baha’i children’s class ideas.

during a recent class, we asked the children what they think of when they hear the word love. one of our older children said “nobody loves me”. I rebutted, asking him “what about your Mom?”, which he acknowledged. “What about your Dad?”, which he again acknowledged. “What about the rest of your family?”, and again, he acknowledged that they loved him. Later, when we asked the children to draw something related to love, he chose to draw his family. In his drawing (pictured above), he’s stepping on his father’s foot, and apologizing. his mom and dad say they love him all the same. Oh, and his sister (right) has an iPad. We also drew the word “love” in big letters in front of the neighbours’ house (pictured below), just to let them know what we talked about that day.

sidewalk chalk is easy to come by, and makes a nice, fun activity for kids who feel the need to move around a lot. as well, it has the added benefit of leaving a visible trace for neighbours and passers-by to see what we’re doing; we even got into a conversation with two older ladies who asked us what we were doing. Nice!

I’m back from Vietnam, newly married, and diving back into the fray of life in my home cluster—back to the Chinatown children’s class I’ve been writing about for the past few months (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…) and dealing with new challenges. Oddly enough, at our local reflection meeting, someone told a story of an individual initiative that echoed exactly what’s been happening with our class. He explained how he and his wife had reached out to their neighbours, gathering up about five families who agreed to support a children’s class in their home. “It started out well,” he explained, “but as time went on, fewer and fewer people came.” Week after week, he contacted each family, and, from one week to the next, they would give some sort of reason why they couldn’t come—too tired, too cold, late lunch, family visit, whatever. It got to the point where he was wondering whether it was worth it to continue holding the class each week; why bother holding the class if there’s only one child?

Our team has been dealing with this same issue in the past month—or so I’m told, since I’ve been away—it seems like family after family has been dropping out of their commitment to the class. It’s not like we’re going to give up, of course. I’ve been teaching children’s classes long enough to see the same kind of thing happen, and I’m determined to learn how to get past it. Still, it’s a real poser. When I first got back, we consulted and decided we had to find out why the families in question had dropped out. We investigated, and found that part of the answer might have been lack of interest in the class. The parents had never really insisted that their children come—they just left it up to the children, saying, “If they want to go, we’ll take them”. Apparently the children just didn’t want to come anymore. That sent the gears in our heads turning, thinking, how can we make the class more attractive to the children?

We identified a few strategies: first was to find better activities, and a more engaging format. We use a calendar to plan our classes (see above), so we added columns for each type of activity so we could plan several weeks in advance which craft, story, game, etc., we would feature for each class. That way, we would be better prepared for each class, and could incorporate more complex and engaging activities, ones that require more preparation than the ones listed in Ruhi Book 3. We had already decided beforehand to repeat each lesson two weeks in a row, and to use different activities each week to avoid too much repetition. We decided to increase the length of the classes from 1.5 hours to 2 hours, with a snack break in between (everyone loves snacks), splitting the class time into two portions. The first portion would be dedicated to the lesson: a few minutes of “presenting” the lesson, time to memorize a quote, and selected activities. The second portion would be devoted to arts and crafts, so that children could go home having accomplished something creative, yet still related to the lesson. Children who finish the craft quickly would be given a drawing or colouring exercise (dependent on age); drawing exercises (click for an example) would include some writing work as well.

This is a current issue for us, and in the next few months we’ll be focusing on class quality and outreach to gather more families into our community of interest. What a joy it is to make a commitment to learning about the core activities—there’s certainly not a boring moment.

So far during the month of January, our Chinatown class has gone through four lessons on the themes of truthfulness, steadfastness, humility, and preferring others before oneself. We started off at the beginning of January (the 2nd) with a special three-hour class, which we hoped would be attended by a large number of families so that we could start off with a bang—of course, things don’t always go the way we would hope. Class size has fluctuated between three to five children each week, and due to how busy some of the families are, we’ve also run into some punctuality problems. So far, though, we’ve managed to get most of the children to memorize at least one prayer—”O God, Guide Me”—and are working on having them memorize the second one suggested in Book 3—the one that goes “I am earthly, make me heavenly”. We got together as a teaching team and discussed curriculum; the plan is to finish the lessons from Book 3, and then continue by introducing the lessons of the Furutan curriculum, given in the books Baha’i Education for Children.

