Ramadan is the holy month of fasting for Muslims, and Allah (SWT) will give us multiple rewards for every good deed that we do. Suppressing hunger, thirst, anger, backbiting, and other bad acts are certainly not an easy thing, especially for children. To make our children love the month of Ramadan, my big family usually arranges Ramadan activities and fun games when we get together. As a result, the children experience memorable Ramadan traditions from year to year until they get older.
Here are some ideas of fun games as part of Ramadan activities that might inspire you. They can be done individually or in groups:
- Qur’an surah memorization where each child will memorize letters from the Holy Qur’an and obtain prizes or a sum of money for every surah memorized.
- Five minutes lectures that can be done by each child (taking turns) after tarawih prayer in congregation; it’s good to train the children to do a short da’wah from childhood.
- Decorating cards or paper bags with Eid/Ramadan themes. The children can use their creations to send Ramadan greeting cards or gifts to the neighbors or friends.
- If there is a child under the age of 3 years old, he/she can be part of the games too. For example, try to make him/her laugh and anybody who can make him/her smile/laugh means ‘success’ and prize will be received.
- Show your creativity. Ask the children to make one work/project according to their own ideas/imaginations and present it to the audience with a description about the thing they’ve made to convince the audience its function. Whoever has the most interesting work is the winner. Keep recycle-able materials for use for creating objects that can be associated with Ramadan. For example, make a mosque from boxes and rolls of tissue, create a Ramadan lantern, or make a miniature of the ka’ba, etc.
- Design costumes. Use newspapers and work as teams to create costumes that will be assessed based upon creativity of the design, time to finish, and also cleanliness.
- Decorating food. For example, decorate rice with vegetables, Eid cookies, cake, pizza, or any typical food of your country.
- Smell and guess game. Each child is blindfolded and has to guess the smell of an object that they cannot touch.
- Touch, feel, and guess the object game where the child’s eyes are closed and the child is handed objects that he/she must select one object from. The child must pick quickly (no peeking) and guess what the object is. Find items that are not easily be guessed such as a tomato sauce sachet, remote control, soft toys, etc.
- Night Screams. Each child should be dressed as a ghost (according to whatever his/her imagination is), and the adults will hide in the bedroom, sleeping room, dining room, or living room with a ghost costume as well. The children have to find cards with numbers on them to win prizes. The house lights should be turned off, the children must use courage to enter and pass through each room. Usually for children aged 9 years and over. Children who are taught to pray and seek refuge from the temptation of evil, will be right to feel scared and pray. From here the parents can see how much faith the children have in the face of challenges. They themselves are scared to see each other because they look scary too. It looks creepy, but there is usually a lot of fun. For example, my husband forgot to turn off his cell phone once and placed it in his pocket, and when the kids were feeling scared in the room, my husband suddenly got a call. As a result, the children in the room knew that it was only their father or uncle. Another time, our maid, who wore a white prayer cloth, meant to jump in front of the kids, but stumbled on her own prayer cloth and fell. Don’t do this game too long, just 30 minutes and it should always end happily.
You can cultivate and explore any other crazy ideas that can make your kids remember Ramadan. Gifts do not need to be expensive, goodie bags containing snacks mixed with various small toys can become a joy for them, as they receive them with efforts. The important thing also is that they must say ‘Alhamdulillah’ and be grateful for the gifts they have received.
Below are impressions from my children about their experiences:
My favorite game was creating an interesting project using materials around the house. It allowed me to express my creativity and explore new ideas. (15-year)
My favorite game was when we played in Ramadan designing outfits with newspaper in 30 minutes plus cleaning, because it was lots of fun and it shows the creativity in you. (11-year)
Ramadan Kareem
