“What is your name?”
That is often the first question that a child encounters in any new social situation. Whether that is the first day of school. Or the first homeschool co-op meet up. Or even the first meeting with a distant relative.
It seems innocuous. But that question opens the door to something so complex and yet so simple. What is in a name?
It is one of the first acts of love from the parents to their child. It carries their hopes and their dreams,
And for us as Muslim families, as minority communities, where our kids’ names are a symphony of unique sounds and a never-before-seen combination of letters, their names symbolize their reality. It marks them as the other.
But the Prophet (sal-lAllahu alay-hi wa-salaam) told us that “glad tidings is for the strangers.”
So let us teach our kids to know their names. It starts with us giving them good names. And then we should be teaching them their names, the story behind it, and the hopes and aspirations that their names carried.
This beautiful picture book by Yangsook Choi tells the story of a little girl and her path to love her name, to embrace it, and to share it. To marvel at it in English and in its original Korean. To own it, after all it is HER name.
It was a perfect read-aloud in our first days of the new school year. I spent September incorporating activities where the kids embraced themselves and of course that included their name. My three kids are all different ages, but we modified the art activity to align with each of their levels.
ACTIVITIES:
-We started off by printing the template of the jar: THE JAR TEMPLATE
Then, they went ahead with age appropriate activities:
-Kindergartner: She copied her name and then drew a picture illustrating the meaning of her name.
-First grade: He wrote his names along with words that represented him and that retold the story of his name.
Third grade: He wrote an acrostic poem of his name.
And then after that, they decorated and coloured the jar template to their heart’s content, as colourful as the rainbow. Before long, it was time to cut it out and add it to our wall of homeschool art projects!
