When teaching children the Arabic Alphabet, I have found that they initially struggle to learn letter names when just shown a shape, but if you give each of these letter ‘shapes’ the name of something familiar to them, that association sticks.
So for my children, we started with the first letter of their names and those of their cousins and friends. We then expanded to a few other familiar words to cover all the letters. The words we have been using are at the end of this post.
My two year old is picking up the letters a lot faster than I thought he would. When I put his animal placemat down for him under his bowl he says ‘Look, it’s Muhammad/Yusuf/Jamila/Idris’ depending on the letter that has caught his eye at the time.
When I reply I say ‘Yes! its ‘Mm for Muhammad’ or ‘Well done! that’s Je for Jamila’, adding in the initial phonic so that he can eventually make the association between the name he is using and isolating that initial sound.
Here’s a list of names and other words that we have been using
ا – Allah/Idris
ب – Bilal
ت – Tabassum
ث – Thawaab
ج – Jamila
ح – Hussain
خ – Khalil
د – Dua
ذ – Dhikr
ر – Rukhsana
ز – Zahra/Zainab
س – Sakina/Salmaan
ش – Shirin/Shams (Sun)
ص – Sabera
ض – Dhahika (laughter – they like actions!)
ط – Tahira
ظ – Dhil (shaddow)
ع – Ali
غ – Ghusl (Shower – we call our Friday showers Ghusl, so they are familiar with this)
ف – Fatimah
ق – Quran
ك – Ka’ba
ل – Luqman
م – Muhammad
ن – Nasim/Nida
ه – Hudhud/Huda
و – Wudhu
ي – Yusuf/Yasmin