For the last several class sessions we continued our study of Baha'u'llah's quotation

"Let your vision be world-embracing, rather than confined to your own self."

To give the children a sense of the vastness and diversity of the world beyond our daily lives, we watched parts of documentaries focusing on other cultures and global experiences.  We watched some of an episode from the incredible "Human Planet" series and parts of the stunning documentary "Home", ( available in its entirety on Youtube).  ("Home" can be a bit intense for some students this age, so it's good to explain the narration.)

 


A class or two after watching Home, Melody brought a drawing she had done. On one side of the paper she drew things that all people really need and should have: food, clothes, trees, rain, housing, sight, the sun.  And on the other side she wrote the statement: "The world is very important" and showed what people don't really need --televisions, computers...  I don't recall what the other two "unnecessary" material objects that she drew are, but I thought it was so wonderful that her mind was absorbed by these subjects and she was moved to put her ideas down and share them with us...






In our discussions we also talked about how this quotation can include reaching out and serving members of our own communities.  For the arts and crafts part of our class, we created a community out of paper, tea boxes and blocks. The idea was to create a community which included a House of Worship and its dependencies, but this had to be modified and the project took on a life of its own.   

We took a short walk in the neighborhood and wrote down what sort of things exist in a community.  The kids generated a good-sized list and then got to planning what they would include in their model.

 




They consulted on the layout of the community and painted the poster-board foundation.  They also painted templates for paper houses and buildings which can be found here.

 

  

Here are the various buildings they included in the community and (in their own words) the experiences a person would have when visiting -- notice how child-friendly the community is:

Hotel
The people at the hotel would make the hotel like your home.  They would make you feel like you're family.  They would give you good service. 

Library
The library is quiet and they always love children coming.  They do not shout at children, but quietly tell the children not to run.

Hospital
At the hospital they take care of you when you're sick and are very, very kind.  If you need surgery the doctor comes to calm you down and help you feel better. 

Elderly Home
The elderly people always like children coming.  The children are very polite and give the elderly pictures they've drawn.  The older people teach the children how to do things. 

Baha'i Centre
At the Baha'i Centre they sing Baha'i songs and say prayers.  They do Ruhi classes, Junior Youth activities and children's classes.  (Teacher-led addition: there are also Firesides and Nineteen Day Feasts. At Feast you say prayers and have consultations about the community.)

Children's Museum
At the children's museum the ticket taker is always pleased to see children and has a big bowl of lollipops that she gives away.  She gives a big discount.  At the museum there are things to build and experiments.  There's an indoor playground with climbing webs and you can play tag and hide- and- seek. 

Shops
There are different shops, and sometimes the owners will give away something for free to be nice.  The shop owners are loving, kind and caring.  They give some of the money they make to the school for orphans and the elderly.

School for Orphans
At school the children learn how to treat each other kindly and lovingly and learn how to read books.  They also learn math, science, languages, and about the Baha'i Faith.
  

The community also included a park and beach

and a university, located next to the school for orphans.

Here are some aerial shots of the community captured by our Channel 9 News helicopter.

Be world-embracing...

Last week we started exploring a new quotation from The Tablets of Baha'u'llah Revealed after the Kitab-i-Aqdas: 

"Let your vision be world-embracing, rather than confined to your own self."

 The possibilities of themes and concepts that can be studied with this quotation are endless!   We briefly looked at the major vocabulary words and then started looking at the concept of the world.  We read through  

 
which was introduced to the kids in a lesson last spring.  I promised myself we would take more time with the book this time and the kids had all sorts of comments and questions to ask as we went through the pages.   

Next we did a collage activity.  To start off, the children created a painted paper background -- which was inspired by an entry at this wonderful blog on teaching children art.
  

The next part of the collage was to create an image of the earth.  As you'll see below, their earth images turned out really beautifully.  The color and texture are the result of melting crayon shavings over globes they've already colored.  The steps for doing this can be found here.

They chitted and chatted with one another while cutting out magazine images for their collages.

The were really quite lovely. 

The children traced the words of the quotation.  There is a nifty handwriting practice web site that allows you to customize your own printable template of words and sentences for students to trace.   

Thanks to the Safajou Family for the delicious cupcakes!  Needless to say, they were a hit with the children.

