The short supplications a Muslim child uses every day, learned with their meanings, so they are understood rather than recited.
What is covered
- Before and after eating
- Before sleeping and on waking
- Leaving and entering the house
- Entering and leaving the bathroom
- Travelling, and before a journey
- When something goes wrong, and when something goes well
- Duas for parents
- Ayat al-Kursi and the three Quls, with meanings
How we teach it
One dua at a time, with the meaning taught first. A child who knows what they are asking for says it differently from a child repeating sounds.
We also cover the everyday phrases that carry meaning children often miss, such as what bismillah, alhamdulillah and inshaAllah actually mean, rather than leaving them as noises adults make.
Why the meaning comes first
Most children who arrive on this course can already say two or three duas. Almost none of them can tell you what any of the words mean. That gap is the whole reason the course exists.
A child who has learned the dua before eating as a sequence of sounds will say it the way you say a phone number. A child who knows it is a request for blessing in the food, said before touching it, is doing something recognisably different. The words are identical. What happens inside the child is not.
So every dua is introduced meaning first, in English, in language a seven year old actually uses. Only then does the Arabic follow. Children who learn in this order retain more, because the sounds are now hanging on something. Children who learn sounds first tend to lose them within a term, and have to be retaught the following year.
The words children say without knowing
Bismillah, alhamdulillah, inshaAllah, subhanAllah, mashaAllah. Muslim children in Britain hear these constantly and almost never learn what they mean, because adults assume the meaning is obvious and children are too embarrassed to ask by the time they are old enough to wonder.
Each one gets a short lesson of its own. What it means, when it is used, and, just as usefully, when it is used wrongly. Children find this genuinely interesting. Several parents have reported being corrected at home within a fortnight, which is a fair sign the lesson landed.
This also does quiet groundwork for later study. A child who knows what alhamdulillah means has met three ideas that come up constantly in Quranic Arabic, and will recognise them rather than starting from nothing.
Getting duas into the day, not into a folder
A dua learned in a lesson and never used again is a fact, not a habit. The course is built around the assumption that the real learning happens at home, in the ten seconds before a meal or at the door on the way out.
Each week the child takes one dua home with a specific moment attached to it. Not "practise this", but "say this before you eat this week". One dua, one moment, one week. Parents are sent the same thing so nobody is guessing.
This is deliberately slow. Families who try to install eight duas in a month usually end up with none, because the child associates the whole business with being nagged. One a week holds. By the end of the course most children are using six or seven without being prompted, which is the actual goal.
Parents who find home practice turning into an argument tend to find our notes on practice without arguing more useful than anything we could say in a lesson.
Ayat al-Kursi and the three Quls
These sit slightly apart from the rest, being Quran rather than short supplications, and they are handled accordingly.
Children work through them line by line with the meaning explained, then memorise in small pieces over several weeks rather than in one push. The pronunciation is corrected properly as we go, because a child who memorises with a mistake keeps that mistake for years and it becomes very hard to shift later.
For children who have not yet done any formal reading work, this is often the first time they meet careful pronunciation. Families who want to build on it usually move on to Noorani Qaida or, if the child is already reading, to tajweed lessons.
Duas for when things go wrong
The section children remember longest is the one about difficulty. Being frightened, being angry, losing something, falling out with a friend, an illness in the family.
This part is taught carefully and without drama. The point being made is that a child is allowed to ask, in their own words as well as in the memorised ones, and that asking is not reserved for adults or for emergencies. Children who understand this tend to use it. Children who have only ever learned mealtime duas often do not realise it is available to them at all.
We do not promise children particular outcomes, and we do not tell them that difficulty is a sign of anything about them. Teachers keep to what is established and leave the rest.
What a lesson looks like
Twenty five to thirty minutes, one to one, online. Short, because this is usually a young child and the material does not need longer.
A typical lesson opens with last week's dua, said from memory with the child explaining the meaning in their own words. Then the new dua: meaning, then Arabic, then a few minutes of practice. Then a short recap of the everyday phrases. The teacher writes two lines to the parent afterwards saying what was covered and what to prompt at home.
Teachers are DBS checked, lessons are recorded for parents, and you are welcome to sit in. Most parents do for the first few weeks with a young child and then stop, which is usually the right pattern.
Duas for parents, and why children take to them
Of everything on the syllabus, this is the section that surprises families most. Children are often more moved by the idea of asking for something on behalf of their mother or father than by anything else in the course.
It is taught simply. The child learns what the words are asking for, who they are asking it for, and that it is something they can do for a parent at any age, including when they are grown and the parent is not there. Nothing is dramatised. Young children take the idea seriously without any help from us.
Parents are usually not warned in advance, because the first time a six year old says it out loud at the dinner table tends to matter more if nobody has stage managed it.
Checking a child has actually learned something
Recitation is a poor test. A child can produce a dua perfectly and have no idea what any of it means, which is precisely the situation the course is designed to fix.
So the check is different. The teacher asks the child to explain, in their own words, what they were asking for and when they would say it. Rough, childlike wording is a pass. A polished translation the child has memorised is not, and the teacher will keep asking until something in the child's own language comes out.
Progress notes to parents follow the same logic. Rather than "learned three duas", you get which duas, whether the meaning is secure, and what to prompt this week. Parents who want a way to check things themselves at home may find our guide on testing what a child has really learned useful, since the same principle applies.
Children who finish this course and want to keep going most often move to Fiqh basics, where the everyday practice is filled in, or start reading properly. Either is a reasonable next step and the teacher will say which one fits your child.
Who it suits
Children from around age four. This is often the first Islamic studies course a family takes, because the material is short, immediately usable, and does not require the child to read Arabic yet.
It also works well for older children, up to about ten, who have been through a madrasah and can recite a good deal without understanding much of it. Those children often move quickly, because the sounds are already there and only the meaning is missing.
Families frequently run this alongside salah lessons, since several of the duas overlap with what a child needs for prayer, or alongside Seerah for kids for something with more narrative in it.
Questions parents ask
My child cannot read Arabic yet. Is that a problem? No. Everything is taught by listening and repeating, with meanings in English. Reading is a separate skill and is not needed here.
How long does the course take? Most families take four to six months at one lesson a week. It can be run faster, though duas learned in a hurry tend not to stay.
Will my child be told off for getting it wrong? No. Pronunciation is corrected gently and repeatedly, which is different from being corrected sharply once. If a child has come to us after a bad experience elsewhere, tell us, and read our piece on what to do when a child dislikes madrasah.
Do you teach a particular school of thought? On duas there is very little that divides anyone. Where there is a genuine difference of opinion, the teacher says so plainly and leaves the choice with the family.