We had the pleasure of attending Megan's Ruhi class, book 3, on the weekend. This series highlights Baha'i Children's Classes, a very significant community activity. Debbie, on the right, is the facilitator of the class, with Megan, Mike and his wife Mehnaz, and Gary as class participants. To add to the mix is Dolly, who is eight years old. She was responsible for the serious business of responding to the lessons from a child's point of view....
and, she was the star of the show, the most delightful student a person could hope to teach. Dolly has already studied the Ruhi Institute's Book 1, and knew this was an opportunity to provide feedback for a teacher and for the class. She was an exceptionally sweet student, confident and well-mannered.
Techniques such as music, story telling, memorizations, prayers, and games are used to illustrate virtues, such as truthfulness and honesty. Dolly learned to memorize a quotation starting with a short phrase, building word upon word through repetition and recall until the quotation was memorized. Megan also used visual aids, drawings of words on a chalkboard, to use as cues. By looking at every drawing, the child 'sees' an image of the word, and the pictures carry the concepts along.
Here, Megan is demon- strating that "truth- fulness is the foundation of all human virtues". She did this by using simple plastic containers from her kitchen, which were labeled with a variety of traits - consideration for others, self-sacrifice, forgiveness, obedience, and patience. If the foundational trait, truthfulness, is not there, the others will not consistently sustain spiritual development. When the tower of containers fell, Dolly giggled and helped Megan collect them into a pile.Megan illustrated 'tale telling' with a game that spread secrets, and how these messages become distorted each time the message is told.
It was so amusing to watch Dolly draw the message on George's back, he then drew it on the back of the person in front of him, until the message had arrived up to the person in front. Then, it was drawn on the illustration board. We all knew the message would be garbled. Dolly eagerly awaited to see what the message would be - me too! She respectfully listened as all the adults offered their commentary on the serious nature of backbiting and gossip.
Things lightened up with a skit by Gary, Mike and Mehnaz, about the habit of lying. They pulled out puppets and told this story: In a country far away, some time ago, there lived a young shepherd, who, while his father worked in the fields and his mother kept up the home, had the task of taking care of the family's sheep. One day, the boy felt very bored and decided to play a trick on his neighbors. Suddenly he started crying out "Wolf! Wolf! The wolf is eating the sheep!" All of his friends came running to help chase away the wolf, but when they got there they found the young shepherd laughing at them because they had received such a fright and really there was no wolf anywhere to be found. His friends went back to their work saying that the boy had behaved very badly. The following day, the boy repeated his foolery, crying out "Wolf, wolf! Help me, help me! The wolf is eating the sheep!" 
Well, we all know how this story turns out. No one came to help the young shepherd when a wolf finally did appear. Playing pranks, not telling the truth, will turn our family and friends away.
