Lesson 4 / part two: Obedience to God’s Laws

We finished lesson 4 of Grade 2 today – looking at more aspects of Obedience to God’s Laws. We took a closer look at the quote that goes with this lesson:

O Son of Being! My love is My stronghold; he that entereth therein is safe and secure, and he that turneth away shall surely stray and perish.

We discussed the meaning of what a stronghold is – a castle, a fort, something with thick walls, a moat even, that keeps you safe inside. This is how we pictured God’s love for us, as keeping us safe and secure, as long as we stay within its strong walls (His Laws). To help us remember the quote, the children drew their own forts and castles.

We also finished our song/melody to go with the unity prayer we started practicing last week – still a little bit of refining to do – but it sounds totally awesome! Will try and record it next week to share with you all! 🙂

For our drama portion, we used some of the warm up exercises from lesson 4 – ‘FREEZE’ is a simple exercise, where the students move about the room (without bumping into each other!) and try and move as much and loosely as possible. When the teacher calls out ‘FREEZE!’ everyone freezes in the position they’re in. The teacher then goes around shouldertapping each student, asking them what they are doing. The student tries to find an explanation why they’re standing in such a ‘funny’ position. The kids love it – we did at least 5 or more tries!

We had all sorts of interesting explanations – I’m dancing, I’m taking pictures, I’m telling someone off, I’m in a hurry, etc. We’ll definitely play this one again!

That was it for today – see you next week. It’s our last class of the school term again already…

Lesson 4 (grade 2) on Obedience to God’s Laws

Today we started the second set of Grade 2. Each of the 7 sets in Grade 2 have 3 lessons, that concentrate on one theme – the last set (lessons 1 to 3) was on Prayer, this second one now is on Obedience to God’s Laws. We will probably dedicate two classes to each lesson, as we don’t seem to be able to pack everything into one – so bear with us as we make our way through them 🙂

Each set has a new prayer that the children are encouraged to memorise. For the last one we used memorisation cards – this time we decided to come up with our own tune to memorise the prayer (see copy below). We’re half-way there already – hopefully I’ll be able to post an audio file, when we’re done next week!!!

We took a thorough look at the words in this prayer, to make sure all children understood the meaning. (Eg. unite = bring together; commandments= binding instructions; endeavour= undertaking, service, the act of following God’s law, etc).

Then we talked about how laws (in general) keep people happy, safe and content. The children were sharing some laws they knew and scenarios of what would happen if they wouldn’t be observed.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá tells us that life was created for happiness, not for sorrow, for pleasure, not for grief. It is through following God’s loving guidance and living according to His teachings that we find true happiness – a happiness that will last forever.

Drama

For our drama portion of the class, we enacted the lesson’s story of the ‘King and his minister (and the cabbage)’. In short it goes like this:

The king tells his minister that he heard that cabbage is bad for you, to which the minister replies, he’ll immediately tell the cook to not serve it anymore. A short while later, the king eats some cabbage and finds it most pleasing, telling his minister so. The minister immediately says he’ll inform the cook to cook it often now. The kings asks him what he’ll tell the cooks when they ask why he changed his mind about cabbage? Minister: “I will tell the cook that I am the servant of the king, not the servant of the cabbage. What is pleasing in Your sight is pleasing in mine.”

The children took turns in the roles of the king/queen, minister, cook (and pot), as well as the cabbage. 🙂

Well done everyone – can’t wait to finish composing our melody for the unity prayer next week – see you all then!

The younger children (3-5s) made beautiful windsocks, with quotes about service on them (sorry, the photographer was a bit slow in catching them whizzing past....)