Five Pillars of Islam Lapbook

This is an example of a simple introduction to the five pillars of Islam, suitable as a project for younger learners. This lapbook was made by a friend’s five year old son.

This project was made during Ramadan, that is why the cover refers to fasting. For colouring pages for a lapbook cover, try Islamic Lapbooking.

I think the pictures explain the content of this lapbook. The flip flap book on the Virtues of Ramadan opens to show bits of information in little “windows”. The layered book on salaah illustrates both the order of the prayers and their timings. Notice that the shade of the papers used illustrates the day, night, dawn and dusk skies.

Altogether this is a very visual lapbook, with use of colour and illustration to highlight the key facts. Great for younger learners.

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Preschool lapbook, Allah made the World

This is a very simple preschool Islamic Studies lapbook that I made last summer with my daughter. At the time we were also studying the name of Allah, Al-Khaliq, the Creator. We made a poster to display the name at that time. Looking back  I think it would be good to make “Al-Khaliq” the centrepiece of the front cover of the lapbook.

 

Inside the lapbook I made simple shape folds on the following themes:

Allah made trees (tree shape)

Allah made everything (wave shaped). This may seem like an unnecessary category, but I wanted to include the sun, stars, fire, mountains and so on, and needed a simple way to group them. I did not want to make a long list!

Allah made fruit (orange shaped)

Allah made animals (turtle shell shaped)

Allah made insects (woodlouse shaped)

Allah made birds (nest shaped)

Allah made vegetables (onion shaped)

Inside each fold we stuck example pictures. Some of these were cut out from leaflets I had, most of the others were taken from colouring books. To add more colour we stuck cut outs from a flower catalogue in the gaps.

This is a very simple project to do. It practises sorting skills and how to categorise, teaches vocabulary (names of the vegetables etc), and teaches a basic Islamic concept. Not to mention cutting, sticking and colouring skills.

 

These are the folds I chose. There are so many more you could add; Allah made me/ my family, using photos; Allah made flowers, planets, reptiles…etc. Much of the learning for this project takes place as your child chooses what categories to include, so be sure to include the child in the planning and design!

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Pleasing Allah Lapbook (for under 7s)

I took the idea for this lapbook from a set of lessons devised some years ago by a friend. The original lessons were given to a group and involved lots of role play, discussions and verbal games. I did not feel that the lessons in their original form could be easily delivered to only one or two children, but I wanted to present the same concepts. I just needed a different format.

The project begins from the ayat on the cover of the lapbook: “And I (Allah) created not the jinn and mankind except that they should worship Me (Alone).”  Adh-Dhariyat: 56.

The concepts are as follows:

To explain the meaning of worship (to be understood by young children) as pleasing Allah, obeying Him, and doing what He commands us to do.

To emphasise that worship of Allah is an integral part of our everyday lives, and should be the intention behind our every action.

To relate the concept of worship to the reality of the life of a young child, by giving them practical things they can do now, to worship Allah. For this reason actions such as Hajj or paying zakat are not included as these are not things a young child can do. However salaah is included, as young children can always join in the salaah, to the best of their ability.

There are many, many examples which could be included in such a lapbook project, but to avoid the work becoming too lengthy, and thereby boring I have limited the content. This is a very flexible project which is easy to personalise to match the experiences of the child. For example, a child whose father is often able to take him to the mosque could include that, a child with very elderly or sick relatives could include the sunnah actions towards visiting and looking after them. The project could also be used to positively encourage types of behaviour a child may be struggling with, for example good table manners, playing nicely with siblings, sharing and so on.

For this particular project I worked with a friend, and with her help the children managed to produce some artistic folds to present their learning, maashAllah. Of course there was lots of discussion too!

This photo shows the booklet on salaah, designed to look like a prayer mat, using felt; a booklet on eating halal food and a colouring page about exchanging gifts and being kind to eachother. Even though children cannot buy gifts themselves they can certainly make gifts, or give one of their toys to another child.

