baha’i children’s class ideas.

learning concepts
All the major religions come from the same divine source.
Bahá’u'lláh urges us to consort with the followers of all religions in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship.

activities
song: “The Song of the Prophets” by Jack Lenz, on the album We Are Baha’is.
drama/skits: A play about the Oneness of Religion, from Baha’i Education for Children, Book 2, Chapter 9 (pp. 19-24)
stencil craft: print out stencils for the symbols of major religions (e.g.: hinduism, judaism, islam, sikh, christian), cut them out onto heavy paper; also print out a nine-pointed star that can encompass each of the other symbols. Cut out stars of many different colours; the children can use the stencils to paint or draw the different symbols onto the stars. these can be used as decorations on walls or windows, or as part of mobiles.

reading/prayer for study
Consort with the followers of all religions in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship. (Bahá’u'lláh)

reference
Ye are all the rays of one sun; the fruits of one tree; and the leaves of one branch. (Bahá’u'lláh, quoted by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in London, p. 80)

O people! Consort with the followers of all religions in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship. Thus hath the day-star of His sanction and authority shone forth above the horizon of the decree of God, the Lord of the worlds. (Bahá’u'lláh, Tablets of Bahá’u'lláh, p. 22)

experience
January 20, 2007: 2 hours, 9 children, average 7 years old. We scheduled this lesson for World Religion Day and had a lot of fun with the stencils mentioned above. We wanted to get the children’s hands in gear in creative ways; amazingly, no one was spotted running with scissors. My only beef with this class was that the lesson content wasn’t strong enough—for example, as we introduced each stencil, we could have had the children guess which religion the symbol represented, and which Manifestation founded that religion… I haven’t been able to find my binder full of lesson plans from the Canadian national curriculum (which have made things so much easier since we started using them—no more last minute brainstorms) and the lesson from Baha’i Education for Children only presents the play, which I didn’t think we could do at the time with the resources we had. So we made up this lesson with the stencils. It went over all right—most of the children seemed to enjoy the artistic activity. One of our Baha’i friends, a regional coordinator for children’s classes, was there and snapped some pictures:

the whole group of us!

one of our shy participants.

hard at work.

Our upcoming class will again touch on the oneness of religion, so there’ll doubtless be more to tell soon. By the way, I’m sorry this post came late—I noticed there was a spike in traffic to this blog just before World Religion Day but I couldn’t get my act together to post our lesson in time :P There’s always next year right?

January 27, 2007: 2 hours, 7 children, average 7 years old. Well this was an interesting class. We wanted to try out the play contained in Baha’i Education for Children. I don’t know about you, but I’m no drama teacher. I suppose it would have been useful to read through Book 3A (aka the old Book 5, “Baha’i Children’s Classes, Grade 2″) before attempting this activity. Where Book 3 relies mainly on games for physical activity, Book 3A includes a lot more drama, acting and role-playing. If I was more of a manual-reading person (rather than the jumping-in type I am) we would have saved a lot of bother this time around. The play is meant to be learned and memorized over a longer period of time (to its credit, there are warnings to this effect at the top of the script); still, we figured we’d start reading and see how things would go. Most of the kids found the text difficult to read, let alone to memorize. For some—especially the younger ones who were only just learning to read—nothing sank in at all. Oops. So after a short period of confusion, we quickly changed tactics and began simplifying the script; a teacher would call out the main points of each child’s speech and have them repeat them out loud. Once the emphasis was off reading, things went a lot smoother.

The result? Well, we haven’t given up on the play yet. We’ll continue working with a simplified script (one of the teachers will be revising it so that it can be more easily understood by the children), and continue rehearsing until we get it. It’s funny—I don’t know who’s doing more learning, the children or the teachers. I certainly feel like I’m getting a crash course in children’s education every time I come to the class.