A class with the ‘littlies’… learning about patience

Kia ora everyone! We had a fabulous class supporting our youngest children’s class participants – the 2-5 year olds. Starting out with prayers and songs and of course a scrumptious morning tea, Raewyn then started the lesson on patience.

First we heard the story of the tortoise and the hare. Each of the children could then choose to be either a tortoise or a hare – colouring in their little paper puppets (stuck on a straw) and re-enacting the race, that the two take. The hare laughs and is off in a hurry, realising, that the tortoise cannot keep up with his speed. He goes and has a little sleep since he’s so far ahead of the tortoise. But – the tortoise – slow and steady, wins the race, while the hare is sleeping! What an example of patience and perseverance! 🙂

After finishing the race, there was a sing-along to Stefan’s CD – the ‘Patience’ song: “…practicing patience is a wonderful thing, the more that you practice the more love it will bring, so be willing to wait for the things that you want, be patient and gentle and kind…”

And then the wonderful children did some more crafts – a pretty little butterfly, cut out of coloured paper, and its wings decorated beautifully with glitter gems and coloured bits of paper. They then got stuck onto a peg, that had a magnet attached, so the butterflies can go to our homes to adorn our fridges. They’ll definitely help us remember to be patient – just as it takes time for a caterpillar to wrap itself up into a cocoon (or chrysalis) before transforming into a beautiful butterfly.

After a snack of popcorn, which the children helped make (very patiently too!) it was time for quick ride on the 6-seater buggy – what a wonderful Sunday! Thank you everyone and we can’t wait to see you again next week.

Grade 2 – lesson 3: Patience

We started our class today, by singing the prayer ‘O God educate these children…‘. Then the children all said a prayer from their lovely decorated prayer books (see lesson 8).

Today’s lesson theme was: PATIENCE. One of the most valuable virtues an individual can possess. Without patience we can achieve little in this life. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá once said about the developing of spiritual qualities, that it was to be done ‘little by little, day by day’. Continuous effort and lots of patience 🙂 To help us remember this, we memorised the quote by Bahá’u’lláh:

He, verily, shall increase the reward of them that endure with patience.

We focused a good portion of today’s lesson on memorising. To help us better memorise the various quotes and prayers in each lesson, I’ve put together a ‘memorisation booklet’ (based on an idea by Atusa Nemat). Each time the children give the memorisation a try, they get a sticker – once they can say the whole quote/prayer by heart, they get to colour in the ‘memorised’ smiley face…

You can download the booklet here, as a simple 20 pager, or get the imposed version here (this one you can simply print double sided and then staple, for a proper little booklet). The children will take these booklets home with them so they can keep practicing, and we’ll review previous quotes next time and start learning the new ones in each lesson.

The story for today, was about Shaykh Hasan, who is sent to Karbilá by the Báb, where He promises him, that he will see with his own eyes ‘the beauteous countenance of the promised Husayn’ (Bahá’u’lláh). For the full story see Children’s Classes Grade 2, p32.

For drama – we used a few more exercises that help us to learn, to control our bodies, and develop the skills to participate in creative drama. See p33 of Children’s Classes Grade 2 for the exercise instructions – they are great fun!

The improvisation scene (for the children to act out) was set as follows:

• Patience and Impatience each have a small plot of land. One year, they both decide to plant and harvest corn on their land. They gather up the seeds and equipment. How does Patience plant and harvest his crop? How does Impatience do it?

The outcome? As Impatience kept digging up the seeds to see if they had grown already, his crop was tiny in the end, most of the seeds never made it grow into a full plant. Patience’s crop was bountiful and he managed to sell a lot of his harvest on the local market…

We finished off with a song from Stefan Brown – Patience, from his CD ‘The Angelic Way‘. And if you don’t have his CD, try one of the songs from the Ruhi website here….

Lesson 13 : Patience

We had a fantastic class today, with our visiting teacher Nora – who did a children’s yoga session with us! It was great – thank you Nora, and a big congratulations to the children, for being such wonderful ‘yogis’ 🙂 As our class was about patience today, Nora showed us how to be a seed, that then slowly, but surely pokes out its roots to find nutrients in the soil and then starts growing, finding its way to the sunlight. It was fabulous!

After all that exercise and fun time with Nora, we started our craft for today. We talked about patience, and how it is not always easy to remember to BE patient. Sometimes we just want things to happen right away and right now… to remind us to be patient, and to practice it a little more each day, we made little mirrors. Every time we look at ourselves in them, we can remind ourselves to be patient and be happy with where we’re at now.

 (we’ll have to work on polishing our little mirrors some more, they are not quite as shiney yet 😉 )

To finish off our lesson for today, we enacted the story from Ruhi Book 3a – about the two farmers ‘Patience’ and ‘Impatience’. Both of them have a field that they want to plant with corn. Once does it patiently and looks after the young seedlings, makes sure they have water and sun, and waits for them to grow to full size before harvesting the yummie corn. The other farmer ‘Impatience’ can’t wait for the seeds to grow into corn, and keeps digging them up, looking at them to see if they’ve grown. He is very disappointed at the end, when harvest time comes and nothing edible has grown…

There was some great acting talent spotted today – well done everyone for participating so well and patiently waiting your turn! 

If you’ve missed today’s class – have a look at the lesson here > Patience. It’s also got the colouring page in it and the quote, which we didn’t quite get to today. But no worries, we will be repeating all lessons again during the year – I’m sure by the end of it, the children will have learnt them all 🙂

See you next week and stay healthy!