Lesson 8 : Humility

Welcome back to the first full lesson of this term. We had a lovely brunch last week – and now ‘got back to work’ 🙂

Using the Virtues Guide as a reference, we first looked at what humility or being humble really means.

We learned that being humble, is about taking on an attitude of learning. We’re not perfect, but we’re constantly striving to do better, not by competing with others, but by looking at our own ‘gifts’ and improving on them. Being humble also means to put others first – before ourselves. It also means asking for help, when we need it.

Before memorising today’s quote, we discussed that we need to show humility before God as well.

“O Son of Man! Humble thyself before Me, that I may graciously visit thee.” –Bahá’u’lláh

To remind ourselves of humility, and to practice being humble every day – we then made lovely little prayer book felt overs. Have a look at the pictures below.We just cut rectangular shapes out of felt, big enough to cover the whole book and allowing for fold-ins on front  and back. Then, using a blanket-stitch, we sewed the top and bottom-fold-ins together and slipped it over the books – done! 🙂 Decorating the fronts with buttons – for an extra special look.

We finished off with the song for this lesson called ‘Be Like the Earth‘…

That’s it for today – have a lovely week everyone and see you next week… 🙂

Lesson 23 : Humility

We started our class today with prayers as usual. While doing so, we tried to take on a humble posture, as if we would be approaching a king. The children did very well!

Book 3 has a beautiful little song for this lesson called ‘Be like the Earth’. I’ve just found this great wikisite with all the lesson’s songs here. The imagery created by the words of the song, inspired our art activity for today – gorgeous and lush collages of trees, gardens and everything on the earth…

We were all quite addicted to making collages, letting it take up most of our lesson time 🙂 We did have time for a quick story about how ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was a perfect example of humility. You’ll find it on page 32 of Ruhi Book 3.

To finish off today’s lesson, we started learning a new prayer – which has been put to music most beautifully by Tara Ellis. It is a prayer by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and goes like this:

O God!  Refresh and gladden my spirit.  Purify my heart.  Illumine my powers.  I lay all my affairs in Thy hand.  Thou art my Guide and my Refuge.  I will no longer be sorrowful and grieved; I will be a happy and joyful being.  O God!  I will no longer be full of anxiety, nor will I let trouble harass me.  I will not dwell on the unpleasant things of life.

O God!  Thou art more friend to me than I am to myself.  I dedicate myself to Thee, O Lord.

You’ll find all details for this lesson on the ‘lesson‘ page. See you all next week – where we learn more about Compassion.

Lesson 8 : Humility

Today we learnt about what it means to be humble. We used the example of a tree, that is full of fruit – comparing them to all the many wonderful qualities a person might have: What do the tree’s branches do when they are laden with fruit….? They get lower and lower to the ground. In reach for us to pick them and benefit from the lovely fruit the tree produced. We talked about how this is what we are supposed to do too – all the wonderful things we are, do and achieve – we should be humble about them so others can benefit through our achievements too.

To remind us of being humble we created a tree collage together … 

and then each child created some of their own tree interpretations to take home as well:

Being humble also means to acknowledge other’s successes, encouraging them without having to compare. We ended our class today with a game called “Sometimes I am tall”. A guessing game, where everyone stands in a circle and one child is in the middle – blindfolded. One of the people in the circle then says, ‘Sometimes we are tall’ (everyone stretches up high on the tippy toes) and then says ‘Sometimes we are small’ (everyone bends down, making themselves as small as possible) – doing this a few times, then that person just does the action and everyone in the circle follows. The blindfolded child in the middle then has to guess – are they tall or small? As simple as it sounds, we had lots of fun with it! 🙂

And here is today’s lesson in pdf format 8_Humility

I’ve also created another page on this blog with all the lesson pdfs listed directly. For other children’s class teachers to download – hopefully they are of use. Have happy classes! 😉