Madiha Siddiqui

My name is Madiha Siddiqui and I am an Early Childhood Educator. I have been teaching young children (preschool to fourth grade) for more than a decade at various private schools in-person and virtually for over a year. I started my teaching career as a preschool teacher at a small homeschooling coop when my son started preschool in the Bay Area. My experience there inspired me to professionally grow and I went back to school to earn my Associate of Science Degree in Early Childhood and Education. I am currently about to finish my Bachelor's Degree in Human Development with a concentration in Adolescence. I specialize in developing curricula for preschool age children, tutor and mentor children in their elementary and adolescent years, as well as provide parent coaching services.

My Philosophy:
I value a play-based learning environment with an emergent curriculum so children can be mentored in engaging ways. Driven primarily through an experiential learning process using developmentally appropriate practices, my philosophy emerges from a firm belief in nurturing the whole child where activities are designed to facilitate growth in six main developmental domains. These include self-development in areas of spirituality, social-emotional intelligence, creativity, cognitive, language, and physical development. I love to meet new people and am happy to learn about different cultures. I further strive for an inclusive, anti-bias, and welcome-all approach in everything I do.
Most importantly, I encourage parents to let children 'get messy' as they explore and join in on all the fun!

What I plan to ‘facilitate’:
This is not a regular ‘teaching students’ online class model. This is where I want my students/parents to take charge of the learning in a hands-on manner and be the drivers of their knowledge. My mind runs rampant with ideas of what I want to teach. However, I am more than happy when parents share their ideas about what they want their children to learn so I can accordingly create a curriculum based on children's interests and support families' needs for their children in developmentally appropriate ways. I plan to engage with your children byways of singing songs and reading. I’ll have concepts/materials that I intend for children to explore by having them connect ideas to real life and the world around them in a hands-on way. Learning to read is such a big part of language development and it begins with an introduction to phonological awareness. Children in my program learn sounds of the English alphabet along with the Arabic alphabet. Research shows that having phonological awareness takes precedence to letter recognition when learning to read. It was with the ayah to 'Read' is where our beloved Prophet Muhammad (may peace and blessings be upon him and his family) also began his Islamic journey.
Mainly I want to build through reading and experiential learning model that also caters to children's own interests. Keeping an open-minded approach to wherever this leads us all; one class at a time.

My Mission:
I want to empower parents to take charge of their children's learning in the early years, especially teaching them the tenets of our beautiful deen in developmentally appropriate ways. I want parents to have the opportunity to team up with a professional educator (me) to set the foundation for their children's educational needs keeping their spiritual development at the forefront. I want children to learn Islamic values and etiquette in a natural way where the secular subjects are taught through the lens of the Quran and Sunnah. Additionally, if parents so choose, I am here to help team up with you in your parenting journey through coaching your children in their elementary and adolescent years as well.

Fun Fact:
I love to play the daff and engage kids with nasheeds.