"It is through your deeds that ye can distinguish yourselves from others..."

One year old Jeyden Ru is a constant topic of conversation among our Shining Stars.  They absolutely adore him.  So when presented with the idea to babysit him as a service project they were very enthusiastic to say the least! 

We spent a couple of class sessions discussing and preparing for our service.  The children prepared an invitation letter and booklet for auntie May and Jeyden.  They also did some yard work to buy  auntie May a cup of coffee to enjoy at a nearby cafe while we watched Jeyden.  

When the much anticipated Sunday arrived, all auntie May wanted was a nap.  (She's a working mom with three kids, after all!)  So the Shining Stars made their way over to the Ru home to watch Jeyden.   And despite having four young babysitters in the house auntie May says she actually got a half-hour of sleep!

Doing yard work to earn money for a cup of coffee for Auntie May

Preparing the invitation letter and booklet

"We will look after him."

"We will make a place for him to sleep."

"We will make food for him."

We will organize playthings for him.  We will clean the house."

The children choose books to read to Jeyden before going over to his house

Playing musical instruments together.  Jeyden is wonderfully musical!

Snack time

Great team work by our Shining Stars

What do you do when the kids want to do something completely differently than what you had planned for a lesson?  In this case, go with it!

As you'll recall, the first quotation we studied as a group was the beautiful Gleanings passage

Let your acts be a guide unto all mankind… It is through your deeds that ye can distinguish yourselves from others. Through them the brightness of your light can be shed upon the whole earth.

Each week was dedicated to learning about a single concept from this passage.  We would read  a story illustrating a concept, do role playing, drawing, arts and crafts, service projects -- a variety of activities to help make the concepts more concrete in their hearts and minds.  When reviewing this quotation last week, the children eagerly remembered making this ebook and all of them wanted to make another one.  How could I say no?  So, for your viewing pleasure here is Be a Guide: The Legacy Continues...


The kids have another good deed in the works.  It involves one of their favorite babies.  Stay tuned!

We're back!  And shining as brightly as ever!

Mid-spring through summer 2012 we took a long break.  Between studying for exams, travel to the U.S. and various family and service commitments, I didn't have adequate bandwidth to share the usual details of what we did -- and there was lots!  But  there were some pics left over to share. I downloaded the free version of this photo collage maker to round-up some of the good times.     

Our shining stars did a wide range of activities in the months of March and April.  With spring upon us, we centered our study and activities around this excerpt from one of Baha'u'llah's Hidden Words:

...Sow the seeds of My divine wisdom in the pure soil of the heart, and water them with the waters of certitude, that the hyacinths of knowledge and wisdom may spring up fresh and green from the holy city of the heart.

We had discussions touching upon divine wisdom, purity of heart (the photos of that project accidentally got deleted:-( ) and certitude.  We did a seed planting activity to illuminate the metaphor of sowing seeds, and had an extra special morning with Elise Parmar, a talented artist and child educator in our community.  She showed us how to make small garden animals out of craft clay.  And we made sure to take advantage of the warm weather by holding a class outdoors at a nearby park.   

It was a great spring and we're glad to be back together this fall!

Memorization activities...

One of the last projects we did for the study of our quotation was a rebus activity:















In a rebus, words are replaced with pictures. At the start of the project, I gave each student a 40 x 50 cm template that looked something like this:















I wrote out the quotation leaving blank words I felt they wouldn't find frustrating to draw. For sure, I tried to leave out concept- words we had studied so there would be an opportunity for the children to think about what they meant when coming up with their images.

Here are the words I left out for them to draw:




























Our camera (and my photography skills) aren't fabulous, but you get the idea...

The completed project above is mine. Whenever possible I try to put together a finished project to show the children so that they see the end in the beginning and have a model as they move along in their own work . (This is especially helpful for non-native speakers and students that can't always grasp and retain instructions given verbally and all at once.) It's also nice to have these kinds of things on hand to display permanently in class or to use for review.

It took the kids a while to draw their word images. They didn't end up with borders and colorful stenciling by the end of the class, and I didn't want to carry the project over to another lesson, so I simply sent them home. For me, the most important aspect of the activity was getting them to think about the concepts again in a way they enjoy and find engaging, so process trumped product.

A few afterthoughts...

