[~أمة الله~]

3) How did you and your children manage to do all of this simultaneously? What was their and your routine in a typical week?

Well, we’ll have to start with a typical day. From the time I had my first, my husband and I have always been fajr parents. Maybe it was the baby’s routine but our day begins at fajr.

It’s breakfast, showers and learning time from 6:30-11am. The key to this is multi-tasking. Depending on the children’s ages, my life is full of setting one child some writing at his desk, sending one to the shower, helping one to get dressed, reading a book to a little one while breastfeeding the baby. It’s an endless stream of running around until everyone’s had breakfast, showered and changed. When everyone’s ready, the children then sit to listen to me reading them a book they’ve chosen. They take turns to choose a book every day. Because of this, the children can’t wait to start work with mummy. Then they all do their portion of reading, writing, learning numbers, Qur’an and Iqraa’ and we always finish off with some exciting craft work. It might be painting, sticking or making things. The children would take turns to come to me for Qur’an, Iqraa and reading Peter and Jane (graded reader) while I monitor the rest in their maths or writing etc.

An additional tip is to make learning fun. The worksheet I created, be it writing letters or doing numbers is full of drawing, colouring, gluing and sticking. Art and craft is naturally incorporated into the worksheets, so they never felt that it was work or in any way tedious. They couldn’t wait to do work in the way they couldn’t wait to do cutting and sticking. So those who want to do the same should consider familiarizing themselves with chidren’s art and craft.

By 10:30 they’re usually hungry and ready for a break, so we would have our snack. Since they’ve been up from fajr and actively learning, they’re usually ready to take a nap after their snack. At this point, I take them to their bedroom. They lay quietly and I read my Qur’an hifdh portion, while putting them to sleep at the same time. So this was how I struggled in trying to memorise the Qur’an while bringing up my eight children, mashaAllah. It was very slow but the benefit was that the children also learned my portion of the Qur’an and memorised them long before me! MashaAllah. This is also how I put them to sleep at night and whenever anyone needs comforting.
So this daily routine continued throughout in bringing up my eight children until they all eventually went to school. For me, it gave them a sense of routine.
I always believed that if you don’t occupy your children, they’ll occupy you! They’ll do things that annoy you or annoy each other. Weekends are free and easy. It’s usually a picnic in the desert or playing in the park.

To Be Continue ....