Lesson 7 / Knowledge of God : part II

Today we continued our quest in gaining more knowledge of God. Our fabulous ‘Knights of Knowledge’ finished creating their armour, to be ready for the search of truth and answers… chest plates, provision bags, matches, swords and much more was added to the ‘equipment’.

 

We then started learning the new prayer for this unit. To help us memorise the words and understand the concepts within, we created a series of ‘pictograms’.

Do you know a melody, that goes with this prayer? If so please share it in the comments below – we’d love to learn it! Have found an ‘old’ one by Mary Davis but it doesn’t cover the whole prayer, only the first few lines.

We finished off today’s lesson by playing the game initiator/investigator – everyone stands in a circle, one person (investigator) steps outside for a minute. The rest of the group decide who the initiator is, and he/she starts various actions for everyone to follow (clapping, stamping, jumping, etc…). The investigator is called back in to stand in the centre of the circle, trying to find out who the initiator is. We had to play at least 8 rounds! 🙂 Fun game!

There won’t be a class next weekend, as it’s ‘Queens Birthday’ weekend and two of our teachers are away. See you all back on the 10th of June.

Lesson 7 / Knowledge of God

Set 3 of the new grade 2 lessons of the Ruhi Curriculum is all about acquiring knowledge of God. There is a beautiful overview paragraph for the teachers:

In the previous three lessons, the children learned about the love of God and the importance of obeying His laws, concepts fundamental to the pattern of conduct and habits you are trying to help them develop. Good behaviour is not, of course, to be acquired blindly. We are not machines programmed to act in a certain way. All of us have to work consciously for our own spiritual and intellectual development, which implies a passion to pursue knowledge. (Section 2, Set 3 of the Grade 2 lessons)

We started out by discussing with the children, how we can learn about God. Some of the answers were through prayer, using good virtues and qualities, through Bahá’u’lláh, the Báb, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and in fact, all the messengers of God. It’s through the teachings these manifestations bring us that we can learn more/gain knowledge of God.

One of the keys to knowledge is asking questions!

And then of course, we can observe nature – the universe – everything around us to see signs and tokens of God EVERYwhere. Trees, mountains, flowers, the ocean, human beings, the stars, animals – it’s all created by God and carries signs of His Glory.

The purpose of God in creating man hath been, and will ever be, to enable him to know his Creator and to attain His Presence. – Bahá’u’lláh

(This was the quote for today’s lesson, which we started memorising.)

One of the children then suggested we should all become ‘Knights of Knowledge’ in search of truth and answers… What a fabulous idea. To start out our quest, we prepared some very colourful armour – getting ready to know more of God and His Creation – armed with shields of unity, peacefulness, swords or courage, and helmets of wisdom. We are ready to tackle our journey and start the quest….

…lets see where our quest takes us next week! There is much more to explore within this lesson, so we will continue then… Have a wonderfully inquisitive week! 🙂