Choosing an Arabic curriculum for a weekend school is harder than it should be, and not because the options are bad. It is because the names collide, the levels do not mean the same thing between publishers, and almost every series was designed for more classroom hours than a weekend school actually has.

Here is an honest comparison of what is available, and how to match a series to the hours you really teach.

First: separate Arabic from Islamic Studies

This trips up new curriculum committees every year, so it is worth stating plainly. Safar and Weekend Learning are Islamic Studies series, not Arabic language curricula. They teach aqeedah, fiqh, seerah and character. They will not teach a child to read and write Arabic.

Most weekend schools need both, running as two separate strands with separate books. If you are staffing and budgeting for one, you have a gap. If you want the Islamic Studies side, our Weekend Learning guide covers that comparison; this article is about the Arabic strand only.

The hours problem

A typical weekend school teaches Arabic for roughly one to two hours a week, across perhaps thirty weeks. That is thirty to sixty hours a year.

Most Arabic curricula were written for day schools running four or five sessions a week. Take a series designed for 150 hours a year and deliver it in 40, and one of three things happens: you cover a third of the book and the class feels like it is failing, you rush and nothing sticks, or the teacher quietly abandons the book and improvises.

So the real question is not "which series is best". It is which series is honest about the hours you have. That reframing eliminates most of the field immediately.

Gateway to Arabic

Written in English for learners who do not speak Arabic at home, structured across Books 1 to 7 with extension material. The English medium is the defining feature: a volunteer teacher who is not a fluent Arabic speaker can actually deliver it, which for many weekend schools is the binding constraint rather than the curriculum's quality.

Best for: weekend schools with mixed-heritage, non-Arabic-speaking students, and volunteer teaching staff. Start with Book 1 or browse the full series.

Horizons in the Arabic Language

Six levels, and importantly a complete set at every level: textbook, workbook and teacher book for Levels 1 through 6, with no gaps.

That completeness matters more than it sounds. A series missing teacher books at the levels you teach forces your staff to plan from scratch, which is how weekend school teachers burn out. Horizons does not have that problem at any level.

Best for: schools that want a fully supported, self-contained six-year Arabic programme. See Textbook Level 1, Workbook Level 1, and the full range.

Silsilat Al-Lisan

Structured by stage rather than by grade: Tamhidi (preparatory) 1 and 2, Mubtadee (beginner) 1 and 2, Intermediate 1 and 2, then Advanced 1 and 2. There is a Tadribat exercises book and a teacher guide alongside.

The stage-based naming is a genuine practical advantage for weekend schools, because your Sunday class is rarely one clean grade. A room holding eight-to-eleven-year-olds who are all beginners is a Mubtadee class, and nobody has to feel demoted. Placing a twelve-year-old into "Level 2" of a graded series is a much harder conversation.

Best for: mixed-age classes, and schools placing by ability rather than by year. Start at Tamhidi 1 or Mubtadee 1, with the teacher guide.

The two series called "I Love Arabic"

This is the single most common ordering error we see, so read this section carefully before you place a school order.

There are two different series with almost the same English name:

• I Love Arabic (أحب العربية) — textbooks and workbooks across Levels 1 to 8.
• I Love The Arabic Language (أحب اللغة العربية) — a separate series, also Levels 1 to 8, with a deeper support set: teacher books at every level, teacher cases for the early levels, and dedicated handwriting books for Levels 1 to 3.

They are not editions of each other. A school that orders half its class from one and half from the other ends up with two incompatible sets of books and no way to teach from them together.

Check the Arabic title on the cover, not the English one. أحب العربية and أحب اللغة العربية are the two you are distinguishing between.

One more thing on this series: within I Love The Arabic Language, the Level 1 to 6 textbooks and workbooks are the old edition, while Levels 7 and 8 are not. If you are ordering a continuous programme, confirm with your teaching staff which edition their lesson plans are written against before ordering the early levels. Mixing editions mid-series is the same page-reference problem that catches families every year.

Browse I Love The Arabic Language and I Love Arabic, and read the Arabic subtitle on each product before adding to cart.

Arabic Between Your Hands

Levels 1 to 4, each split into two parts. This is a serious, well-regarded programme, and it is aimed at older and adult learners rather than at a Sunday children's class.

Best for: adult classes, teacher training, and high-school students who have outgrown a children's series. See the series. For adults working alone rather than in a class, our Mastering Arabic 1 guide covers the main self-study alternative.

Choosing, in practice

What a full school order actually looks like

Committees consistently under-order, then scramble in week three. For each level you are running, the order is:

• One textbook per student, unless you are keeping a class set in the room and students do not take them home. Decide this first, because it halves or doubles the order.
• One workbook per student, always. These are consumable. They cannot be shared, reused next year, or passed to a sibling.
• One teacher book per teacher, per level. Not one per school. A teacher covering two levels needs two.
• Two to three spare textbooks per class for mid-year joiners. Weekend schools gain students in October and January, and a new child without a book disengages within two weeks.

Order the teacher books first and earliest, before the school year starts. Teachers need lead time with the material, and a teacher who receives their guide the week term begins will teach the first month from memory.

Four rules before you commit the school

1. Count your real teaching hours first. Not scheduled hours. Actual hours, after holidays, events and the weeks attendance collapses. Choose against that number.
2. Never adopt a series without the teacher book. If a series lacks teacher support at the levels you teach, you are not adopting a curriculum, you are handing your volunteers a textbook and hoping.
3. Pilot one level before buying eight. Run a single class for a term. The cost of a wrong series is not the books, it is the year.
4. Write the edition into your book list. "Level 3" is not a book list entry. Series name, Arabic title and edition is.

Browse the full Arabic range in Arabic Elementary and Arabic Middle & High. If your students are still learning to decode Qur'anic Arabic rather than studying the language, start with our Qur'an-reading primer guide instead — that is a different track and it comes first.

Setting up a programme this year? Tell us your class sizes, ages and weekly hours, and we will recommend a series and quote the full school order.