baha’i children’s class ideas.

learning concepts

We must be fair and just at all times, even to animals.

activities

story: The Lion and the Mouse – Aesop’s fable. "Even the weak and small may be of help to those much mightier than themselves."
song: "God’s Creatures" from Ruhi Book 3.
drama/skits: Divide the children into teams of two. One team at a time, have the children improvise activities depicting kindness or unkindness to animals. (They may need to be cautioned about not acting too roughly.) One child is to be the animal and the other the person. Then have them reverse the roles.
drawing: have the children draw one of the scenarios depicted in one of the drama activities they did. Alternatively, have the children draw one scene each from the "Lion and the Mouse" story, and then bring the drawings all together in order to retell the story in pictures.
origami animals: One of the children showed us how he had learned to make origami animals last year, so I figured it might be a good activity for all of us to take part in. I guess I have to learn origami first :O

reading/prayer for study

"Do not be content with showing friendship in words alone, let your heart burn with loving kindness for all who may cross your path."’Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks

reference

Because animals do not have the power of speech, `Abdu’l-Bahá states that they are to be treated with even more consideration than are people: ". . . ye do worse to harm an animal, for man hath a language, he can lodge a complaint, he can cry out and moan; if injured he can have recourse to the authorities and these will protect him from his aggressor. But the hapless beast is mute, able neither to express its hurt nor take its case to the authorities. If a man inflict a thousand ills upon a beast, it can neither ward him off with speech nor hale him into court. Therefore is it essential that ye show forth the utmost consideration to the animal, and that ye be even kinder to him than to your fellow man." (Source?)

"The world of existence is an emanation of the merciful attribute of God. God has shone forth upon the phenomena of being through His effulgence of mercy and He is clement and kind to all His creation. [...] Consequently man must learn the lesson of kindness and beneficence from God Himself. Just as God is kind to all humanity, man also must be kind to his fellow creatures. If his attitude is just and loving toward his fellow men, toward all creation, then indeed is he worthy of being pronounced the image and likeness of God." (‘Abdu’l-Baha, Foundations of World Unity, p.79)

Then, O ye friends of God! Ye must not only have kind and merciful feelings for mankind, but ye should also exercise the utmost kindness towards every living creature. The physical sensibilities and instincts are common to animal and man. Man is, however, negligent of this reality and imagines that sensibility is peculiar to mankind, therefore he practices cruelty to the animal. In reality what difference is there in physical sensations! Sensibility is the same whether you harm man or animal: there is no difference. Nay, rather, cruelty to the animal is more painful because man has a tongue and he sighs, complains and groans when he receives an injury and complains to the government and the government protects him from cruelty; but the poor animal cannot speak, it can neither show its suffering nor is it able to appeal to the government. If it is harmed a thousand times by man it is not able to defend itself in words nor can it seek justice or retaliate. Therefore one must be very considerate towards animals and show greater kindness to them than to man. Educate the children in their infancy in such a way that they may become exceedingly kind and merciful to the animals. If an animal is sick they should endeavor to cure it; if it is hungry, they should feed it; if it is thirsty, they should satisfy its thirst; if it is tired, they should give it rest.Man is generally sinful and the animal is innocent; unquestionably one must be more kind and merciful to the innocent. [...] This sympathy and kindness is one of the fundamental principles of the divine kingdom. Ye should pay great attention to this question. (‘Abdu’l-Baha, Baha’i World Faith, p.374)

experience

October 4, 2008: Argh! This class was a disaster, mainly because of me being completely unprepared for it, and being the only teacher for a class of five rowdy kids didn’t help either.  the idea of doing origami animals may have been a good one, but it was a whole lot harder to learn than I had originally thought.  most of the children just broke out the legos as I tried to wrap my head around making a crane with the one or two who actually wanted to stick with it.  In any case, I’m not sure it’d be very useful for me to report any further on this one x_X Maybe next time.

