Child's Way/Volume 2/Issue 4/Text
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[Page 1]
CHILD’S WAY
July - Aug.
dedicated to children everywhere
BAHÁ’Í YEAR 127
[Page 2]
dedicated to children everywhere
BAHÁ’Í YEAR 127
Vol. 2, No. 3
CHILD’S WAY[edit]
3. The Science Corner: Weather Station 4. Shrine of the Bab 5. The Adventures of Willie Wiggleworm: The Case of the Hungry Platypus
- by Alice Bacon
7. Prayer 8. Poem 9. Photo Portraits 10. Calendar 11. Doug’s Diary 16. Chuckles 17. Prayer 18. Poem 20. Servant of God 21. A Child’s Prayer
- by Marion Wilcox
Editor’s Note[edit]
Dear Friends of CHILD’S WAY,
How is your Summer? Soon we can begin thinking about a new school year. We surely hope that you had a chance to attend a Summer School somewhere or that you will, soon!
We have heard from many parents and teachers who are trying CHILD’S WAY in children’s classes and find it very helpful. Have you? If so, we would enjoy hearing from you.
We actually have two surprises in this issue. The introduction of a fine new author, Doug Allen and a new feature section: Poetry, Prayers and Thoughts. Won’t you send in some soon?
Some of you have asked about the return of the Adventures of Dewey. We are happy to announce that the final chapter will be included in the next issue.
Sincerely,
THE EDITORS OF CHILD’S WAY MAGAZINE
Advisory Board: Carole Allen, Ray Johnson, LaNelma Johnson, Maxine Rossman, Mark Rossman, Helen Sousa, Donald Streets
Contributing Editors: Barbara Cook, Robert Hart, Molly King, David Lepard, James Nelson
Art Illustrator and Consultant: Diane Paquet
Subscription Service: LaNelma Johnson
Managing Editors: David Lepard, Mildred Lepard
CHILD’S WAY is published bi-monthly in January, March, May, July, September and November in Amherst, Massachusetts. Manuscripts, editorial correspondence and subscriptions should be addressed to: CHILD’S WAY Magazine, Box 551, Amherst, Massachusetts 01002.
Subscriptions: Second Class mail USA, $4.50; Foreign, $5.00. Single copy, $ .75.
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WEATHER STATION[edit]
rain gauge[edit]
Keep a record of how much rain falls with a rain gauge made from a test tube or pill bottle one inch across. Put it against a ruler and mark every half-inch with enamel paint or nail polish. Tie the bottle to a fence or lamppost out in the open. After each rainfall, record how many inches of rain fall into your gauge.
barometer[edit]
If you listen to the weatherman on the radio or TV, you’ve heard him say that the barometer is falling or rising. The barometer is an instrument for measuring air pressure. You can make a simple one by fastening a piece of stretchy balloon rubber over the mouth of a large jar or milk bottle. Glue a piece of light cardboard to the rubber for a pointer. Then stand the jar next to a ruler in a place where the temperature is always the same. When the air pressure increases, it pushes on the rubber. The pointer tilts upward, indicating nice weather. Low pressure causes the opposite to happen, and the pointer tilts down. Bad weather ahead. Keep a daily record of how far the barometer rises or falls.
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Shrine of the Báb[edit]
The Shrine of the Báb is a golden-domed structure which stands out above the city of Haifa, Israel. The Báb was the Martyr-Herald of the Bahá’í Faith who declared His mission in 1844 and who in 1850, at the age of 31, was executed in Tabriz, Persia, because of His liberal religious teachings. His last words were these: "Had you believed in Me, O wayward generation, every one of you would have. . . willingly sacrificed himself in My path. The day will come when you will have recognized Me; that day I shall have ceased to be with you."
The Báb’s remains were brought to the Holy Land and entombed in 1909 by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Son and Successor of Bahá’u’lláh. The present building was begun in 1948 and completed in 1953.
