baha’i children’s class ideas.

learning concepts
Truthfulness is a law that Bahá’u'lláh has established that the world may be united. We should tell the truth at all times, even if it is difficult. This way, we will be worthy of the trust of others.

activities
story: The Boy Who Cried Wolf. There is an excellent retelling in Book 2 of Bahá’í Education for Children, aka the Furútan curriculum. Our children could relate to it a lot.
song: “Tell the Truth” or “Truthfulness”, from Ruhi Book 3.
craft: Nine-pointed stars—cut out three equilateral triangles for each child; help them put them together to form a regular nine-pointed star. They may either (1) place them on another piece of paper, trace them, and cut out the resulting nine-pointed star, or (2) glue the three triangles together to form a nine-pointed star. They can then decorate the star as they wish; they may also want to punch a hole in one point and run a string through to hang it somewhere when finished.

reading/prayer for study
Let truthfulness and courtesy be your adorning. (Bahá’u'lláh)

Truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues. (‘Abdu’l-Bahá)

reference
O SON OF MAN! Neglect not My commandments if thou lovest My beauty, and forget not My counsels if thou wouldst attain My good pleasure. (Bahá’u'lláh, Arabic Hidden Word no.39)

experience
December 2, 2006: 2 hours, 10 children, average age 6-7. Pretty good class this afternoon; our only hang-up, lesson-wise, was that I didn’t prepare the craft in time, and we ended up cutting out the triangles at the last minute. Miraculously, the kids didn’t implode out of impatience. I was surprised to find such an amazing retelling of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, too. The kids weren’t looking forward to the story too much today—too much sitting quietly, I guess—but all of them got into it and could empathize with the main character. The story focused on the consequences of the boy’s actions (which were mainly along the lines of disappointing his family and his community and losing their trust) and wasn’t cheesy at all. I was afraid that telling that story would elicit groans from the kids—everyone’s heard that story way too many times, right? I was happily mistaken.

A quick word about our renewed focus on discipline: we have been taking certain steps to quiet the children down at the beginning of the class, and it seems to be paying off. While the children aren’t necessarily at their best every moment of each class, the class seems to be more manageable now. We haven’t yet had the need to apply a punishment (what Ruhi Book 3 refers to as “sanctions”—in our case, sitting apart from the class during the colouring period that now follows prayers); God willing, we won’t have to, but in the meantime all of us (the co-teachers) have to be ready to do so if disruptive behaviour arises.

August 17, 2007: 1 hours, 3 children, average age 7-8. Our calmest outreach class so far! Due to rain, we had to move the classes inside for the evening, at the home of a Baha’i who recently moved into the area. (more in a bit.)

December 5, 2007: 1 hour, 3 children, average age 8. Outreach class. wow. pretty interesting class. discipline went well even though we had some normally feisty kids in the class – things have gone better since we introduced the painting activity, which has given our more tactile/kinesthetic learners a stronger reason to engage themselves in the class. after reading prayers and singing two songs (“Tell the Truth” and “Blessed is the Spot”), we memorized the quotation (“Truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues”), which brought us into a discussion about what a “foundation” means. I think we got the idea across well enough—we introduced the idea of the foundation of a house, and how a house would fall over if it didn’t have a good enough foundation; we then compared our souls to those houses, and explained that without truthfulness, our “soul houses” (as it were) would have nothing to stand on, just like a real house. We then launched into the story—which I hammed up a great deal, but which again seemed to have gotten the point across—and, to end off the class, we had about five or ten minutes to paint with the kids. usually we have more time to paint, but I guess I hammed up the story a little too much!

One of the children told me something interesting that made me think; I’ll share with you an abridged version. She said she had gotten into the habit of lying about little things, for example, making a mess in the house—and then blaming said mess on one of her younger sisters out of the fear of punishment. When guilt finally overtook her later on, she would confess the truth to her parents, at which point she would be punished—perhaps worse than if she had told the truth in the first place. We encouraged her to see that as a good reason to tell the truth up front, but instead she cited the inevitable punishments as being “why I don’t tell the truth anymore”. yikes. How do you go about helping a child to learn to love telling the truth when they come out with something like that? (comments welcome…)

July 3, 2010: Trying it yet again! Outreach again this time. A group of us have been doing outreach in Chinatown and met some families all living in one apartment building who showed interest in a children’s class. After meeting a few times and sharing Anna’s presentation with the families (through a significant language barrier), we finally had a class of sorts, with 4-6 boys (I’d say about 5-8 years old). We played a lot more games than usual for us, and they loved it. in fact the class was mostly games, proportion-wise. all the same, we worked on memorizing “O God, guide me” and the quote on truthfulness. The prayers were amazing, as the older children stayed in quiet meditation for a full minute after the prayers were done–I’ve never seen that in all my time doing children’s classes. My co-teacher suggested it might have been due to their Buddhist background… in any case, it was astounding and MOST welcome, and we’ll encourage them to continue doing this for sure. They loved the story about the Boy Who Cried Wolf, and they seemed to grasp all the concepts well. overall, a great summer class after a very uneventful spring season.

