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!

 

Grade 2 – lesson 2: Joyfulness

“Joy gives us wings! In times of joy our strength is more vital, our intellect keener, and our understanding less clouded…” tells us ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (in Paris Talks). And this was our theme for today’s lesson. 🙂 I’ve created a pdf for downloading – check it out here. We talked about how bringing joy to someone’s heart (especially when they are not well) can make them feel soooo much better. The children even had ideas of going to visit people at a hospital and bringing a pet along for patting, to bring joy to people’s hearts. Mmmh – we’ll have to look into how we can best do that as a service project.

We reviewed the memorisation of last week (Blessed is the spot) and practiced the new quote: “O Son of Man! Rejoice in the gladness of thine heart, that thou mayest be worthy to meet Me and to mirror forth My beauty.” Then we shared today’s story about Leroy Ioas meeting ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, when He visited Chicago, which you can find in the lesson pdf or on page 30 in Ruhi Book 3a (Teaching Children’s Classes Grade 2).

Drama was great fun today – the exercises comprised of pretending to be candle, melting while counting back from 10.

…they did splendidly! 😉 After enacting a scenario (see the lesson pdf for details) of how 3 friends figured out how to bring joy to their hearts by supporting one of them who hurt themselves, we moved on to singing (Joy by Nancy Ward) and then crafts. Starting out with making tissue-paper flowers (like the bouquet, that Leroy Ioas had bought for ‘Abdu’l-Bahá), we went on to create a whole garden, meant to bring joy to everyone’s heart!

…so much joy, so little time 🙂 it was a lovely lesson – thanks everyone! Well done!