Yesterday marked another milestone in DD’s life. She has completed her Muqaddam recital. I could sense her excitement when I took the huge Qur’an out of its casing and laid it open in front of her. She was in awe when she started reciting Alif-Laam-Meem.

It took her almost a year to complete Muqaddam. Now that I’m putting it in writing, 1year seems like a fairly long time to complete just 1 juz of the al-Qur’an, but the truth is I didn’t realize that time was passing when I was teaching her the Muqaddam. It seems like only yesterday (almost) when she was reciting Iqra’ to me, and now, she can recite verses of the Qur’an with minimal interruption from me.

Overall, teaching DD Muqaddam was not that hard. Looking back, introducing her to Iqra’ was tougher. We had a false start 2 years ago when I introduced her to Iqra’ Book 1. She was simply not ready for it. I gave up after going through a few pages with her.

The real start was when she entered a new kindy last year. I enrolled her for a once-a-week Iqra’ class at the kindy. Perhaps it was the joy of learning with friends, or perhaps it was the teacher, or perhaps she was just ready for it, because I noticed she was making a good progress with Iqra’. And then I noticed that she also learnt to recite al-fatihah at the kindy.

Sensing her readiness, I decided to teach her Iqra’ at home as well because obviously, a once-a-week class is far from sufficient. That was in March last year. However, it wasn’t long before she started showing signs of boredom, so I attempted to make it more interesting by teaching her new things (Muqaddam) on top of Iqra’. It worked, so for a while she was learning both Iqra’ and Muqaddam, just as I learnt both mengeja and Muqaddam simultaneously when I was her age. But then a couple of moths later, she requested to stop learning Iqra’ at home as it was getting too repetitive for her. So we just focused on Muqaddam at home, and she continued with the weekly Iqra’ lessons at the kindy.

I was fairly consistent with her lessons at home. The lessons were usually held after maghrib prayers, every day of the week. But I was more lenient during the weekends, allowing her to skip the lesson if she was tired or when we had other things to do. Her lessons were kept short. The lesson started with her reciting al-fatihah, followed by revision (1 page of the Muqaddam), and finally recital of the surah that she was learning, which were kept at 3 times of recital at most (sometimes 2 times if she was tired.)

She made a good progress last year. But this year proved to be a bigger challenge. Schooling took a huge chunk of her time, so she got less motivated to learn anything at home, Muqaddam included. I wasn’t firm with her either, mainly because I felt sorry that she didn’t get enough time for rest and play. So her Muqaddam lessons suffered. Sometimes lessons were cancelled because she was tired, sometimes because her BFF was around, at other times for 1 reason or another.

But as March approached, I made a pact with her that she should try to complete Muqaddam before her 7th birthday. And that she did, 3 days before her birthday, Alhamdulillah.

Now I have to think of a strategy to keep her motivated to learn the rest of the Qur’an. Perhaps more importantly is how to plan her time so that she could have her fun time without compromising on her learning time.