What is a prayer?

We started our discussion of what is a prayer out with couple of prayers (we had some written on pieces of paper to read as well). After that, a teacher threw a fit - banged her hands on the floor and cried out to God to give her a new bike. Make it believable. Be in the moment! This really got students' attention and allowed an interesting start to the discussion. We started asking whether this was a prayer? Why was this not a prayer? How should we pray? Why should we pray? Etc. We had amazing discussions - see the keywords we wrote on the board during the discussion.

Prayer

We introduced and discussed the following prayer:

"O Lord! I am a child; enable me to grow beneath the shadow of Thy loving-kindness. I am a tender plant; cause me to be nurtured through the outpourings of the clouds of Thy bounty. I am a sapling of the garden of love; make me into a fruitful tree. Thou art the Mighty and the Powerful, and Thou art the All-Loving, the All-Knowing, the All-Seeing."

‘Abdu’l-Bahá

Shadow Theater

To help us learn and memorize the prayer, we did a shadow theater. We first discussed what is a shadow and explored what happens to the shadow if we move the object further and closer to the light. We also explored with different color lights. For the theater, we had paper cutouts of a person, heart, plant, clouds, sapling, tree, muscular arm, and an eye - all for different parts of the prayer. Heart gets used multiple times, so make sure to give this part to the oldest child. We used straws with a slit cut to the end to hold up the cutouts.

We expected this to be a big hit with students. And it was. However, it also was perhaps a bit too exciting. We hard a hard time keeping students' attention on the task here. Perhaps it would have helped to let them play with the shadows freely first and then try to have the organized activity with it.

Memorizing the Prayer

It is difficult for the kids to memorize a prayer. Repetition helps. However, to be able to really memorize probably more is needed than just repeating the prayer. We used two techniques with this prayer:

1) We covered up some of the words in the prayer (using post-it notes) and asked the kids to read it. For kids who cannot read yet, you can just say part of the sentence and they have to come up with the rest of the sentence.

2) However, if you have a high energy class, kids might not want to sit and repeat the prayer all the time. So we spiced it up. The kids stood up and first had to stand on one leg. And say the prayer. All the way through. Then we put our hands and one leg on the ground and held the other leg up. And said the prayer. All the way through. Then we did the same with our tummies up - hands and one leg on the ground, the other leg up. And said the prayer. All the way through. This was a lot of fun and helped the kids to focus. They had to be able to see whether they can say the whole prayer while being in this position. And thus, without noticing, they were learning the prayer.

Of course, we had earlier also talked about respectful way of saying prayers, thus, when it comes to saying prayers during prayer time, students are supposed to sit respectfully.