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Baha'i Holy Day Ideas Children class

3 Easy Ways To Create Resources for Ruhi Children’s Class

Some of you may already be members of my platform for neighborhood children’s class and use the resources I develop, if not, then: here is the link to Grade 3 and from there you can access kindergarten to grade 4. Today I would like to highlight one of the places for developing your own content, called Canva. It is super EASY to use and I have the feeling that soon I will be visiting your lesson plans to download your amazing resources. I will share with you 3 easy ways to use Canva to create content that you can do today, right after you read this post!

The first easy way to use Canva

Once you create your free account here is where I would start: Go to the “templates” tab on the top of the screen. This tab has many types of templates. the post today will highlight 2 ways to use use a template. I use the postcards template to create the downloadable, printable postcards with lesson quotes and prayers on them. Just like my post here. Postcards template is just one of the many free templates that can be accessed. there are paid versions of all the amazing resources on Canva so you always have the option to go above and beyond with a paid image. All I do is find a postcard with an image I like, and then change the text to what I want: a prayer, a quote, or any other piece of information that you need.

The second easy way to use Canva

The other template I use falls under “education” in the worksheet category. There are tons of worksheets that are suited for any level of Baha’i Children’s class. I use the worksheets for word definitions, fill in the blank, re-telling of a story, drawing, and much more. Here is an example of one of the worksheets I used from the template called “Cathematics”. I liked this template for the boxes which I modified. I also tend to delete the grade, teacher and date sections on the top and of course change the title. Most of the time I keep the graphics but as you will see in the next image, I did get rid of the cats.

Here is my edited version which took no time at all. I changed the title, the information in each box, I got rid of the cats, and added another box by using the copy and paste feature. Then I customized it a bit more by adding a rectangle for each box heading and filled it in red to match the box line colour. Five minutes later I had the cards that I needed to be cut out for the lapbook.

The step that always takes the longest for me is choosing a template that really fits the need. Once I have a template that works for something, I make a copy of it and use it for a similar lesson plan item. One such template is what I use in the Grade 3 lesson for the review quote. This template is set up for a fill in the blank model and I love the look of it. Each lesson has a different background which you can obtain from Canva free stuff or from other sites like Creative Fabrica digital paper.

Make sure that once you create a template of your own to use to create a copy each time you need it for another lesson. If you don’t the new information will be saved and you will loose the previous information. I did this a few times and although no big deal, i did have to go back and recreate it later in some situations.

The third easy way to use Canva

One last way to use use Canva is to create something from scratch. Under “create a design” on the right side of the screen are many size options from Instagram posts and infographics to a plain 8.5 by 11 worksheet. The 8.5 x 11 option is my go-to size and I use it for creating things like story prop images to print and other types of fill-in-the-blank resources. It is just a blank document so go wild filling it with images, writing, shapes, color, and more.

There are many other features to use in Canva and I am sure that once you develop your first few pieces, you will be eager to dig in and learn more. I use Canva for my Baha’i feast reports and the community likes the infographics created with Canva. I also use Canva to create beautiful pages with readings for our 19 day feasts.

I hope that you find Canva as great a resource for your classes as I have, and I look forward to using any resource you develop and are willing to share.

Thank you for reading, and hope to hear from you all.

Carolyn

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Children class Uncategorized

Free and useful resources For Ruhi Grade 3 Lesson 1

Baha’i Children’s class grade 3 (and kindergarten to grade 4) has been up and running on my course content platform free to anyone, all you need is to create an account and use it. For Grade 3, it has taken me a while to add the free downloadable resources for each of the lesson plans suggested in the Ruhi book. Just a note, while putting these lessons up, I used the curriculum from the Ruhi material, material found on other websites, lessons from the Australian Peace Pack, and Brilliant star magazine. The material I am adding is mainly developed by me or ideas found on other websites and modified. In my post today, I will share some of the new content that I have so far. This content is not on any other Baha’i children site (yet) but you are most welcome to upload it to your site (please give the credit and link to this blog) To access all the material developed so far: visit the registration page where all my Ruhi book 3 children’s class material are hosted. To make your own unique resources check out my post on how I create my resources

Lesson Design

Grade 3 contains SIXTEEN  lessons, divided into THREE sets. The themes of the 3 sets are listed below, include three lessons.

  1. The Fundamental Concepts Related to the Manifestations of God
  2. The Lives and Missions of the Manifestations of God Who appeared before the Báb and Baha’u’llah
  3. The Life and Mission of the Báb 

Each lesson is broken down into the following sections:

  1. Prayer
  2. Music
  3. Quote
  4. Stories
  5. Games / Narrative 
  6. Crafts/ Activities 
  7. Review of quotes from Grade 2
  8. Resources

Prayer

The prayer section contains the prayers to be memorized and any video content that may be available, as well any as memorization aids. I also created postcards that can be emailed or printed and sent to friends in your neighborhood, or far away to say “Hi, thinking of you” Download the free postcard on the Children’s Class site, or from my Google drive here

Quote

For memorization of the quote, each lesson has a worksheet to fill in the definitions of any words the student is not sure of, this is a great way to build a personal dictionary of words and keep them in the class notebook or lapbook. By the way, I WILL be going back and adding material to compile lapbooks! I speak about lapbooks on the class platform and have some up for Grade 2. Although I am very excited about lapbooks as a learning resource, it is time-consuming to develop. This free worksheet can be download here or sign in to the lessons on Coach Zippy to download this and many more unique and free resources.

Story

The story section for Grade 3 typically has more than one story to choose from. In every lesson there are 2 documents that can be used with any story, one allows for the drawing of the main events and the other leans towards a written summary. Each lesson has different resources from a video of the story, slideshow of the story to questions specific to that story. We are always looking for resources, so feel free to reach out to us here on this blog or on the Coach Zippy platform. Below is the storyboard for drawing the main sequence of events.

Games and Narration

This section takes one of the stories and gives suggestions on how to act it out, or just how to tell the story with props. Sometimes, I put the props in a PDf as pictures, and other times, it’s up to the teacher to gather the props. If you like, any of the interactive games used in grade 2 can be substituted.

Craft and activity

Creating new crafts and activities not available on any other Baha’i children’s class site is something I love to try. Its not always possible and I do add what I know and find. There are some sites that have great paid content and some are free. Twinkl is a Canadian site with Baha’i content that has some free as well as paid content. I use the Australian Peace Pack, and Briliant Star magazine for many of the lessons and also Dayspring Magazine for a few.

Review Quote

This section is where a quote from grade 2 is reviewed. The document I created has the quote, then the second page is to fill in the blank and the third page is the answer page.

Quote to review from Grade 2 Children’s class
fill in the blank quote review
Fill in the blank template used for Ruhi book 3 Children's class
Answer to the fill in the blanks for Quote review

Thank you for reading I hope that some of these free downloadable resources make your class more interesting and the information easier for the students to assimilate. Visit our platform to access all the free downloadable goodies.

Soon you all soon.

Carolyn