 Inshaa Allaah.

Here is a brief detail about the Challenge taken from their website

This competition is intended to engage children in Qatar with nature and the world around them.

Our hope is that children will create a community map, showing the world as they see, imagine,

and dream it to be. Please support your students and children by helping them to understand the

monthly challenge and encourage their creative responses with artwork, poems, or short stories. 

Please remember, each entry must be a child’s original work based on the monthly theme in

order to be valid. 

More details could be found here.

This month's Challenge is 

"Imagine your favorite green space in Qatar. What does it look like? Why do you enjoy going there?"

I told Maimoonah about this whole thing today and explained to her and showed what other kids have uploaded. She was very excited and liked the whole idea. Since I know Maimoonah does not write poems, I have been cracking my mind thinking what kind of artwork would be best for the theme and in fact asked another dear sister to send me some ideas from a book that she had with her as well. (Jazzakillaah Khayr for sending me sis it was helpful for us even though we did not do them). But surprisingly she wanted to enter the competition but opted to write a poem for this month!

Now, we have been studying about few poems in the Nelson English Book for the last few months. I like the way they introduce this subject in this book, where they make it easy for kids to attempt writing poems. Especially this one!

 

But even though she writes many stories and uses lots of new vocabularies, so far she has not written any poems. Any way Alhamdulillaah I though this is an opportunity to enhance this skill as she is saying she wants to submit a poem and an artwork every month Inshaa Allaah.

So the first thing I did was asking her to choose her favourite green space in Qatar. She chose Dahl Al Hamam Park. This is a beautiful park known as the "House of the Doves". If you go to the link above you will know the history of it!

Then I told her to write down the two important things that she needs to include in the poem according to the theme and list them. 

While she was writing, we were discussing about all what she used to do in the park, her feelings, what she sees there and how well we use poetry to express this and so on... I have been thinking for sometime when is she really going to embark on writing poems and Alhamdulillaah this challenge came at the right time.

Then I told her now think of lines and rhyming words and include all what you have listed in a very nice interesting way and reminded her not to forget the Creator of all those lovely things she has listed.

So she wrote.

Dahl Al Hamam Park

A Feeling of Bliss,

Happiness in this,

Bending trees greet me,

Cats eating popcorns,

Looking cheekily at me.

Little spooky woods,

Mysterious cave,

Grass like waves,

A sandy playground,

All make me laugh.

I adore....

sledding down the hills,

Rolling over with pals,

Picnic with family,

Feeding chirping birds,

play with sand

And dawdle back home

Thanking my Lord!

Then we went outside on a nature walk to collect some items that we could use for decoration. She collected dead grass, sticks. feathers and fallen flowers. Thats all we could find! 

Then she used them to decorate her poem. This is the final product!

 

Then she typed out the information and a brief description about her entry and uploaded a picture for the competition.

Prophets Sent by Allaah - Idris Alaihissalaam

We learnt about Prophet Idris alahissalaam this week. We used Ibn Katheer's Stories of Prophets for this.

We pasted the Prophets Fact Sheets and recorded about him alahissalaam.

She traced this.

We learnt that Prophet Idris was the first Prophet to be sent to mankind after Aadam and Sheeth Alahissalaam. We also learnt that he was born while Aadam alahissalaam still had three hundred and eighty years more to live!

We learnt that he was the First Man to write with a pen in this world. We pasted some pictures with pen, ink and so on along with our review questions. Co incidently we visited the Museum of Islaamic Art here last weekend (Pictures and post about our visit will come shortly Insha Allaah!) and we saw many ink pots and pens all the Muslims used many many years ago. We spoke about it and remembered the great favour of Allaah that He taught us how to write.

Then we learnt that Allaah speaks about Prophet Idris in Soorah Maryam saying that "he was a truthful Prophet and Allaah raised him to a high station". We learnt his Story and learnt a bit about Malakal Mawth and how his soul was taken at the fourth heaven.