Combining the style and proportions of European architecture with designs inspired by the East, it is constructed of stone cut and carved in Italy and with 12,000 fish-scale tiles made in Holland by a special process of fire glazing over gold leaf. The whole cost of the new building was met by Bahá’ís throughout the world; contributions for any Bahá’í work are voluntary and accepted only from members of the Faith.
The Báb was martyred on July 9, in 1850.
[Page 5]
THE CASE OF THE HUNGRY PLATYPUS[edit]
by Alice Bacon
"I see by the paper," said Levi Horsington, worm mayor of Amentia, to his wife, Hettie, "that they are starting worm farms just to feed our fellow worms to those strange things in the city zoo. They are called duck-billed p-l-a-t-y-p-u-s-e-s." Levi Horsington pointed out the long strange name in the newspaper.
Hettie Horsington laid down her knitting tremblingly. "Do you suppose they will dig up our town and get us ALL?" she quavered.
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Carefully loosen the staples on the magazine to remove the special cover. Also remove the poetry pages.
Each new issue of Child's Way will contain poetry, prayers, and thoughts which you will want to put in the new book. Soon you will have your own special book to share with others.
Tie the book together with a colorful ribbon or string. Add your new poems with each issue.
If you know of a poem or would like to write one to share with others, send it to us and we will try to print it in the magazine.
Willie cont.[edit]
"It says here that the platypuses eat 800 worms a day! said Levi.
"Oh my, I feel a little faint!" said Hettie. "Why that's worse than war! You must call your council together and DO something!"
"But those platypuses are in New York," said Levi. "What could we worms in Amentia do?"
"Couldn't those--those THINGS eat something else?" asked Hettie.
"It says here they eat crayfish and egg custard too!" said Levi.
Then Levi remembered that long ago Cecil and Penelope Platypus had been sent from the far-off country of Australia. He remembered, although he had just been a little worm, squiggling around at his mother's feet, how terrified he had been by all the talk. They had sent out an airplane with ten thousand more worms to meet the ship and supply food for the duck-billed platypuses.
continued on page 19
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I give praise to Thee, O my God, that Thou hast awakened me out of my sleep.
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My kite and I go soaring together
through the trees;
Feel it tugging in the breeze -
Pulling me, Showing me
What a lot of fun can be!
Barbara Rogers
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PHOTO-PORTRAITS[edit]
Choose a black and white photograph from a newspaper and decide on two contrasting colors you would like to use to paint with. You might use red and green, blue and orange, yellow and purple or any others you wish.
First you will paint all of the black areas carefully with the darker paint. Then you will paint all of the white areas with a lighter color
Now comes the difficult part-- look carefully and notice that some of the areas of the picture are different shades of grey. You must now decide which greys are closer to black and which greys are closer to white. When you think that you have a pretty good idea you may start to paint the areas that seem closest to white with the lighter color and the ones closer to black the darker color.
TIPS**use a photograph of a head at least as big as the drawing shown on this page.
- use poster paint that is thick enough to cover the grey, but thin enough to paint neatly.
- be sure to let one color dry before putting another color next to it.
- be sure that you wash your brush thoroughly when changing colors. Newspaper photographs work best.
Let us know how your {{{2}}} came out.
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Calendar of the Nineteen Day Feast[edit]
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | |
| Kamál | PERFECTION | 1 AUG. | ||||
| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
Doug’s Diary — A Teaching Trip to India[edit]
Saturday - Dec. 6. Today we started out on our trip to India. Intermediate stops will be New York, Madrid, Spain, Rome, Italy, Beirut, Lebanon, Teheran, Iran and finally our destination, New Delhi, India. We come to India armed with teaching materials and hope we will help India in bringing the Bahá’í Faith to the villages. It is Dad’s hope also that he will be able to test some teaching materials that were prepared by the U.S. N.S.A. He will use them in Mass Teaching areas as a means of keeping people’s attention and also in this way they will have something to keep and hang up in their homes to remember the lesson that was presented to them. These sheets comprise of a picture or series of pictures on one side along with a short caption below the picture. On the back of the sheet is a paragraph or two explaining the picture in detail. Dad is taking four boxes of these pictures over to India. Already they have had an interesting time, starting in Hartford, Connecticut (the airport from which we left) the airline people told us that we would have to pay overweight if we wished to take them with us. The overweight charge would have been a mere $688.00 — but it was the principle of the thing that counted. So we decided to take them as far as New York, and ship them air freight to India from there. However, once there the airline man saw a sample of one pasted on top with the caption “Prayer is communion with God” or something close to that, he asked if it was a religious pamphlet, and when dad said yes, he let them go free of charge!