The three-hour class went remarkably well; I haven’t tried to go that long with a class in a while, and was pleasantly refreshed to see that we had enough material to keep the children engaged, having fun and learning through the whole time. After praying and singing a few of our favourite songs, we plunged straight into memorizing the well-known Baha’i quote, “Truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues”. We tried explaining it in terms of the foundation of a building; I’m not sure whether the analogy helped them or confused them. I keep wondering about how good their command of English is, since most of them have only lived in Canada for a year, and I seem to end up explaining a lot of the words. Perhaps that’s actually normal for kids of their age (~6-7 years), and I’ve been coddled by only having gifted children to teach in the past. Well, whatever. This makes for great teaching experience.  The second half of the class, after a healthy snack, consisted of putting together a house out of wooden stir-sticks—illustrating how virtues can be a “foundation” for human spiritual life—and a dramatic presentation of the day’s story, which was a retelling of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. It was actually my first time successfully “doing” drama with the kids in a children’s class; we did it by eschewing a script and instead giving the children their roles and lines verbally, with extensive narration by one of the teachers. We had two children playing the mother and father, and one playing the titular character. The children took their cues from the narrator, acting out whatever the story said. The whole thing worked out well, I had my directorial debut, and they got a real kick from acting out the story.

The next two classes dealt with slightly more abstract themes, and I noticed that we had a tougher time getting the message across to all of the kids. During both the lesson on steadfastness and the lesson on humility, they seemed to have trouble understanding the theme, and I had to explain it a few times, leaving me wondering what they had come away with. I found that the description of Book 3 seemed to go a little over their heads, so I tried to explain humility to the children the following way: God is big and powerful, and we, on the other hand, are so small and weak by comparison. Humility is just remembering how big and powerful God is, and how small and weak we are. When we remember that we depend on God for everything, we stop thinking that we’re better than anyone else around us. It took us most of the class time to get to that point of understanding, though. I think we got it by the end, but of course, as suggested in Book 3 itself, we’ll have to repeat it later on to be sure.

Regarding steadfastness, I was pleased to see that nobody came away with nightmares from the story of Ruhu’llah and his father, which I decided to tell in its entirety, though as non-graphically as I could. I’ve heard Baha’is express misgivings about telling a story in which the main character, a young boy dedicated to teaching and spreading God’s message, watches his father die before him only to die himself after refusing to recant his faith—but, besides having to make certain disclaimers, I’ve never heard either parents or children object to the story. On one occasion, a child reacted with anxiety to think that children could be killed in such a way, at which point the parent on hand explained that, while such things may have happened in that place at that time (19th-century Persia), we don’t have to worry about it happening to us here in Canada, which seemed to bring the anxiety level down. I made sure to give the same disclaimer this time, and nobody even made a peep—which, again, made me wonder whether they had understood what I was saying… oh well.

Several members of our teaching team just spent part of the afternoon on the ice at Ottawa’s Dow’s Lake, where many people, both locals and visitors from far and near, spend the winter months skating around on the world’s longest skating rink. no skates for us, though—we were accompanying two families from our Chinatown children’s classes who had never been out on the ice before. boots for all, and at least one young child snoozing comfortably in a stroller. the kids were full of energy, and dashed up and down the frozen surface of the lake at least twice, hooting and hollering, falling over and getting back up again, bumping into each other and flourishing into big hold-on-for-dear-life hugs. despite the chaos of little feet scrambling around on the ice, we managed to reinforce some of the lessons from the children’s class, such as showing kindness by helping our siblings and friends up when they fall. one of the children, a six-year-old girl, was asking lots of questions about all the big buildings she saw around us, which i attempted to answer, explaining the long words in their names. Perhaps thinking of other big complicated words, she asked me, “What about that ‘Thou art’… you know?” “You mean, ‘Thou art the Mighty and the Powerful’?” I replied, citing the prayer we had been memorizing together. “Yeah, that one. How does it go again?” she advanced. I repeated the prayer for her (making sure to be reverent and respectful), and she repeated it afterwards. We talked about what “mighty” and “powerful” meant, and discussed what it means that God is Almighty and All-powerful.  Really nice. I felt like it was a great bonding experience between us and the families; sort of like friends getting to know each other better. We walked them home feeling lots of joy at being together, knowing that we would meet again soon for another class.

