In celebration of Ridvan

Our family attends our local Baha’i children classes on weekends, and I have to say I feel blessed to be a part of this great group of parents and kids. The class is co-op style, so the parents take turns teaching the classes and they come up with the most fantastic ideas. This weekend the class was taught by my nephew’s wife, Elizabeth (in case you are wondering - my nephew is not that much younger than me and our kids are the same age), and it was the most wonderful class, so I asked her permission to share it with you all.

We arrived for class in the morning to find that their entire living room had been turned into a tent (chairs, sheets, and a big, tall tube in the centre to prop it up and give it shape), complete with twinkle lights around the edge of the tent, comfy cushions to sit on inside, and the sounds of birds chirping (on CD).

The children were welcomed into the tent, and after prayers and a welcome song, Elizabeth brought out a handful of fabric roses and a styrofoam base, so each child could “plant” a rose in the garden that was used to decorate the interior of the tent.

She gave them a blue sheet and river stones to create the Tigris river alongside the tent, and then brought out a bowl of rose water so each child could rub some on their hands and soon the room smelt of roses, birds were chirping, and we were sitting in a tent alongside the Tigris river.

Elizabeth’s mom (Grandma Julie) then climbed in the tent and told the story of Ridvan, at the end of her story she asked the kids to close their eyes, smell the roses, listen to the birds and imagine how they would have felt at receiving that wonderful message. They all sat there quietly, and soaked in the atmosphere, and I could see their little faces shining (the parents too!), when they opened their eyes Rylan even commented about how wonderful it felt.

I think what I liked most about this class was how it appealed to all the senses, I try to do this a lot in our homeschool, I am trying to do this with our growing Holy Day book, because if you can draw on all the senses, children make more connections with what they are learning and it leaves a lasting impression, a lasting sensation.

It made me think about how to use such ideas for the other Holy Days – the stained glass windows of the home of the Bab, candles on the Ascension of Baha’u’llah, and my mind was racing…

Would love it if anyone posts about a such a themed Holy Day celebration, if you would come back here and link up in the comment section below, so we could build up a collection of ideas together.

Hope you all had a wonderful Ridvan period!

Preparing for Ridvan and other Baha’i Holy Days

I wanted to create a special book on the Baha’i Holy Days with the boys, one that we could look back on every year in preparing for the Holy Days as they approach. We have been working on this over the past week or so, finding the information, quotations, prayers, and putting it all together. Here are our pages for the Festival of Ridvan. You will notice the little velvet pocket on the top of the second page, in which I placed a paper scented with rose oil, I also plan on adding a few rose petals from the Shrine of Baha’u’llah, which we received during our last pilgrimage, to our pages for the Ascension of Baha’u’llah. I felt sensory touches like these would enhance their understanding of and connection to these special days of the year.

We also did a spring inspired set of pages for the Baha’i New Year.

I will continue to share more throughout the year.

Happy Ridvan to all! :)

How to make hanging paper roses in a vase

Here is a little tutorial on how to make these hanging paper roses shown in my last post.
We started with A5-sized sheets of paper for both the vases and the roses.

Making the vases first: you twist the sheet of paper like this.

Then tighten until it forms the vase shape with a point on the bottom end.

We just taped of ours at the back because no one will see the backs for ours, but if you wanted it to be neater you could use a little glue.

To make the roses (I used relatively thick paper so that it would be less frustrating for little hands in terms of tearing while twisting, but to get a finer looking rose a softer/thinner paper, like crepe or tissue paper, would probably work nicely): lay the paper down, roll it around one finger, like this.

Then roll it again, but this time all the way around two fingers.

Once the paper is completely rolled around, squeeze in along the bottom of the "rose" and twist in the opposite direction to make a stem.

Put tape on the flower stem and then insert into the vase, push down on the tape to stick it in the vase. I found it was easier to put the tape on before putting the rose into the vase, because once inside it is hard to move your fingers around in the little vase. I actually stuck a pencil inside the vase to push down on the tape, to make sure it stuck down properly.

To finish off, use a hole punch to make a hole at the top of the vase and add ribbon or string to hang it. If you prefer, you can also skip this stage and just stick them directly onto the wall with tape or sticky putty (for those in South Africa - a.k.a prestick!).

Find this at: Craft Schooling Sunday and Kiddos Create.

Preparing for Ridvan

In preparing for Ridvan we have been reading about the Holy Day, the beautiful garden, and Rylan pointed out how the Shrine of Bahá’u’lláh always smells like roses...so we decided to decorate with a rose theme. Yesterday afternoon we sat down and made 12 red roses in little green paper vases (there are 12 days of Ridvan). I think I will put little quotes in each one, so we have one to read each of the 12 days. We also made a little sign for on top (please overlook the ugly blinds...had to close them to get rid of the glare for the picture).