Sunday - Dec. 7. Today, nothing much happened. We stopped at Madrid, Spain where we looked around in the few shops that were at the airport. After waiting in the airport a few more minutes we boarded the plane once more and were soon winging our way to Rome where we were to change planes. While at the Rome airport we looked around the airport, sent a few postcards to our mother and brother and sisters and had some delicious
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pizza and some terrible ice cream. We then got on our plane that was to take us the rest of the way to India. On this flight we stopped at Beirut, Lebanon, and finally in Tehran, Iran, the Land of Bahá’u’lláh.
Monday—Dec. 8. We arrived in New Delhi, India at 7:45 A.M. and went through customs shortly later. We expected to be met but no one showed up so we took a taxi to 6 Canning Road, the address of the Bahá’í House in New Delhi. After meeting some of the New Delhi Bahá’ís we went to the hotel where we would stay, the Imperial Hotel. This hotel is a roomy, fairly old hotel that saw its height of glory about 30 years ago. Today it is still very nice although a little run down. Because of the 10½ hour time difference between India and Eastern United States, we were quite tired and spent the rest of the morning sleeping. In the afternoon we went to a few of the shops and then were privileged to be able to have dinner with Mr. Mohajir, Hand of the Cause, and his wife. We ate at a small restaurant in Old Delhi that served typical Indian food. We had chicken with very good sauce on it. Tomorrow we would start our teaching.
Tuesday—Dec. 9. After catching an early morning flight for Kanpur, a town of about three and one half to four million people, we landed there and were met by local Bahá’ís. We were each given a lei of flowers which they call a garland. We were then taken to a place that is owned by the third largest industrialist in India. He uses this place as a retreat and “WOW!” what a place! It has a large swimming pool that has its own wave-making machine to simulate the rolling waves of the ocean in the pool. It also has extensive gardens as well as an artificial rainbow machine. After about 45 minutes we started out with a press conference and then were on a tight schedule for the rest of the day. At 4:30 P.M. we went to a village (Melhouse) where we stayed overnight at a prince’s house. Although the ride was dusty it wasn’t too bad, for the jeep we were in smoothed the bumps nicely.
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Wednesday - Dec. 10.[edit]
Early this morning we were taken on a tour of Melhouse by the prince. He showed us his poultry coops where he raised poultry as a hobby. He has about 2,500 chickens that lay about 3,000 eggs a day. The methods he uses to raise them are very impressive and scientific: he can tell you which kind of chicken can lay the most eggs and which are the most economical. After breakfast we went to another place about 2 hours drive from Melhouse (that is if you went the way Dennis and I did). While Dad was giving a talk on the Bahá’í Faith in Melhouse, the prince sent Dennis and me ahead to speak to about 4000 boys at a combined school on customs and schooling in the United States. We left an hour earlier but got there about 2 minutes earlier than Dad because the car we were in was not in good mechanical condition. On the way there we saw many different kinds of birds. When we got there, there was no time for our talk. That night at dinner we met a fine man from Japan that was involved in television manufacturing. That night we went to the market area in Kanpur. After buying a few little trinkets here and there, we bought some fireworks to set off at the hotel. When we got home (to our hotel) we set them off making sure they didn’t make any noise for it was 11:30 at night.
