baha’i children’s class ideas.

learning concepts
We follow God’s commandments out of our love for Him.
When we love someone - a parent, a guardian, a teacher - we do what they ask so that they may be happy.
Even when we’re asked to do unpleasant things, we must be patient in our obedience.

activities
story of Lua Getsinger: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá asks Lua to take care of a sick man. Ruhi Book 3, Lesson 5.
story of Bahá’u'lláh and the hunter: Bahá’u'lláh asks an expert hunter not to kill innocent birds… Ruhi Book 3, Lesson 13.
simon says: the classic game. a teacher (or a child) is ’simon’ and everyone must do as simon says, as long as simon says ’simon says’ first.
circle, triangle, square: a memory game from Ruhi Book 3, Lesson 10.
‘blind man’: one child plays a blind person, and another acts as a guide. the guide must help the blind person navigate safely through obstacles from one end of a course to the other. var 1: the guide holds the hand of the blind person. var 2: the guide does not touch the blind person and only gives verbal commands. Ruhi Book 3, Lesson 13.
crafts: cards or gifts for parents - works well on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, parents’ birthdays… something that shows the love and appreciation towards those who we obey.

reading/prayer for study
O Thou the Compassionate God! Bestow upon me a heart which, like unto glass, may be illumined with the light of Thy love, and confer upon me thoughts which may change this world into a rose garden through the outpourings of heavenly grace.
Thou art the Compassionate, the Merciful. Thou art the Great Beneficent God.
(’Abdu’l-Bahá, Baha’i Prayers)

reference
O SON OF MAN! For everything there is a sign. The sign of love is fortitude under My decree and patience under My trials. (Arabic Hidden Words, no.49)

Say: From My laws the sweet-smelling savour of My garment can be smelled, and by their aid the standards of Victory will be planted upon the highest peaks. The Tongue of My power hath, from the heaven of My omnipotent glory, addressed to My creation these words: “Observe My commandments, for the love of My beauty.” Happy is the lover that hath inhaled the divine fragrance of his Best-Beloved from these words, laden with the perfume of a grace which no tongue can describe. By My life! He who hath drunk the choice wine of fairness from the hands of My bountiful favour will circle around My commandments that shine above the Dayspring of My creation. (Kitab-i-Aqdas, para.4, page 20)

experience
September 27, 2008: 1.5 hours, 3 children, average age 8-9. we’re back to one teacher again (me). got off to a bit of a rough start (wow, how many times have I written that) and had to go over the rules with the kids. now that I think of it, I totally should have expected to spend this class going over ground rules. one of the children was especially impatient, “we already know the rules!!” (yet was throwing pillows and sitting improperly, etc). so we ended up spending a fair bit of time at the beginning just trying to get ready for prayers, which is never much fun. same child also wanted to read “the longest prayer in the prayer book”; had to reason with him a little on that point (we don’t want to discourage children to say prayers!).  so I asked if the children knew people that they really loved talking to and listening to—conversing with—someone to whom they could feel comfortable telling anything.  then I explained that praying is the same, but conversing with God.  God listens to us, and we are able to tell Him anything that’s on our minds or on our hearts.  if we pick a prayer from the prayer book and recite what it says, and yet our minds are elsewhere being silly and not paying attention to what we’re saying, then God wants to hear us and listen to us, but there’s nothing to listen to.

we’ll have to revisit this concept with the children, but especially with that one child—the concept that prayer is not just parroting the words in a book, but is something you genuinely feel.  perhaps we should devote a part of one class to “how to choose a prayer”; is this an issue that others have had? how did you deal with it? is it something that becomes clearer to the children as they grow older? is it better to deal with it when they become junior youth? dunno, lol.

craft went very well; we made cards for our parents—I did a run to the new art superstore that opened up close to here, and picked up some really nice materials and stamps for the kids to use. it was genuinely fun to do for all of us—we weren’t many, of course, so that probably helped things go smoothly. kids were very excited to hear that there would be more art projects. need to fit in more games, though, especially for the one child who seems to have a lot of trouble learning without them. it almost seems like we should be taking more time for the class, that an hour and a half isn’t enough. now that our kids are older (8-9) they should have the capacity to keep their attention on the lesson as long as it is reasonably varied, and today’s experience seems to have borne that out.

