Ramadan Ready Children’s Party

A couple of weeks ago my  friend Artina had the brilliant idea of hosting a ‘Ramadan Crafts Party’. It had been a while since our tribe of mamas and kiddos had had a proper party and a celebration linked to a virtue of the deen was the absolute perfect excuse.  A lovely way to get children together, indulge in some messy crafts, listen to a little spiritual story time and of course cake. Always Cake.

Something I love about my friends and I,  is our ability to rally together and come up with something awesome that is the sum of shared skills and resources. We emerged with a joyful afternoon for the kids and minimal stress for the adults.

This followed on perfectly from our intentions to celebrate the Islamic calendar with our children and here is what we did if you’d like to see.

Our generous host Artina set up craft stations. Since ours was a collective of children on the younger age spectrum, these were kept fairly simple.

This festive table cover was the perfect touch and kept mess to a minimum.

Wooden lantern and moon and star ornaments from here 

Stencils, paper lanterns, Eid cards…

Of course there is always room for some free styling too!

How cute is this beautiful Ramadan themed reading nook?! I was specially happy to see this ‘Awesome’ book !

Two mamas prepared and baked sugar cookies ready for decoration. Not a job I would envy!

The results though, were delicious and word from the kids suggests that this ‘craft’ was a surefire hit!

Our friend Nafeesa wowed everyone with the sweetest ‘Ramadan cake’. 

Decorated in dreamy pastel colours it looked like an illustration straight out of a cute children’s book. Even the inside of the cake was a gorgeous pistachio colour (and flavour). 

I loved that she had the idea of lighting one candle for each day that was left till Ramadan began.

Children plus cake plus candles? Whats not to love? It was like all their birthdays had come at once!

Guess what my ‘job’ was? To come with a ‘story’  for the story time session of course! this happened near the end, when all the wriggles had been wriggled out all the candles had been blown and all the cake had been eaten…

I started by expanding a little on the ‘two hearts’ analogy (something I had worked on with the same bunch of kids) and taking inspiration from this book, directed  them to imagine that Allah Created all of creation with a portion of ‘light’ inside each thing big and small. And that we all have a portion of this light inside our hearts which we need to nurture and use for ‘lighting’ up any darkness around us. 

The Little Lore of Light uses this idea that only the prophets were given light of the quality that literally shone ‘…on their foreheads…like a beacon … illuminat(ing) all the darkness around them’

This led to the second part of story telling, as I had prepared one of the stories of the prophets. A  prophet whose story really is so beloved no wonder children love hearing it again and again. It was the story of course of prophet Musa.  Concentrating of the babyhood and boyhood of Hazart Musa and using a combination of this book and my own narrative I told of how he came to have  two mothers and why that was so special. You can get a little peek of my narration here.

My children left with favors, balloons, and tummies full of treats. Best of all they left with connections from the heart to friends and the love and excitement for the eminent arrival of our most welcome of  guests… the month of Ramadan!

 

 

Also Costumes, Cake and Candy , How we celebrated the new hijri year  and Why the Lunar Calendar matters.