Thursday - Dec 11[edit]
During the morning we walked around in the garden of the place where we stayed visiting with the many friends we had made during our stay in Kanpur. While we were doing this Dad had informal question and answers going on where people that had heard him speak on the Bahá’í Faith or Education while he was in Kanpur. Later on that day we flew back to New Delhi where we were met by some New Delhi Bahá’ís including Continental Counsellor, Shirin Boman, Indian N.S.A. member, Mr Shah, and also a local Bahá’í. Dennis had a headache so he stayed at the hotel while Dad and I went to the Bahá’í Home to attend the feast that was being held that night. We arrived slightly late for the feast but we were able to visit with some of the Bahá’ís, both local and visiting. There was
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one boy and his father who had a unique story behind the fact that they were there. It seems that the father had been attending Bahá’í firesides for some time. After each one, when he would come home, he would always bubble over enthusiastically about how great the Bahá’í Faith was, and how great a Faith it is and how he agreed with everything it stood for. One day his son got fed up with hearing about this and said to his father, “If the Bahá’í Faith is so great, and you agree with it so much, well then, why don't you become a Bahá’í?” And you know what, that is exactly what his father did.
Also there was an Ethiopian Bahá’í by the name of Ferris Ahmed who worked for Ethiopian Airlines. He told us some stories about the time when Ruhiyyih Khanum visited Ethiopia. For instance one time when he was visiting the Emperor, he asked her if there were a large number of Bahá’ís in Ethiopia; she admitted that there were only a relatively few Bahá’ís in Ethiopia. He said “Why?” almost as if he were disappointed by the fact that there were so few Bahá’ís in his country. Another thing that Mr. Ahmed told us was that there were 20 Bahá’ís in employment by the Ethiopian Airlines. He also told us that while Ruhiyyih Khanum was there she visited the mass conversion areas that are located mainly in the southern portion of Ethiopia. After an hour and a half of waiting, we went to dinner at a restaurant that had very good orange juice which felt good to our throats, because in India newcomers must be careful of the water because it is sometimes bad for a new person in India to drink. When Dad and I finally returned to the hotel, it was after midnight and we were happy to get into bed.
I’ll have more about my trip in the next issue of Child’s Way.
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| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | |||
| Asmá’ | Names | 20 | 21 | 22 | ||
| 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | 31 | 1 SEPT. | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| 6 | 7 | |||||
FOLD on Line between the Arabic name of the month and the translation - Tape and all the months will fit!
| Kalimát | WORDS |
cut out. Tape Calendar to your wall
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CHUCKLES[edit]
| Which bird has no wings and no beak? A jailbird! |
What irritates a farmer most? Treading on his corn. |
| Why is there so much water in a watermelon Because its seeds are planted in the spring! |
Why is the elephant the best airline passenger? Because he carries his own trunk aboard! |
| What is the difference between a hungry man and a glutton? One longs to eat — the other eats too long! |
What has many leaves, but no stem? A Book! |
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O God, guide me, protect me
illumine the lamp of my heart, and
make me a brilliant star. Thou art
the Mighty, and the Powerful.
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Big red apple, shiny apple, lean down, bend low on your tree.
So high, shiny apple;
Too high, big red apple -
Fall down, pretty apple, to me.
Soft white cloud, puffy cloud, float down, fly low in the sky.
So high, puffy cloud;
Too high, soft white cloud -
Blow down, pretty cloud to me.
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So the mayor of Amentia called his council together. The members all deliberated a long time, but there was nothing they could do to save their fellow worms from being fed to platypuses.
Finally Bertha Genske rose up on her segments and waved herself in the air. "We can go on strike against gardens," she said. "Let the gardens wither. Let them shrivel away! Not until they kill off those monstrous platypuses will we carry soil to the top of the world again! We will starve gardens until the human monsters starve platypuses!"
