A Nice Surprise

Last weekend I managed to drag the whole family to the AlMaghrib class, Light of Guidance. The night before Saturday, I made sure I drilled into the kids the proper adab they should observe in the auditorium. I feared they would lapse into running up and down the auditorium.

That night we packed bags full of library books, new notebooks for them, worksheets, papers and snacks. It felt like we were going to travel, because that's what I usually do when we do undertake a journey. The objective is to keep them fully occupied so they won't even have to resort to acting all hyperactive. Even then, I worried they wouldn't be able to stand sitting in the hall for practically the whole day.

We went in the hall leaving everything to Allah. The class started at 10 am due to the traffic blocking roads on campus. McPherson 1000 was horribly cold that we moved to another auditorium that was less chilly but still shiver inducing nonetheless.

At first the kids had trouble adjusting the volume of their voices especially H. However, alhamdulillah, they persevered throughout the day sitting in their seats, filling in their journals with stories and drawings. The ten minute breaks every hour helped too.

I was holdingmy breath, just waiting for them to run amok with boredom, but to my ultimate surprise, they claimed to enjoy it and remained seated throughout the day, and even throughout Sunday too, except for some very small portion of time towards the end of class.

"Masyaallah, your kids are so well behaved. They just sat there, not even making any noise."

"I'm so glad you brought your kids. It's good training for them and they'll be AlMaghrib kids!"

"Masyaallah they are SO well behaved. May Allah bless them."

"Your kids are so cute!"

"I told my mom about your kids."

I was more surprised than they were at my kids' behavior. It seemed like they really enjoyed the class though. They even jotted down some notes on the Jerboa and Quran. H though after some time began to fidget in his seat. He turned around and looked all around the room. Later on he said to me,

"Ummi, I saw some people sleeping!"

"You could be Syeikh Y's spy," I said to him, laughing at his antics.

The content of their journals are also very refreshing and I felt truly rewarded. So long I worked on S's writing skills, and there she was, writing all by herself, employing her vocabulary like never before.

F said,

"She's like you then. Can't be told what to write, when to write, what to draw, what to draw. She needs to do it when the creativity strikes her."

I have to say I agree. Ok. So I'll leave her alone now. We did do some lessons on writing though and she exceptionally did a good job in using exact words like nibble instead of mere 'eat'.

I'm thinking of offering their pieces for the class's newsletter, as suggested by F.

All in all it was a much more wonderful weekend than last weekend. When it ended, with a 'big bang', I felt rather sad that it had all come to an end. The kids loved how it ended though. Syeikh had us write 3 major shirk, kufr and bidaah on our paper bags, blow it up and pop it in unison, which produced a rather empowering bang in the class. Pretty impressive in terms of leaving a permanent imprint in our minds.

I am now driven to bring my kids as much as I can to such congregation, even if they don't actually pay attention. The presence of such an atmosphere is blessing enough..subhanallah.