November 11, 2006: 2 hours, 7 children, average age 6-7. By now we’ve had some good experience with this lesson, so it wasn’t too hard to give. We used a nice new quote from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to go with this lesson: "Do not be content with showing friendship in words alone, let your heart burn with loving kindness for all who may cross your path." It goes along with the subject, and it’s general enough that the kids can apply it to animals, people, and whatever else – so the kids could add it to the prayer book they’re creating. We told the story of the lion and the mouse again – many of them remembered it – after which the kids drew pictures of different parts of the story. We collected them all at the end so that we could stick them on the wall in order – a nice way to show off the kids’ work and a good way for them to remember the lesson later on. Many of the children had quite a few comments and questions about animals – including how to handle dangerous or poisonous animals, and so on. Their curiosity is really heartening. On the spur of the moment, we suggested that maybe we could dedicate a future class to learning about different animals of the world… maybe when we review the topic – either November 26th or January 6th (I love having a class calendar all planned out!)

June 24, 2006: 2 hours, 2 children, ages 6-7. This was a weird class! We were going to focus on another topic for this week, but one of the children brought his new pet hamster to the class so it seemed logical to switch topics. We had quite a lot of fun interacting with the hamster and talking about how we should treat animals with respect and do our best not to scare them. It was a bit disorganized and unfortunately, I didn’t have appropriate quotes with me to go over with the children. Should I put together a binder with materials we’ve used in the past, so we can go back to them at a moment’s notice? Or perhaps a small notebook with quotes we’ve studied? I guess I’m not really satisfied with my level of preparation for this class. Oh well, it’s done. One of our more difficult children (a 6-year-old boy) sang a prayer with the other boy who was present, of his own accord – usually we struggle to get him to say prayers. God bless these children – I can become so confused with them sometimes. Before going outside for the day, we worked on a craft we started last week – paper-people chains. OMG they loved this to pieces. One of them drew clothes and faces on his people, the other cut out pants and shirts from different-coloured paper. AWESOME activity (although not strictly in line with the topic).Another note – I was mostly alone in teaching this class today, which I found more difficult than usual. There were only two children present, so it wasn’t a major disaster or anything. I find that when I’m alone with the children, though, I get easily distracted. Me being easily distracted means that I lose control of the class easily. That’s why I prefer co-teaching to being on my own. I’m not sure what I can do to build up my ability to stay on top of things – maybe to build my own confidence, I just need more practice, more experience.

June 3, 2006: 2 hours, 5 children, average age 6-7. Apparently, the class went quite well – I was out of town for the weekend, so I wasn’t there to take part. We had two versions of the story available to read (our class operates in French, so we had to find translations). The versions we found used language that was a bit difficult for the children to understand, so the story was read once more in paraphrase to make sure everybody got it. Once the story was done, we made time for drama – we started by miming animals and having the rest of the kids guess what animal was being mimed. Afterwards, the children broke into groups and performed the skits as described above. It seems like they did well with these – I was afraid that there might have been problems with the kids being too rough, but that doesn’t seem to have been an issue. Once the skits were done, it was colouring time – we had prepared two drawings, one of a lion and one of a mouse, to go along with the story. Everyone in our class seems to love drawing and colouring time. They love getting their hands on the pens and colouring in different images.There seemed to have been two main problems during this class: first was that the materials we prepared didn’t last long enough, leaving us with jumping and screaming kids rampaging around inside at the end of the class (it was raining, so we couldn’t take them outside); second was the uncooperative attitude that some of the younger members of the class displayed. The first is relatively easy to take care of – we just have to be able to come up with more activities to have on hand during the class (potentially crafts, which are popular because of the hands-on aspect). The second isn’t so easy to resolve and has been a challenge with our class from the get-go. To be honest, it’s difficult to conduct a class for a wide age range (our oldest member is going on 11 (almost a junior youth!), and our youngest member is still 4 years old). Perhaps we need to split into several groups at some point in our class, so that each group can take part in age-appropriate activities that may better stimulate them and allow them to develop the capacities they’re struggling to develop. But what’s the difference? That’s what I’m wondering. I’ve become comfortable dealing with the older children (say, 7 to 10), but I admit that I still have a lot to learn about dealing with the younger children (4 to 6) in ways that really support their development. Any comments from readers?