This week one of our children chose
MODERATION as our virtue to concentrate on. An interesting choice from a child, we thought, but hey, we can all use some learning about moderation!
STORY: Sarah told the story about how, in 1912, while members of the Baha'i Community were contributing funds towards the building of the Baha'i House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois (the first and only Baha'i temple in North America at the moment), a woman made a rash decision in order to contribute money to this cause. She cut off her hair and sold it, then she gave the money to the temple fund. But when she told 'Abdu'l-Baha that this was what she had done, 'Abdu'l-Baha told her that, had he known that she was planning to do this in order to contribute to the temple, he would have told her not to do it.
This story comes from the early 20th century, when North American woman kept their hair long. Prior to 1913, women's hair was piled high atop the head and thickly padded. Notice the thick hair beneath the large hat in the picture. It was viewed by the culture (both men and women) as 'extreme' and completely unacceptable for a woman to cut her hair short. Of course this changed over the years, and so now we just need to understand the historical context of 'Abdu'l-Baha's comment. But the message of the story is still clear: moderation in all things.
The kids briefly discussed what needed moderation in their lives: watching TV, eating sweets, playing video games. They totally got it without much prompting.
MUSIC: Today, instead of learning a song about moderation (because we couldn't think of any!) we learned the musical term, "moderato" (moderate speed) and then compared it to the terms "presto" (fast) and "lento" (slow). We played rhythms with our hands, changing tempos between these three terms, depending on which one was shouted as a direction.
CRAFT: Our craft was to each create a picture of things in our lives that may require moderation - we ended up with pictures of all kinds of things anyway. The kids glued a candy onto the picture as a reminder of our discussion about moderation, and then we went outside for a service project.
SERVICE PROJECT: Today was a bit unusual in that there had been a lot of trash (hamburger wrappers, straws, cups etc) along the edge of the lawns on our side of the block. We decided to take the kids outside with tongs and a garbage bag and they had a ball finding trash and picking it up. We went down the block to the bus stop, and when we were done we looked up the street and saw how beautiful it looked once again with no trash littered along it. The kids had a lot of fun with this, it was a bit like a treasure hunt!
Hope to see you all there,
We told a great story about a littl e boy who was in a class that was working on calligraphy, and 'Abdu'l-Baha was taking the time to look at all of the children's work every week. 'Abdu'l-Baha would comment on the work always in an encouraging way, praising the children, and offering any help if the children needed any. The little boy in the story created some beautiful calligraphy one week, and when he showed it to 'Abdu'l-Baha, 'Abdu'l-Baha saw how beautiful it was and he praised the little boy's work and wrote a comment on it (something like, "Excellent work!"). The boy was so proud and happy that 'Abdu'l-Baha had praised his work. The next week, however, the boy realized at the end of the week that he didn't have a good quality calligraphy done to show 'Abdu'l-Baha. So instead of showing him his real work for the week, the boy took the calligraphy that 'Abdu'l-Baha had already praised the week before, tore off the comment that 'Abdu'l-Baha had written, and showed exactly the same work to 'Abdu'l-Baha. When 'Abdu'l-Baha saw the work, he said kindly, "That work looks familiar," and handed the work back to the boy without any praise, without any written comment. The boy realized that he had lost 'Abdu'l-Baha's trust by trying to trick him, and after that he never tried doing something like that again.
Music: We will sing "Truthfulness is the Foundation of all Human Virtues" while accompanying it rhythmically on the instruments and xylophone. Then we will continue with reading rhythms and learning solfege (Do-Re-Mi etc).
Music: We learned the song "Hello World" by Red Grammer, and we learned the sign language for it as well. Then we made a rain storm on hand drums, using dynamics.
"Hello World"