Helping Hands: Hadhrat Abbas Activity

Salam Alaykum!

Muharram at school has been a bit hectic! We have been having many great discussions and doing some great projects. Here is a project I did recently with the 2nd graders.

We spoke about Hadhrat Abbas and how he went to get water for his beloved niece Sakina (sa), as well as the other children, but that he was unable to get them water because the enemies cut off his hands. The children were very touched by the story, and many already knew it, but they enjoyed hearing it again.

We talked about how Hadhrat Abbas sacrificed his life and lost his hands for the sake of his Imam (a), and how we should also try to serve our Imam, as this will help us to please Allah (swt). We talked about how we can use our hands in the way of Allah (swt) and did this activity.

Materials:

• Black Cardstock
• Pastels or chalk
• Silver/gold sharpies
• Caption Template (Available Here)
• Glue sticks

Procedure:

1.  On the whiteboard, brainstorm a list of actions you can do with your hands that will help Islam. Some ideas: washing the dishes, helping parents, cleaning the masjid, giving sadaqah, praying salah, feeding the needy, reciting qur'an
2. Hand each student a black cardstock. Have them glue the caption on top so that they know how much room they have for their hand. For older kids, they can write the caption.
3. In pencil, have them trace their hand and write their name in the center. Then, on each finger, they can write how they can use their hands to serve Islam.
4. Have them trace their hand in pastel/chalk.
5. Have them trace their name and their 5 deeds in gold or silver sharpie.

Our 12 Imams Flapbook

I have been trying to encourage the students to learn and eventually memorize the names of our 12 Imams. Some of them are more familiar with these names than others. I had them make a flapbook at the beginning of the year. As we discuss an Imam, I have the students fill in their books, with a few (up to 5) fast facts about the lifetime of the Imam (AS). On the top portion, they draw a picture, usually having to do with a story I tell them about this Imam.

We sometimes pray salat in our classroom, and at the end of the salat we do a short ziyarat. I have each of the students say the name of one of the 14 infallibles, and then the rest of the students repeat, in hopes that this will help them remember all the names in order. We also made cards that are strung across the classroom, to help them remember while they are saying the ziyarat.

 

Muharram/Safar Activities

The tragedy of Karbala is a huge part of our faith. Sometimes it can be challenging to teach this to younger kids in a way that will resonate with them, and come up with activities and projects.

Here are some resources that I have used:

http://www.saba-igc.org/Education/Madrasa/syllabus/books/Grade%201%20History%20Book.pdf - This is for 1st grade, which is what I teach, but on the website there are books for many grade levels.

"Tears for Karbala" - http://www.al-islam.org/gallery/kids/Books/tears/index.html

For the first days of Muharram, I went through stories with my children, like a mini-majlis, each day emphasizing on one or two of the heroes of Karbala. The resource above was great because it told the story in a couple pages of some of these people.

Muslim ibn Aqeel:

Mokhtarname (The Mukhtar Narrative), which is currently available on YouTube and http://www.shiasource.com/, has a very nice visual of Hazrat Muslim ibn Aqeel's story. You can show the part where Muslim is walking toward the court of ibn Ziyad and is slowly deserted by the people of Kufa (episode 7, about 48:05), up until the part where he fights the enemies (episode 8, about 12:40). I skip some parts in between, and also do not show his actual death.

Bibi Zainab's speech in the court of Yazid:

This clip does the job in giving a visual of Bibi Zainab and Imam Sajjad (AS)'s speech in Damascus. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvdpPggY04M&feature=player_embedded (starts at about 1:27). With the movie clips, the subtitles went too quickly for younger kids, so I dubbed. For older kids, this would be okay.

Other resources/activities:
*Crossword: Easy to make on http://www.theteacherscorner.net/. (If anyone knows how to attach word docs, please let me know!)
*Maps: These make it a lot easier for the kids to understand the events, since they spanned several cities and countries. A quick google search will lead to many helpful images. If you project it onto the board, you can draw a line showing the journey of the family of the Prophet (P). Here is one map I used:

*Art activity: acrostic poem. I had my students write acrositc poems with the word KARBALA. First, we brainstormed words with each of the letters. As a class, they were able to do this. For older kids, you may want them to do it on their own. Then, We wrote the word Karbala on a black paper vertically. We used chalk. They then wrote the words starting with each letter horizontally. Then, we glued the black construction paper onto a thicker white paper (almost like posterboard). I had them use a piece of plastic (like a tile) which they dipped in red paint, to smear on the white paper. The end result looked like this:

*Art/Language Arts: Flags. This is a project my 3rd/4th grade neighbor did with her students. Each flag has a word/phrase such as strength, importance of salat, helpful, sacrifice, truth, Islam, love for Allah, faithful, justice. Then comes a "dictionary definition" of each. After that is an example of this trait as it was shown in Karbala. The flags are then strung against a bulletin board.

I would love to hear your ideas/comments/suggestions/etc!