Grade 2 – Lesson 1: Forgiveness

We started with the second book in the Ruhi Curriculum for children’s classes today – our first lesson was about ‘forgiveness’. The lesson structures are quite similar to the ones in grade 1 – learning prayers, memorising quotations, songs, stories, art and something new – drama! 🙂

Our first prayer to learn off by heart, was one that we had used many times in singing. “Blessed is the spot…” Our favourite version of the melody is based on strong regular drumming rhythm (we used plastic pots and out laps to drum on), which the children did REALLY well with!

We then moved on to memorise our quote for today: “…let your adorning be forgiveness and mercy and that which cheereth the hearts of the well-favoured of God.” (Bahá’u’lláh) After discussed the meaning of the tricky words, the children were very in quick in memorising it. Well done everyone!

I still need to create the ‘downloadabale’ worksheets for these new lessons, but if you have access to the book “Teaching Children’s Classes – Grade 2” (ISBN-1-876322-56-X), the story for lesson 1 is on page 26. It’s a beautiful example of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá showing the utmost forgiveness to the governor of ‘Akka, even after he sought to do Him wrong.

Before moving on to painting, we did our first warm-up exercises in drama. Learning to control our bodies within a given space (square) and interacting with each other in creative drama. The execises are beautifully explained on pages 27 and 28. It was a very joyful experience and the unity in our class today was heart-warming!

See you all next time – I hope to have some more lesson info up next week…. 😉

UPDATE: here is the write-up forlesson #1 ‘forgiveness’ – yay! I’ll post them to the Lessons page as well, as they become available.

Lesson 12 : Generosity

….a very sweet theme! 🙂 At least in our class today – we made/decorated cookies, to give away as gifts and sweet reminders of Generosity.

Coincidentally, today was also National Switzerland Day (1. August) and therefore some of our cookies had a very swiss look about them 🙂

Before we did the cookie decorating we learnt a new quote by Baha’u’llah – see quote of the week on the right! We also learnt a new song called ‘Blessed is the spot’, which the children put into action – I wish we had a video to show you the movements, they were great!

Have a look at the lesson pdf, which also has a beautiful illustration of the lyrics for ‘Blessed is the spot’, as well as a picture of a fountain, which is such a nice example of complete generosity – giving constantly.

This is it for today – we’re off to celebrate Swiss National day with friends – yay! 😉

Lesson 10 : Honesty

Our last lesson for this term was about HONESTY. We started out as usual with learning a new quote (see quote of the week on the right). As it spoke about adorning ourselves with honesty, we cut out the quotes and ‘adorned’ them – decorating, beautifying with stickers, coloured paper, glitter and colouring in – to our hearts content 🙂

 (Today’s images were taken on my phone, hence they’re a bit blurry…)

We played a shape game, where the teacher says a sequence of shapes (ie. circle, square, triangle, etc), and the students have to try and memorise it, and then repeat it. To make it a bit simpler for our varied ages in class, we used flash cards. (The children also wanted to test the teacher – yikes, not as easy actually! 😉 )

For our story we read The Berenstain Bears and the Truth. A great little story, where Brother and Sister Bear learn a good lesson about telling the truth….

To finish off our last lesson before the school holidays, the children had to solve some puzzles – all 10 quotes they memorised over the last 10 lessons in this term were cut up into strips, and they had to put them back together again. they got a little notebook to glue them all into, and keep them safe – and maybe look at them again over the holidays, so we don’t forget them all already 🙂

A pdf of the complete quotes can be downloaded here.

We didn’t quite have time to do our colouring in today, but have a look at the lesson pdf here – it’s got a colouring in page in there for those of you who want to finish it at home.

See you all after the school holidays, we’re back on the 25th of July.