Several times in this lapbook I have made use of Islamic colouring sheets. These particular sheets were given to me by another friend and I don’t know where they came from. You may find useful colouring pages for this project here. Other links can be found at Islamic Lapbooking.

The colouring book “Our Way Of Life” contains many pages suitable for this project. (Can be found in Islamic bookshops, including online bookshops).

 

The fold about exchanging the salaam was cut from a colouring page. It opens up to show two people exchanging the salaam, with the words in the speech bubbles.

 

Summary of contents:

1. Salaah. Prayer is worship, and the names of the prayers inside a prayer mat styled booklet.

2. Eating halal food. There may be occasions where children want to buy non-halal food (eg. sweets or yoghurts containing gelatine), and we have to tell them they can’t have that particular product. It may help them to understand that by being careful to choose halal foods they are worshipping Allah.

3. Being kind to one another and exchanging gifts. Loving for your brother what you love for yourself.

4. Reading and learning the Quran

5. Being good to parents.

6. Using the greeting of “Assalamualaykum”.

7. Dawah. (explained as telling others about Islam.)

8. Making dua.

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Ants Lapbook

This lapbook, by a friend’s son, is an excellent example of how a lapbook can be used to gather information on a current topic of interest. It really is a way for a child to write his own information book, on a subject he is interested in.

You can see above that this lapbook was made by sticking two folders together, (the yellow and the green). On the left of the picture there is a section on references to ants in the Quran.

This lapbook is packed with facts! There are many layers, lots of card flaps to lift. Much of the information, exercises and wordsearch have been printed off from online sources.

Some of the information used here came from Enchanted Learning.

For more information you can google ants kids. That gave me the following useful links:

Pest World

Kids konnect

Homeschooling explore ants

Ant Cam

In this section wool was used to outline the structure of the nest.

Child led lapbooking! Enjoy!

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Salaah Lapbook

This lapbook was a long project, taking roughly the time between Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Adha. It is not about the movements of the prayer, or the words to be recited in prayer, as I think these are easiest learnt in a practical way. Instead it is about various other aspects of and around the prayer. This lapbook was the work of both my sons, so sometimes there are two versions of the same piece of work, presented side by side, or one under the other.

I chose a simple, useful and practical cover page, as my sons are not interested in colouring or art work!

To make this lapbook I stuck together two file folders, one a square cut (greetings card style) folder and the other a manilla folder, which I opened out, trimmed the flaps off and fixed the left flap to half of the right side of the square cut folder. So, the right side you can see here folds to the right again, with plenty more underneath it!

On the top left in the picture above is a piece of writing describing how the Prophet (saw) was informed of the numbers of daily prayers on his visit to the Heavens, and how Musa (as) advised him to request that the number of prayers be reduced, until it was fixed at 5.

Beneath that is a fan book, listing the prayers, their times and rakaats.

You can get a copy of that here. Salaah fan book

On the right side is a list of the pillars of salaah. (One list by each boy – same list) Beneath that is a hadith relating to prayers being the first thing we will be called to account over on the Day of Judgement.

Once that flap has been folded back you can see where the two folders have been joined, under the printed page.

The printed part is a summary of ways of developing kushoo, there is a second page underneath, (they are stapled at the top). I took this information from the book “33 Ways of developing Khushoo in Salaah”, by Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid, which I downloaded from A2Youth.com. I found my way to this ebook via this useful blogpost. I spent several sessions going through the book with the boys, they made notes then wrote the notes up on the computer.

On the right of the picture the “Do” and “Do not” fold, opens to lists of the makruh (disliked) and mandoub (recommended) actions of salaah.

In this section there are two layer books listing vocabulary related to salaah, with definitions. the lined paper inserts contain paragraphs on what khushoo is, and why it is important, (also taken from book mentioned above). The blue pocket is entitled “It is fard to make sujood on 7 parts of the body”. The little cards inside list those parts. Finally, the “conditions for prayer” are listed on petal like sections. The templates for these folds can be found at Homeschool Share.

Whatever information in this lapbook project is correct is from the mercy of Allah (swt), any mistakes are mine.

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