Online Arabic Classes for Kids

Live online Arabic classes for children from age four, taught one to one or in a small group if you ask, with a named tutor who stays with your child week after week. Most of the families we teach have nobody at home who reads Arabic, so every lesson is built to work without a parent checking the homework. The first lesson is free.

Book a free class on WhatsApp How the free class works

What a class costs

Arabic for children is priced exactly like our Quran lessons: the more hours you book in a month, the less each hour costs. These three plans keep lessons short, which is what young children need.

Brothers and sisters take 10% off the family bill, and each child keeps their own tutor, level and timetable. A lesson can be moved with two hours notice. Every plan, up to $84 a month for three hours a week, is on the pricing page.

An academy, a marketplace tutor, a group class or an app

Most online Arabic for children comes in one of four forms, and they suit different families. The question underneath is who plans the lessons and who checks they are working.

If nobody at home reads Arabic, a set syllabus with the same tutor every week is usually the easier route, because nobody at home has to judge whether the plan is working. A marketplace suits a parent who speaks Arabic and wants to choose and steer the tutor themselves.

What your child learns, stage by stage

Parents usually want to see the sequence, not just hear that one exists. The order holds at any age. Only the speed changes, and a child who has heard Arabic at home moves through the first two stages faster. The last column links our free pages on the same ground, so you can see the material before you book.

Grammar comes last on purpose. Children absorb a pattern long before they can use a rule, and a child taught case endings too early can name them and still cannot hold a conversation.

A lesson at each age

A young child needs a change of activity every five to seven minutes, which would feel scattered in an adult lesson and works well at six. Teenagers usually do better in a lighter version of an adult class, because games start to feel patronising once a student is old enough to be taught directly.

Under four, we would not book live lessons yet. A two or three year old rarely holds a screen for thirty minutes, and what builds Arabic at that age is hearing it: songs, the sounds of the letters, and a few words said every day at home. Our colours in Arabic page plays each colour aloud, so you can say them together even if you do not read Arabic. Live classes start at four, when the table above takes over.

If nobody at home reads Arabic

This is the family the academy was built for, and it changes how a lesson has to run. A parent who cannot read Arabic cannot tell whether a sound is right, so the lesson cannot rely on practice being corrected at home. The tutor does the correcting in class, and the between-lesson work is set so a child can do it alone: tracing, listening, or saying the week’s words to someone.

You still have a part to play, and it does not need Arabic. Ask your child to teach you one word after each lesson. You are welcome to sit in on any lesson. There is more on this in our guide to teaching Arabic when you do not speak it.

When your child understands Arabic but answers in English

The other common family is the opposite one. Ask a parent in Manchester or Michigan how much Arabic their eight year old has, and the answer is often: he understands everything, he just will not speak it. That is not a contradiction. Understanding a language and producing it are two different skills, and they come apart quickly when a child spends six hours a day in an English-speaking school.

A child like this does not need the alphabet drilled from zero. That throws away what they already have and bores them, which is usually the week a parent hears that Arabic is boring. They need to speak: questions they have to answer aloud, sentence frames to fill, and room to be wrong quickly and often. In a one-to-one lesson or a small group, nobody can sit silently behind a classmate, which is why this format suits them better than a class of thirty.

Which Arabic we teach

Course pages rarely say, and it is worth asking anywhere you book. Ours is built on Modern Standard Arabic, the Arabic of books, formal writing and the grammar of the Quran. It is what eventually lets a child read anything put in front of them, not only the dialect they grew up hearing.

Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf or Maghrebi Arabic at home is an advantage and is never marked wrong. Sooner or later a child will tell the tutor that a word is wrong, because written Arabic and spoken dialect genuinely differ. The tutor names the difference instead of correcting it: this is how it is written, that is how your family says it, both are Arabic. Children accept that easily. What they will not accept is being told the way their mother speaks is a mistake.

If what you want is your child understanding the words recited in prayer rather than general fluency, that is our Quranic Arabic course, a different syllabus.

