Rasul Vs. Nabi

Today is the day before Ramadan, well at least for some of the Muslims. We started our school day as usual and really raced through it. I dangled a trip to the library as bait to get them to finish up as fast as their little fingers can manage. It worked. Teaching about animals to N is was easier than teaching her about the water cycle. Math worksheets also seemed to be something they enjoy when rewarded with little itty bitty stickers. I actually put sticky tape over H's mouth, after failing to get him to sit quietly and do his work. I decided 5 seconds was enough and he endured through it with no complaints.

The timer didn't seem to really work for N in getting her to do her work religiously, but the stickers did. As for H, he had the gall to ask me for a 45 minute break just because he did a "lot of worksheets."


Nevertheless, we all finished in good time today. On the way to the library I brought along Anwar Awlaki's cassette on Lives of the Prophet. Read on Al Maghrib's forum that some mothers managed to make a lesson out of listening to the tape for her children. It inspired me to do the same. Saves me from lecturing and storytelling.

So far, we learned about the difference between rasul and nabi. We didn't get that far with it because the trip to the library only took about 10 minutes. I guess now at least we have something new to try for social studies and probably seerah. What I love most about it is that it uses sources from the Quran and hadith that I can look up, rather than just mere narrations like in Malaysia.

With just narrations, the students are indirectly taught to not scurtinise the sources of those stories and growing up, I'm sure I've heard a lot of the stories from Bani Israel which we should neither believe nor refute. Isn't it just easier to cite the sources and take that as what we should learn? Makes us less of blind followers and hones our analytical thinking.

I keep being reminded of the Ramadan incident and now I'll make sure I dive into the QUran and hadith for backups of what i teach them, though it can be pretty challenging when you think you've read the hadith somewhere and then just narrate it in your own words.

I think I'm going to do hadith lessons with them too. Take a simple hadith and talk about it. Just today I was very disturbed when H threw something that hit N's head. When I asked him if he felt bad for hurting his sister he replied in the negative. After a slow-talk session, it turned out that he prefers one sister over the other for some reasons only he himself experienced.

So out came one hadith (though very much paraphrased..sigh) and another one while discussing S's literature for today 'House in the Forest'.

Am so glad I took the Aqeedah class with Al Maghrib. Now it's clearer to me what shirk and its stepping stones are. Alhamdulillah.