October 21, 2006: 2 hours, 8(?) children, average age 6-7. (…)

June 17, 2006: 2 hours, 3 children, ages 4, 6, and 7. Another class that went well, especially since I didn’t really take all that much time to prepare. Before the class, we (the teachers) had a little time to chat and determined that we should focus on having each of the children say a prayer, or at least participate in the prayers. Some of our kids don’t really like saying prayers - we haven’t quite figured out why. I’ve been wondering whether it might be related to the atmosphere we create surrounding prayers - perhaps they need some quiet-down time before starting with prayers, or perhaps we just need to be firmer. Anyway, we took advantage of the class’s theme, starting the class by telling the kids we would be talking about obedience today, and that one way we show our obedience (to God) is by praying. One of the kids was more than happy to recite prayers, but the other two (the younger ones - not sure if that’s relevant?) didn’t want to. One of them eventually lip-synched a prayer and we ended the prayers by singing a prayer together, so we left it at that. I’d really appreciate feedback from people who’ve had similar issues surrounding prayers… we’re trying to understand what we might be doing or not doing that is keeping certain children from participating in the prayers (to the point of consistently refusing!)

The other point of revisiting obedience is because this week’s class falls on Father’s Day weekend - you know, obedience to parents and all that. After reading a story about Lua Getsinger and her obedience to ‘Abdu’l-Baha and performing some skits comparing obedience and disobedience, we set to work on Father’s Day cards. These were sheets of paper folded in 4, on which the kids drew and wrote “Happy Father’s Day” type messages. We had planned several other things to work on (such as prize ribbons made by paper-folding) in case we had extra time, but ended up finishing on time without having gone into the extra activities. The activities went well because folding paper is just fun, but I think the kids found it difficult not to have an example already finished to guide them. We’ve come across this before… food for thought! All in all, the class flew by (which is a good sign, I suppose). We seem to have some pretty good luck with this topic - every time we talk about obedience, the kids are more obedient. Maybe we’re too soft the rest of the time! Actually, that’s another thing we’ve discussed - we tend to be soft on discipline and not to push too hard when the kids don’t want to do something. That can be a big problem though, especially when it comes to prayers - God tells us to pray, so we can’t just not do it.

Thoughts about all this are greatly welcomed!!!

April 8, 2006: 1.5 hours, 4 children, average age 6-7. This class went well - better than we had expected! It had been a while since we had revisited the topic of obedience and it was long overdue. Most of the children had just come back from a birthday party (one of them was the birthday boy) so they were a bit rowdy and undoubtedly full of sugar, so it took a little while to get them calmed down, but miraculously, it happened. We said prayers (with some difficulty) and sang some songs, after which we had a talk about obedience. I think the children were able to catch what we were saying on some level; we gave all sorts of examples, and even asked them if some of the things they were doing (for example, writhing on the floor or sitting quietly, being loud or showing reverence during prayers, etc) were examples of obedience or not. Their conduct seemed to improve during the colouring period / artistic activity, where we used the drawing from Ruhi Book 3 - of a young boy kneeling to pray. We explained the connection between the drawing and the content of the lesson. They were even sharing pencils and felt pens while colouring, and patiently waiting for their turn with certain colours (with minimal grabbing)!

The simple nature of this lesson seems to be what made it so successful (at least in our eyes). In fact, most of the lesson was taken straight from Ruhi Book 3 - you can’t get much simpler. As well as being simple, the lesson was also focused - since the Ruhi lessons are designed to reinforce the theme of each lesson in many different ways (through memorization, songs, stories, games and art).