For fun

Alhamdulillah H finally completed his At Takweer after much weeping, scolding, coaxing and prodding.

"I like Takweew. Can you write it in my Juz Amma?" he asked.

I had prepared something akin to a homemade certificate for each of them. S's is an apple tree with the apples as surah. N's is a vine of morning glories with each flower as a surah. H's is strings of beads with each bead as a surah. As they memorize each surah, I label each representative of it. S's is almost full. She only has Al Inshiqaaq left insyaallah.

Today, on the way to our front door, H related to me,

"The other boys have to catch up to me."

"Catch up in what?" I asked.

"In suwaa."

"Why?"

"Be..be..because they didn't finish it," he explained.

"You mean you're the only one who finished it?" I asked, incredulously surprised.

He nodded.

"Not even L?" I asked, still in disbelief, because L is thirteen.

Today, before I napped I told them,

"I'm gonna to take a nap. Go do your surah. By the time I wake up, I want to hear how much you've memorized."

S woke me up, already dressed in her prayer garment, ready to pray Asr.

H had done a good job on his An Naaziat, S had also done a good job on her Al Inshiqaaq, and N still needed a lot of work on her An Naaziat. She seems to be lagging behind somehow. H and S seem to be flourishing on individual effort but not N.

"Ummi, why don't we read surah for fun anymore?" H asked me a few minutes ago.

"What do you mean?"

"Like, like, you ask us to read a surah, and we read it and you check us."

"Yeah, we can do that," I said, a little taken aback by his question.

Apparently we have been too busy memorizing new surah to do it for 'fun' anymore.

And as I am writing this, H and S are using each other as a sounding board to review their surahs that they already memorized. And as I am writing this, I keep hearing,

"That's easy!"

"Let's do this suwaa!"

"What suwaa is this?"

"Al Kauthaw! It's so easy! It's just thwee!"

This Thursday is their last day of summer school at the masjid. I feel sad, because H really loves it. He also seems to be making a lot of friends, and also seems to be coming home asking me questions like,

"Why is showing the middle finger rude?"

"My teacher wrote A.S.S. and a boy said it's rude."

"Ummi, a boy said a rude word in school."

Well, it truly has been a 'swell' summer for all of us. I thought I'd be getting a break, but the truth is very far from it. Nevertheless, I've seen the kids blossoming, Alhamdulillah, especially with regards to the Quran. Alhamdulillah!