if you so happen to be subscribed to doberman pizza, my personal baha’i blog, you probably know that I’ve been busy over the past few months planning a voyage to Vietnam. I just so happen to be blogging from a Hanoi café (wireless internet café) at this very moment. With my usual children’s class safely in the hands of Baha’i friends back in Ottawa, I’ve turned my attention to such exotic projects as developing a national Baha’i website in Vietnamese for the community here. as well, seeing as I have a fair bit of experience holding children’s classes, I’ve been asked to put together a skills training workshop for prospective teachers of children’s classes, to be held in Ho Chi Minh City in July. A number of youth have eagerly signed up for the training, which will happen as part of a week-long intensive training session aimed at mobilizing Vietnamese youth into service, especially to support the growing intensive program of growth (IPG) in Ho Chi Minh City (previously known as Saigon) and two burgeoning IPGs in Da Nang and Hanoi, both to be launched soon.  I imagine that if the training session in HCMC is successful, it’ll be replicated in the other two places.

I’ll probably blog more about what the training workshop will look like, but just to give you a quick idea, I’m planning four days’ worth of sessions, with each day focusing on a particular aspect of children’s classes: arts and crafts, songs and memorization, storytelling, and games/drama. Each day will consist of an introduction / theoretical portion in the morning, followed by practical advice on how to plan for the day’s activity, and, after a lunch break, an afternoon of group work and presentations in which participants practice planning the different activities: telling stories, memorizing songs, and so on.

Has anyone had experience offering these kinds of workshops or training sessions? How about Book 3 refreshers in which lesson planning played a part? I’d love to hear from Baha’is who have tried this out before.

many thanks to those of you who’ve left comments in the past few weeks and months with so many encouraging words. it really makes a difference! just about to head off to bed right now, with a children’s class tomorrow morning, about how "God knows the secrets of our hearts". I’ll have to blog this lesson since I don’t think I’ve added it yet. We were slated to do that one on the first weekend of January, but nobody showed up that week. the next weekend (last weekend), everyone was off to Toronto for the regional conference (which was amazing). So the lesson’s left over for this week.  Later in the day, I’ll be helping run the children’s program for our local reflection meeting. I have an idea of what I’m going to do for that one; since our city’s World Religion Day celebration is the next day, we’ll be doing a related art project from our oneness of religion lesson to decorate the Baha’i Centre. busy day huh? I’ll let you all know how it goes.

today was supposed to be yet another day of class, but all our usual participants had to cancel—other commitments, car trouble, or whatever—so the day just turned into a break for me instead, which is actually quite welcome.  I was scrambling this morning, rushing out of the house after sleeping in a bit—it’s been a long week, what with a public transit strike in Ottawa with a snowstorm on top. I managed to put together the bare minimum for today’s intended lesson on consulting experienced physicians when ill, and then forgot it at home when the taxi came to pick me up. :P oh well. so finally, I guess I became the recipient of God’s mercy—or maybe just the victim of circumstance? anyway, I figured I’d jot down a few notes while I had some time to do so. overall, the situation in the class isn’t all that different from the last time I updated—still without a co-teacher, although one of the parents has been attending the class with her children. I am beginning to wonder whether it will be realistic for the class to continue past the early spring, seeing as I will be taking time off for pioneering/travel teaching beginning in March, as I mentioned earlier. well, that’s just one of the things I have to think about, anyway. and again, like I wrote before, there’s no sense in worrying too much about it—if God wills, others will step up and take my place.  lots of things are starting to happen at the Baha’i Centre—monthly firesides being a prime example, ones that are advertised in the local papers. There’s a nice new sign for the outside, too, for people who are out walking in the street (although there are fewer of them now that the weather’s so cold).

