Ramadan

Everytime Ramadan comes, I will go into a frenzy about how little I've covered with the children in terms of Islamic studies and all the other things I have to cover about Ramadan and Eid come falling down on me like the books Sarah takes off my shelves, something she believes is her duty as part of this family. I guess it comes to the point that Islam is not about one month in a year, that we have to do it everyday, but Ramadan is a special month were everything is illuminated by degrees and I think it's important for children to see the essence of Ramadan and look beyond the tests of hunger and tiredness, to see the bigger picture. This special month has always been a rite of passage for me since I had kids. There is the difficulty in waking up, the moaning and complaining of hunger, the lack of interest or deliverance from hunger when the iftar is served and the dread of the next day. As for myself; the wondering of what to cook, feeding the baby while fasting, trying to keep the children occupied without much outdoor activity. For this year I am planning to continue with the holiday memorisation programme which the boys went through during the school holidays where they memorised: 1. Doa Iftitah 2. Doa Qunut 3. Ayatul Qursi 4. The 99 names of Allah 5. Tahiyat Akhir As the boys have covered most of it, I plan to go into the meanings of the five and continue with the surahs that they have memorised so far. At the moment, for hafazan, Ihsan reads the Quran and listen to the quranexplorer app which has a list of Qaris, among other functions. Umayr is only reading the short surahs so far and only listens to the surahs he needs to memorise as he has been doing so even before we got the app. As for Sofiyya I plan to cover the basic readings in solat like the readings for different actions, and the tahiyat. Apart from this, we plan to take the children to the masajid when we can, especially on weekends. Of course the biggest challenge is to keep the children occupied as we cut down on going out, I usually try to incorporate more hands-on activities but as Ramadan starts wearing me down physically, I get tired with cleaning up. Hopefully with the kids bigger, it will be more bearable. We usually buy the children's clothes before Ramadan but sometimes you just can't find something and end up doing it near Eid. While others love the bazaars and crowds that gives the sense that Eid is coming, I totally don't enjoy it even as a child. The culture here is to clean up the house, decorate, refurbish it,... etc and have cookies and cakes ready. However, as we don't receive guests till much later; I usually just buy the goodies later (we can get goodies here anytime- they have lost significance)and we usually do whatever was needed with the house (like that piles of paper I stuffed in baskets since I went back to school) The children have expressed interest to bake our own cookies this year. I said maybe, we'll see where that goes..