Lorenzo Rockahead asked Bertha Genske to sit down. "It won't do any good for us little worms to strike," he said calmly. "We are only a few little worms compared to all the worms in the world. Now if All the worms in All the world...!"
"Be quiet and don't be silly," advised Bertha Genske.
"Moles and toads and snakes eat us too," said Levi Horsington sadly. "Only they don't eat as many of us at once!"
Willie Wiggleworm heard his mother and Hettie Horsington talking about the hungry platypuses while he lay in the back burrow that separated their homes. He remembered then how his Monster had saved Amentia from the drought, and he remembered how his Monster had saved him and Lorenzo and the other worms from the fish hooks. Surely his Monster could save them all from platypuses!
When Monster saw him there in his familiar place on the bedpost, he said, "Hello Willie! I'm glad you don't live in New York. You might get eaten by two funny flat-footed birds I saw at the zoo today!"
"Y-y-you mean PLATYPUSES?" asked Willie, backing away as though Monster might try to eat him too.
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The Servant of God[edit]
When His Father was alive and dwelt outside the city of Akka among the mountains, ‘Abbás-Effendi (‘Abdu’l-Bahá) frequently visited Him. Though the journey was rather long, He usually walked. His friends asked Him why He did not save time and effort and go on horseback. "Over these mountains, Jesus walked on foot," He said, "and who am I that I should ride where the Lord Christ walked?"
Once when he was older and rode in an ordinary stagecoach to return to His home, the driver thought that for a man of His appearance and bearing that He should be riding in a private carriage. ‘Abbás-Effendi insisted on using the stagecoach. At the end of His ride, He was stopped by a poor man who pleaded for a few coins. Turning to the driver, He said, "Why should I travel in a carriage when such as he needs money?"
Adapted from BW, Vol. IV, 340
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A CHILD’S PRAYER[edit]
Words and Music by Marion Wilcox
O God! Guide me, protect me, illumine the lamp of my heart, the lamp of my heart.
Make me a brilliant star, Thou art the mighty and the powerful.
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“What do you know about platypuses?” demanded Monster sitting up on his elbow and shaking the bed. Willie clung tighter and advanced a little closer to Monster. “It’s Cecil and Penelope,” he said. “Can’t you do something about them?”
“My Daddy can,” said Monster, “because he can do anything in the world!”
But Daddy-Al laughed when David told him how many earthworms Cecil and Penelope ate every day. “I don’t think they will get your little friend, because there are millions and trillions of earthworms in the world. There are enough for all!”
“But {{{2}}},” quavered Monster...
“All right, all right, I’ll think about it!” said Daddy-Al.
When the mayor of Amentia called his council together again, Berthe Genske was the only one who talked. She still waved her segments and said they should all stop taking soil to the top of the garden.
“But that won’t help anything,” said Lorenzo Rockahead. “We must just continue to work--but in harmony, each helping the other.”
“Words! Words!” thundered Berthe Genske. “I don’t see any sense in saying everything is all right with the world when everything is all wrong!”
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"We can't even make our own world over--to say nothing of that other one at the top of the garden. Almost every creature is bigger and stronger than we are, and we have no protection except to work in unity!"
Bertha Genske sobbed then. "It's hard being just an earthworm," she said.
"It's hard being anything worth while," observed Levi Horsington gently.
And then the very next day, something happened that caused great rejoicing in Amentia. Word ran around the burrows that Penelope Platypus had run away from the zoo. It was in all the papers. Even the police at the top of the world were all on the lookout for Penelope.
"As if she really AMOUNTED to something," said Bertha Genske.
But Penelope Platypus was never found. Cecil was lonely and he drooped and refused to eat worms. He refused egg custard and crayfish, too. Finally, Cecil died, there in the New York zoo, thousands of miles from his native land of Australia.
"There! What did I tell you?" demanded Monster of Willie Wiggleworm. "Now there are no platypuses to eat you up. I TOLD you my Daddy could do ANYTHING!"
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--BLANK--