Who teaches the classes

Every child is matched with one named tutor. These are the Arabic tutors on our faculty, as the about page lists them. Four are women, and you can ask for a female tutor at no extra cost.

She wrote in Arabic. In English: “An excellent, patient teacher, thank you,” and she asked for the tutor to start setting him homework later, insha’Allah. More messages from families, none of them edited, are on our reviews page.

Will my child sit through an online lesson?

It depends far more on how the lesson is built than on the child. What holds a young child on a screen is a short session, a change of activity every few minutes, the same tutor every week so no time is lost warming up to a stranger, and being spoken to rather than presented at. What loses them is long explanation, reading pitched above their level, and any format where staying silent is an option.

If a lesson falls on a bad afternoon, move it rather than push through. Two hours notice is enough.

Between lessons

Ten minutes on most days beats one long session at the weekend. The things that help are small.

• Let them send voice notes to relatives. Speaking to a grandmother has real stakes, which a worksheet never will.
• Ask rather than test. “How do you say this?” gets an answer. “What did you learn today?” gets “nothing”.
• Keep Arabic books in reach, including ones above their level. Familiarity with the script does some of the work before the reading does.
• Protect the weekly slot. A lesson time that keeps moving teaches a child that Arabic is the thing that gets cancelled.

Something to point at helps as well, and ours is free to print. A colours chart on the fridge or a few letter flashcards give a child a reason to say the week’s words out loud.

If the Quran is the goal

Many parents book Arabic because they want their child reading the Quran, which shifts the emphasis. Correct pronunciation of each letter matters from the start, because Tajweed rests on it, and vocabulary comes from the prayers and the short surahs. Children on this path usually start with our Noorani Qaida classes and move on to Quran classes for kids once reading is steady.

How to start

1. Send one message. Your child’s age, whether anyone at home speaks Arabic, and two or three times in your week that could work.
2. Take the free first class. The tutor spends it finding out what your child already recognises, so the plan starts from where they are, not where a syllabus assumes.
3. Carry on with the same tutor. If the class suits your child, lessons continue at the times you agreed. If it does not, tell us and we look again.

Book a free class on WhatsApp Use the contact form

Starting age, lesson length and helping without Arabic

At what age can a child start learning Arabic online?

We take children from age four. At that age the lesson is almost all listening, repetition and play, and reading starts once the child can sit through a short guided activity.

How much do online Arabic classes for kids cost?

From $34 a month for two 30-minute lessons a week, which is $8.50 an hour. The hourly rate falls to $7.00 as monthly hours rise, and siblings take 10% off the family bill. The first class is free.

How long should a lesson be for a young child?

Thirty minutes for children aged four to six. Children from seven to ten usually manage 30 to 45 minutes, and from eleven, 45 to 60. Stretching a young child past that rarely helps them remember more.

Can I help my child if I do not read Arabic?

Yes. The tutor does the correcting in class, and the work between lessons is set so a child can do it alone. Your part is asking your child to teach you a word, keeping the weekly slot, and sitting in on a lesson whenever you like.

My child understands Arabic but refuses to speak it. Is that fixable?

Usually, and faster than parents expect. The understanding is already there, so the work is speaking practice rather than starting over. Expect weeks of being made to answer aloud, not one breakthrough lesson.

Do you teach Modern Standard Arabic or a dialect?

Modern Standard Arabic is the backbone, since reading, writing and the Quran all need it. Where a child speaks a dialect at home, the tutor works with it and never marks it wrong.

Should siblings of different ages share a class?

Usually not. A five year old and an eleven year old need different pacing and different material, so separate lessons work better, and the sibling discount still applies.

Is an app like Duolingo enough for a child to learn Arabic?

Not on its own. An app is good practice for recognising letters and building a first set of words, but it cannot hear your child, so pronunciation, reading aloud and speaking go uncorrected. It works best between lessons, alongside a teacher who listens.

Prices, adult classes and free printables

For every plan and the full rate ladder, see the pricing page. For older students and parents learning alongside their children, our online Arabic classes cover adults too. And the free printables give a child something to do between lessons.