I read up on memorization games over lunch, since that’s one thing we always seem to struggle with; apart from the usual repetition games, I found a few new ideas, including a kid-friendly version of Charades—kids are split up in teams and given a quote to act out that the others have to guess. Dialogue is permitted, but they’re not permitted to use any of the words in the quote.  Seems like it might be difficult for the younger children, but the older children should enjoy a game like that.

OK, post over for now as I catch up on more emails.  Class is still on for next week, and then another, real break (I’ll be away during the Christmas vacation period).

 we just had another class this morning, on cleanliness this time. I still haven’t explained the project that we’ve been working on over the past few days, so I figured I’d spend a little time doing a regular blog post to keep everybody up to date (I have another lesson plan to post as well, but I haven’t got all the references I need for it).  the week before last was Unity in Diversity week, and I thought it might be appropriate if we put together something special to commemorate it, so we’ve been working on masks that we made using papier-mâché on balloons. it’s been a great activity so far; the kids love using paint and decorating their masks in fun ways that show off the diversity of the human family. I’ll post photos of the masks along with the lesson plan (once it’s ready to post!)

I had a conversation with a friend the other night about how I felt like the class hasn’t really been going anywhere, mainly because of my lack of energy. the fact is, right now, I’m pretty much teaching this class solo, and have been since… well, basically the past year.  Maybe that’s been what’s made me feel a little down and discouraged lately; despite Baha’u'llah’s reassurance that we should not get discouraged even if we perform a certain service alone, I feel like it would be so much easier, and the class would be so much better, if I had a committed co-teacher. right now, I’ve got some of the parents sitting through the class with the children, and a few other people (including family members) on standby.  But I don’t really feel comfortable yet asking any of them to step up and take a stronger role in the class.  This is going to be more and more important for this class in the near future, mainly because I’m making plans to do some service overseas in the spring of 2009, which means either someone else steps up to the plate or the class is no more.  I suppose I’m blowing things up a little too much; if God wills it, brave souls will arise to help if the situation becomes too dire. We are, after all, committed to the core activities as a community, and the sudden unavailability of one teacher should be easily remedied by bringing in new people as teaching resources.  We’re fortunate in Ottawa, too; there are lots of people who are trained as teachers.  It doesn’t always feel that way—because there are so many classes to teach that we get spread pretty thinly—but really, we are blessed to have a strong, growing Baha’i community where people are becoming involved more and more.  So basically, I shouldn’t worry, or as Baha’u'llah says, "be not grieved if thou performest it thyself alone."

just a little note to let you all know that the new year of children’s classes has begun here, so I’ll be posting reflections again after an unjustly long hiatus. as always, go nuts with leaving comments! I’d really love to see as many people posting their thoughts as possible, so that we can all learn from each other. one interesting feature this year will be that I’ll be going over the curriculum we used a few years ago—so you’ll see a lot of old lessons popping up with new reflections added to them. hopefully this will help me (and you) better reflect on how children’s classes change as the children get older.  Since most of the lessons are already somewhere on this blog, I’ll be bumping them up in advance so that people can have a chance to look at them and leave comments—for instance, this week’s class was on obedience to parents (I’ve added some wrap-up comments to it already), and next week’s class is on kindness to animals, which you’ll find below. if you’re up to follow the whole curriculum as it happens, you may also want to check the class calendar in the sidebar, which will give you a glimpse of what’s coming for us in the next few weeks—surprise me by looking ahead and leaving comments on upcoming lessons!

the past week, I’ve been involved with a neighbourhood teaching/outreach project that’s endeavouring to offer all of the core activities in tandem to the local community. some of us are looking after junior youth activities, home visits with local residents, and study circles; I’m helping to look after a children’s class. After teaching a couple of classes to an enormous ring of kids the first few days, we split the class into a younger (5-9) and an older (10-11) class, with the younger children studying lessons from Book 3 of the Ruhi curriculum and the older children studying lessons from Book 3A (aka the old Book 5). As reported tonight, we’ve had an average of 8 children in both children’s classes together, and an average of 5 junior youth—and that’s only in one part of the neighbourhood.