Lesson 9 – Gaining knowledge is a life-long process

We spend our lives learning about the world around us. It’s a life-long process that never stops, for as long as we live. True understanding brings joy to our hearts, therefore it’s important to ask questions about the things we discover.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá tells us that truth is one. No matter what angle we look at it from, or where we find it. To find the truth, we must let go of prejudice and superstition and keep our minds open at all times. Looking for answers in sometimes the most unusual places.

To finish our unit on ‘knowledge’ we spent quite some time memorising the prayer from 3 lessons ago. First we cut up the prayer sheet into strips to then assemble the puzzle pieces and then flipped over more and more strips to remember the words by the little ‘pictures’ only…

Assembling the lines of the prayer – a team effort!

To memorise, we then removed more and more ‘lines’…

…eventually having removed them all, and just using the little ‘pictures’ as a reminder.

All children then got to fill in the gaps in their memorsation booklets with stickers, for a wonderful effort!

Yay! we did it – stickers symbolise the achievement of having learnt by heart this prayer.

After our big memorisation activity, we read the story for lesson 9. It is about an amazing early Bahá’í named Táhirih. Whe was born in Persia in the early 1800s. At that time, it wasn’t customary for women to receive any schooling, but Táhirih had an insatiable thirst for knowledge, was well read and eager to always learn more. Even though she could not sit in a class with men, she would sit behind a curtain, hidden from view, just so she could deepen her understanding and broaden her knowledge… We’ll learn more about Táhirih in  a later lesson, of how she become one of the most outstanding heroines of the Bahá’í Faith and a champion of the cause for women. Her courage was unwavering and she dedicated her life to learning and gaining knowledge. Composing beautiful poetry and articles that reflected her deep understanding of the teachings of God.

We then finished off with the drama session for today – a collectively enacted story about the ‘search for truth’. A group of children try to find out why their river which has always been flowing steady and abundantly, had dried up. Walking, climbing and running up to the mountain to get to the river’s source. Eventually they realise that the source is unblemished and running free, but that there is a blockage further down the track, that’s diverting the water. The children join forces and push the huge tree trunk out of the way, so the water can flow steadily down the mountain again. 🙂

Next Sunday is the last class of this term. As we didn’t get a chance to do a lot of art/crafts today, we decided to have a special arts/craft session – we’ll be baking (muffins!) and sewing some soft-toys! Any contributions of material, buttons, thread, etc. would be greatly appreciated! See you all then!

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! 🙂