PS: I hear some sisters saying that they are having trouble in leaving a comment on my blog. Subhanallaah, I have no idea why and I have not done any settings changes. Any way those of you are finding difficult to leave a comment on the Darul Kitab Give away please mail me your comments at ummmaimoonah@gmail.com and I will post it Insha Allaah!

Nature Challenge - December

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

This month for the Qatar Museum Authority Nature Challenge Maimoonah had to write a poem on 

"Imagine and look up to the sky. What shapes do you see?  What stories are the clouds or the stars telling?" 

Since her success in the last month poem, she has been into looking for rhyming words to write poems and awaiting this month's challenge. 

So I asked her to write down all what she sees when she looks up in the sky. She went to the window looked up in the sky and wrote what she sees and what she used to see. Then I asked her to write what each of them look like for her and what she would want to do with them. She wrote on her note book. Then I asked her to put everything together and make the lines rhyme. So she wrote...

The Sky Like a Canopy

I see..............

Clouds like woolly sheep,

to cuddle and keep.

Sun like the yellow bright ball,

to play and crawl.

Moon like a rocking cradle,

to nest and label.

Twinkling stars like sequins,

to sprinkle the penguins.

Far away planets like tracing dots,

to doodle on the pots.

Flashing lightening like zig-zag,

to stop all our chit-chat

Colourful rainbow peeks out like an arch,

to go under and march.

Glory be to My Lord,

and hoping for His reward.

 

Compiling a Book Project!

Update: So Maimoonah won this contest Alhamdulillaah. And she has handed over the "Star" book to the Children's Library. Jazzakumullaah Khayr everyone for your kind words and encouragement.


The QMuslimah Children's Library organized a Book Compiling Project for kids of all ages. Alhamdulillaah we were able to use the Museum of Islamic Art Library - Doha premises and resources for this project. We sincerely thank the MIA Library Manager and the staff for accommodating us and supporting and encouraging our project.

Children of all ages participated. They had to choose a topic and do their planning and present the information in a form of a book. The most important aspect was that they had to link everything to Islaamic Sources and provide evidence from the Qur'aan and the Sunnah.

The session lasted for 4 hours and they used the MIA Library resources and the stationery materials we provided to compile their books with the help and guidance of the mothers according the age of the child.

Alhamdulillaah it was a great experience to do this with a group of kids in a different environment. Compiling a book is not new to us homeschoolers as we have done many lapbooks during these years and found them very interesting way of learning. But this experience was unique in the sense the environment was different. Though some of the kids were able to finish at the Library,  time was not enough. So they had to finish up the project at home and send the pictures for judging. The judging is not yet over. Inshaa Allaah will update the winner when it is done.

We thank all the kids and the moms for participating. Jazzakumullaah Khayr!

Maimoonah chose to do about Stars and there were many resources available at the MIA Library for this topic and we use the internet to get the Islaamic Sources. She was ready to write this time and did well with planning and presenting. Here is her book and there are some pictures of the books of the other kids too.

Nature Challenge - January

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

We entered the Nature Challenge organized by the Qatar Museum Authority for the month of January as well.

This month Maimoonah wanted to submit a Poem as well as an Artwork as the topic was "Under The Sea".

So for the Artwork she did the Under the Sea scene using the foil technique.

And for the poem, she picked up this wonderful book from the library and got inspired.

 

And wrote this poem. 

Amazing Seabed

What do I see,

Under the sea,

Awesome rainbow fish,

fearsome great white shark,

Enormous blue whales,

Notorious Manta rays,

Scanning hammerhead sharks,

Snouting seahorses,

Stinging jellyfish,

Hiding on the coral reef,

Five armed starfish,

Dive and calm dolphins,

Rumbling sea volcanoes,

pouring out sea lava,

Amazing seabed,

gift for eyes!

This month's challenge could be found here. Certificates and awards will be given to the winners in April, so next month will be the last Challenge I guess. Those who are in Qatar could still participate Inshaa Allaah!