Unit 1: Lessons for Children's Classes Grade 2

Purpose: To develop further the capability of teaching children's classes consisting of memorization of prayers and quotations, songs, stories, historical episodes, creative drama and drawing.

Practice: To conduct a regular class for children in their second year of a Baha'i program for their spiritual education.

Excerpted from "To the Collaborators": The thirty lessons for children are preceded by sections for the study of the teachers themselves in a group setting, with the assistance of a tutor. This part of the book encourages them to review their experience in conducting classes for the first grade so that they can learn from one another. They are helped to think about each element of the curriculum and its role in the educational process. Not every member of the group will have necessarily taught regular classes for children after studying Book 3, and this is taken into account in these sections. While clearly the friends who were involved in a formal class with a large number of children will have much to express in the discussions, others will also have insights to share, and the diversity of experiences should be used as a means to enhance the group's learning.

30 Lessons for Children

Excerpted from "To the Collaborators": Although the thirty lessons in this book are a continuation of those in Book 3 for grade one, there are some significant differences between them, especially in the latter fifteen. The first set of fifteen focus on spiritual qualities, and aspiring teachers will find them much like the lessons they taught the previous year. They will, however, need to exercise the skills they acquired in conducting classes for first grade to manage more complex activities in the area of creative drama. This part of each lesson is designed in such a way that it draws naturally on the teacher's experience in carrying out cooperative games with his or her students in grade one. Nevertheless, these activities, as well as certain other aspects of the lessons, will require increased capacity on the part of the teacher.

In the second set of fifteen lessons, the content itself becomes somewhat more challenging. Each lesson evolves around a theme related to one or the other of the Twin Manifestations of God for today, and we hope that teachers will take advantage of the class period to fully develop the various themes so that the children begin to acquire some structured knowledge about the lives and Missions of the Bab and Baha'u'llah. It should be recognized that, by the time children have entered the second year of a Baha'i educational program, they already have developed a relationship with the Manifestations and have a sense of the history of the Faith. Teachers should build on this foundation by using the rich material presented in the book, adapting it to the level of comprehension of their students, remembering that they are not trying to give them a detailed chronology of historical events, but increase their understanding of the theme in each lesson.

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