Ramadan is an annual observance that lasts a whole month and ends in a three day holiday called “Eid al-Fitr”. The month is full of traditions and ceremonies that characterize the fasting days. At the Sindian Early Intervention Center of Beit Issie Shapiro, we chose a number of activities for the iPad to help children get a sense of the holiday.
In honor of this special month, we created an activity on Tiny Tap, a free app that allows you to create and customize your own learning activities. Using stickers from their creation pack for Arabic Traditions we created an activity for Ramadan. Click on the first picture to access the activity.
Click on the picture to access the activity.
Ramadan Lanterns – a step by step activity
For this activity, we used the app Lamsa: Educational Kids Stories and Games which includes many interactive stories in both English and Arabic about the celebration of Ramadan, one of which is about Ramadan lanterns and includes step by step instructions to create your own lantern.
In order to illustrate the steps of the activity in a concrete way and to allow the children a way to effectively communicate during the activity, we created an activity-specific communication board for Grid software\App. Here is the link to the board.
A boy and the lantern he made in the activity
Stories for Ramadan:
The Lamsa also app includes many interactive stories and additional activities on a variety of topics. To find activities specific to Ramadan you can search within the app using Arabic or English.
Sample stories found in the Lamsa app
The Sindian Musaharati
The Musaharati is the person responsible for waking Muslims during Ramadan for Suhur, the pre-dawn breakfast before the fast day begins.The Musaharati takes a drum and walks around the neighborhood, singing religious songs and beating the drum calling everyone to morning prayers.
Using two apps on two separate iPads we had the children act out being the Musaharati. One child drummed using My Baby Drum lite and a second child “sang” the melodies using Play Button.
Another app we used is Al Musharati, for Android, which encourages the children to make sounds. Using sound, the children have to use sound to wake up the Musaharati. The louder the sound or noise used the more the character moves through the game.
Let us know how you are using apps or technology to enhance the experience of Ramadan for your students. We’d love to hear from you.
Ramadan Kareem!
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