Kindliness

In the future we might add salt to the mixture to make the foggy water less attractive to kids. Alternatively, it might be better to focus on being able to see through the glass and not on the taste. Probably the best would be to ask children to see something specific through the class (like a flower or a bloom) and not just ask a general question about whether the water is see-through.

Kindly Heart

Healing the sick

This was a truly fun activity. We told kids that one of us will now pretend to be sick and they need to help to make her feel better. Carolina played an excellent sick person. She laid on the couch and looked miserable and complained of cold. What could help against cold? Kids brought her a blanket. Then she told the kids that her throat hurts and that she really need to drink. Thus, kids brought her a bottle of water. And finally, she said that she would feel much better if she could get some hugs. And all the kids hugged her. It was very sweet. We continued with a discussion about what had just happened and how they had just been really kind to someone in need. This activity turned out really good.

Story time: 'Abdu'l-Baha

Keeping to the theme of helping those who are sick, we told the children short snippets of 'Abdu'l-Baha helping the sick. How he was always visiting them and taking care of them, how he was not afraid to visit those ill with leprosy, even when others had outcast them. Also, how 'Abdu'l-Baha hired a doctor to come and service Acca, where there were no doctors to help the sick. Although the stories were great, our storytime was generally a bust. We had very hard time to get the kids to listen. At our parents' reflection we realized that we cannot just have stories with kids of this age. We need to give them something to look at, something to focus on when the story is told.

Coloring Project: helping the sick

We used this coloring sheet (page 11) in the end of our "helping the sick" themed kindliness class. While the kids were coloring we went over what we had heard and learned in class. We also asked the kids to tell us what they see on this picture.

Helping hand - cutting fruit

In the end of each class, after saying our final prayers, we always have a big bowl of berries and cut fruit ready to snack on. Kids love it and parents won't refuse either. This time we decided to use these fruits to teach kindliness. We asked the kids to help with cutting the fruit. We had sectors of soft fruit prepared (papaya, cantaloupe, water melon). Each kid got a table knife and a sector of fruit and their task was to help to make the fruit into bite-size pieces. They worked hard on cutting the fruit. It actually focused them really well. In the end, before starting to eat the fruit they all said thank you for the hostess for getting the fruit. We also made sure that they said their "thank-yous" when they were handed their own fruit to eat. Kindliness is all about helping!

Baby cuddles

Most of the kids in our children's class have young siblings below age one. Thus,we decided to show that helping a baby is all about kindliness as well. We distributed different plush animals to all the kids (saying that this is their "baby" now). And then read them stories from a big sibling book (while showing the pictures from the book). The idea was to discuss what can they to do help the baby. Here are couple of things they could do: 1) sing to the baby, 2) talk to the baby, 3) hug the baby, 4) be gentle to the baby, etc. It was fun to read the story, look at the pictures, and at the same time, play it out with the doll in their hands. This was good story-time that worked much better than just reading a story with no props.

Sticking together

For this activity we had fridge magnets in the form of animals. Every child got two animals. We asked them to see whether these animals would stick together. We explained that if you are kind to others then that brings others to you. Kindliness is like glue or a magnet. We had one larger animal (a whale) and made up a story about the whale and how he is nice to a lion (then stick the lion to the whale) and to a goat (stick the goat to the whale), etc. It was OK, but the magnets were not very strong and did not always stick to each other and sometimes it seemed that it was slightly confusing to kids. At the reflection we were thinking that perhaps it would have been better to have a large sheet of magnet that we could lay on the floor and then stick the animals to it.

Radiant Heart

If you're happy and you know it...

We took the famous song "If you're happy and you know it..." and changed the words to suit radiant heart. In our reflection we had decided that one aspect of the "radiant heart" is to be outwardly nice to others, smile, greet them, hug them. This is what we wanted to teach with this song. Here is the lyrics for the new song.

One funny thing happened. We did not model the activities to kids before starting the song and - their interpretation of "shaking hands" was different. The children did not think that "shaking hands" is a greeting. Rather, they started shaking their own hands back and forth (and got quite excited over this). It probably would have been better to first model what we mean by "shaking hands".

In our summary class on kindliness we did the song again, this time we had prepared three hand-drawn pictures as pages in a notebook: 1) one of a big smile; 2) of a kid waving and saying "Hello!"; and 3) close-up of a hand-shake. The lead-singer used these sheets to first introduce the responses (before starting to sing). Thus, we practiced saying "Smile, smile" when he showed the picture of the smile, and saying "Hello, hello" when he showed the picture of hello, etc. And the lead-singer used the same sheets while we were singing too. This way it was easy for kids to know what the response is and - it also helped them focus since now they had also the picture to focus on.