I recently thought of others ways this rebus activity could be done that might allow for both process and product to get their due diligence. The template posters can be introduced at the very beginning of the quotation study. As the children learn a concept, they can draw its image on the sheet. (So one image is drawn every week or two, as opposed to all of them at once.) At the end of the quotation study, after all the blank spaces have drawings, the children decorate their posters to celebrate the culmination of their study. This might be an occasion to bring out special craft materials -- glitter, decorative paper for cut-outs, stencils, stickers, foam shapes, sequins -- anything that might suggest the end of an era :-).

If you want to turn the rebus into a more cooperative, whole-class activity and/or don't have a lot of paper and supplies, you can have each student or a pair of students draw an image on a separate piece of paper sized to fit the blank spaces. After everyone is done drawing, the poster with blank spaces is put up and the class is gathered together to read the quotation aloud. When the class reaches a blank space, the child(ren) with that image go up to the poster to glue it on. After everyone has added their contribution, the entire quotation is read again. Each child can then be given a small piece of paper to draw a picture depicting the meaning of the quotation to be added to the border, or everyone can decorate a cut-out (e.g. heart, star, butterfly, flower) to glue on.

One for the road...

This was another memorization activity we did.















I printed out the quotation in large font and cut out word-phrases for the children to piece together. (Whenever I do this type of activity, I try to cut out the words in phrases that make capture an entire idea and concept, instead of just random cuts here or there.)

I placed the phrases around different parts of the room for the children to hunt for (definitely optional) and the kids collected them all in one place and pieced them together.

Not all children are strong readers at this age, and most of our class hadn't memorized the quotation, so I made sure the whole quotation was available for them to see. This adaptation allows non-readers to still participate -- they may not be reading to figure out the sequencing, but they can match letters and words.

Your Deeds...

“Let your acts be a guide unto all mankind… It is through your deeds that ye can distinguish yourselves from others. Through them the brightness of your light can be shed upon the whole earth.” –Bahá’u’lláh

The last two concepts we studied from the quotation were: deeds and distinguishing ourselves from others. I actually tied them together, emphasizing the importance of good deeds. We did a lot of role playing on this one. Sometimes I would come up with a problem or issue, and have the children show a deed that would resolve the situation or distinguish themselves from others, and sometimes the children would come up with scenarios.

They were having so much fun role playing I was eager to take a few pics to send parents. A picture or two in, and the idea of creating another book -- this time with "real life" images -- popped into my head.

You may remember that not too long ago we used our class work to create an e-book using a free online resource called SnackTools. This time I created a pdf Word file with the pictures and text and downloaded it into the SlideSnack app featured on the site. The fun thing about this app is it allows you to record audio which syncs with your slides.

Oh the places you can go with apps like these...

Obviously...

The most tangible activity to connect children to the concept of good deeds is performing them! We happened to have a service project at a local preschool lined-up around the time of this lesson. Here's a service activity a friend of mine organized a group to do for their local firefighters. A quick look around your neighborhood can stir up lots of ideas.

But, if it isn't easy to coordinate something for the whole class, each child can be encouraged to come up with good deeds they might do for the week. And something like these Good Deeds punch cards are a fun way to keep the children motivated to keep up the good works.

Family members punch a hole in the card each time the child performs a service. The next week, bearers of fully punched cards could be rewarded a little treat, or, if all the children add their cards together and they have more than X number of holes punched the class gets to ______.

I put together something a little more rudimentary-looking, (excuse the photo, our camera broke the other day...), and threw in a couple of other things to do, too. Using Word, I made a simple 3-column table. One column labeled "Memorization", the second "Understanding" and the third "Practice/Example". Each time the child recites the quotation from memory they are awarded a sticker in the "Memorization" column. A sticker is put in the second column each time they demonstrate an understanding of a single concept or the quotation as a whole. And in the last column the parent/child records good deeds carried-out during the week.

















The table-chart is a nice idea if families have time to complete it within a week; the "Good Deeds" punch cards might work better for busier families (are there any other kinds?) or busier times of the year.

The punch cards can also easily go beyond the family -- school teachers can punch a hole, neighbors can punch a hole...And don't worry if you don't have a color-printer, etc to print any out. Take some white or colored paper, cut it into rectangles, and have the kids decorate and personalize their own punch cards.