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.

learning concepts
Baha’u'llah teaches us never to enter a person’s home, or lay hands on his or her belongings, without that person’s permission. this is a mark of courtesy and respect towards others.

activities
story: any story about asking permission may do; the story of the fish inside the reservoir from Ruhi Book 3 might do in a pinch.
maze: “Obtaining Permission” (Obtenir la Permission) (PDF); children must navigate a maze that seems simple to complete, but before they are able to complete it, they must first “obtain permission” (in the form of a detour).
drama: children act out situations where they share their possessions with friends—for example, playing together with toys, sharing crayons, etc. how do the children feel when someone takes something of theirs without their permission?

reference

experience
Dec. 8, 2007: 1.5 hours, 6 children, average age 7-8. I was skeptical about how this class would turn out, because, to be honest, the topic seemed bizarre at first—how do you explain this Bahá’í law to children? Of course, the curriculum we’re using is quite clear—when we observe this law by asking permission before entering a home or laying hands on someone’s belongings, we are showing them courtesy and respect. So we spoke to the kids about this during the lesson; they seemed to get it, but in retrospect, I think I may have spent too much time talking. we could have integrated some sort of activity to help the children understand, for instance, a short dramatic exercise. that’s for next time, maybe. All in all, this lesson went well. the children found the maze challenging, which was the point behind it—I designed it from scratch to illustrate that we need to have the presence of mind to ask permission before impulsively infringing on someone’s property. in retrospect, this kind of thing applies in many different situations in class—sharing crayons during the colouring portion of class, respecting the property of the Baha’i Centre where we hold our classes, asking for permission before taking snacks out of the cupboards, and so on.

learning concepts
Our love should be like the rays of the sun: we should love everyone, even those who mistreat us.

activities
story: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and the unkind man, Ruhi Book 3, pp.45-46. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá shows love to a man who reviles and curses him for twenty-four years.
handprint flowers: trace your hand and turn it into a flower! a lily, to be precise.
rose tag: played much like freeze tag, except that when a player is tagged, he/she must sit down; a player must untag them by kneeling, touching the ground and saying (planting) “the rose of love”. helps the related quote (see below) to sink in.

reading/prayer for study
In the garden of thy heart plant naught but the rose of love.

reference
O FRIEND! In the garden of thy heart plant naught but the rose of love, and from the nightingale of affection and desire loosen not thy hold. Treasure the companionship of the righteous and eschew all fellowship with the ungodly.
(Hidden Words of Bahá’u'lláh, Arabic, No.3)

experience
May 13, 2006: ~1.5 hours, 2 children, average age 6. Mother’s day. The class started late, but we managed to hit on most of the main activities. We practiced and sang prayers with our two participants: “Blessed is the Spot” and “Say God Sufficeth”. We read the story of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and the unkind man and had a good conversation about love and gratitude, which segued very well into the handprint flowers – the children’s Mother’s Day gift. Gotta go – more soon.

August 15, 2007: ~1 hour, 3 children, average age 8. Outreach class. We began with a new format for this class, to accommodate our group’s high energy level: colouring first to calm the kids down. So far, it seems to work like a charm – it may take a few minutes to convince some of them to colour instead of playing games, but once they’re convinced, they’ll be able to concentrate enough to say prayers together. We also created a new movement-based game for this lesson, called “rose tag”; it’s explained above.

learning concepts

God loves justice. Justice means that we must respect the rights of every human being and make sure we do not take away from anyone what they deserve.

activities

story: pp. 43-44, Ruhi Book 3: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in the stagecoach.
games: we often play games as examples of justice… is it just to break the rules? how can we ensure that we can be just while we play games?

reference

Tread ye the path of justice, for this, verily, is the straight path. (Gleanings, p.250)  

The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee. By its aid thou shalt see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbor. Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee to be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes. (Hidden Words, No.2, Arabic)  

“The light of men is Justice,” He moreover states, “Quench it not with the contrary winds of oppression and tyranny. The purpose of justice is the appearance of unity among men.” “No radiance,” He declares, “can compare with that of justice. The organization of the world and the tranquillity of mankind depend upon it.” (quoted in Advent of Divine Justice, p.28)

experience

May 6, 2006: ~2 hours, 6 children, average age 6-7. The class went well. I was able to consult with the children to see what sort of games we could play, and we ended up playing a game called "tic-tac-toe" which is basically a variant of "hot potato" – we passed a ball around in a circle while one child repeated "tic, tac, tic, tac…" and whoever was holding the ball when he/she said "toe" would have to leave the circle and replace him/her counting. The kids loved it.

August 9, 2007: ~1 hours, 4 children, average age 8. Outreach class. We basically took this class straight out of Ruhi Book 3 with very few modifications, and it went alright. The boys in our class, including one who seems to have something similar to ADHD, had some trouble staying still—and hence participating—so it wasn’t perfect. To accomodate, we introduced a new type of movement-based activity to help them have the patience to memorize quotes and prayers: the "step game", in which children stand in a line and slowly advance one step at a time, each saying one word of a quote in sequence when they step ahead, continuing until they cross a finish line. We used bristol board to write out quotes and prayers in large print so that they can easily be seen from a distance; the kids love this game, and always want to take turns holding the bristol board for the others. We’ll be using this game a lot in future.

starting the step game.

let’s go!

sharing towel space (from Ruhi Bk 3).