Grade 2 – lesson 5: Prayer

As today’s lesson was all about ‘PRAYER’ we spent a bit more time with saying and singing prayers. Going over the unity prayer we started learning last time (O God my God! Unite the hearts of Thy servants…) and decided we need to find a melody to go with it, so we can learn it easier. Any suggestions…? Leave us a comment 🙂

We learnt, that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá lived in a state of prayer – His heart was always turned to God. Prayer is conversation with God – we asked ourselves, how we would behave if we were in the presence of God, talking to God? A good question to ask ourselves before we pray, helping us remember to be reverent, humble, patient, radiant – the children came up with a whole list of virtues! Fabulous!

Have a look at the pdf of today’s lesson on PRAYER, for more references, and the quote we started learning too.

We have been practicing the previous quotes and prayers as well – and it’s been great to see the children’s enthusiasm in using their memorisation booklets! Those sticker lines are filling up nicely 🙂

For our crafts today we used the story we enacted in the drama practice as inspiration. The children were pretending to be flowers or corn in a field, all droopy and sad, because it hadn’t rained for days and the sun was hot and drying everything around them. Finally, a thunderclap is heard, coming closer and closer and FINALLY bringing rain – glorious wet rain, the plants are reaching upwards, receiving the heavenly bounties.

See the beautiful collages of sad and happy flowers, before and after the rain… some of them even turning into beautiful gardens! We simply used pages out of old magazines, which we cut out and stuck onto slightly thicker paper. A very easy process for a gorgeous result.

We finished off with the story about about ‘Abdu’l-Bahá teaching a very devoted believer how to pray, and sang Tokozani. Both these references are in the lesson on PRAYER pdf.

See you all next week – for the last lesson before the school holidays – stay warm!

 

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.