We had our first Summer Virtue's Class yesterday for elementary school children. It was a big success, although a summer bug prevented a few students from attending. We'll be doing 5 more classes, every Friday through July. Each class features a specific virtue or positive character trait like Truthfulness, Creativity, Generosity, ect.
This year I prepared folders for each student to keep activity worksheets in. That way if we have a few extra moments in class, they will have a coloring page or cross word puzzle to work on. And following the completion of this program, they will have a lovely reminder of how hard they worked.
'Abdu'l-Baha wrote that "Truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues." So I like to begin the summer discussing what Virtues are, and why Truthfulness is so important.
I adapted some activities from Linden Qualls. We began with a discussion that Virtues are like flowers in a garden. I spread out silk flowers around me and pretended to be a monster. The children had to collect as many as possible without getting tagged - or they would have to give me their flowers and start over. When all the flowers were gone, each student named a virtue for each flower they had collected. It was a great way to get the children on their feet before moving into more serious discussion.
Next, we talked about situations where it is important to be truthful. After brainstorming many real life and imagined scenarios, we decided to act them out. But first we made a Truthfulness Crown! Then we took turns acting out the scenarios with or without the Truthfulness Crown on. The children found it entertaining, perhaps not realizing how much they were learning!
Because we will have twice as many students next Friday (and because the Crown was so successful) they are going to act out a few skits to the new students to help them catch up. Then we will segue into the next Virtue.
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