Activities to Celebrate the Declaration of the Bab

by Leanna

The Bahá’í holiday the Declaration of the Báb is coming up next week, so I wanted to share some fun activities we did to celebrate last year. There are lots of creative ways you can celebrate. One year we held a play date, complete with storytelling and games, while another year we had a treasure hunt in a park. This year we did a scavenger hunt and craft, rounded out with some treats!

Scavenger Hunt

In the past we’ve focused on the idea of search, to commemorate Mulla Husayn’s search for the Promised One (the Báb). To continue this theme, our first activity was a simple scavenger hunt at the park. Simple is key because the boys were still rather young (4 and 1), and we were at the park, so I knew their attention spans for structured activities would be rather short.

For the items on their list, I threw in some general spring items (flowers, birds), plus others to do with the holy day: Since “the Báb” is an Arabic title meaning “the Gate” I had them look for any gates. (There were several at this park; if there aren’t any at yours, you could always modify it to include doors). And since green was a color associated with the Báb (throughout much of Islamic history in Persia, only the descendents of Muhammad, such as the Báb, were allowed to wear green), I also had the boys look for as many green things as they could find. Not hard to do in a park!

Craft

Following up on the color green, after we got home we did a modified version of this really fun fireworks painting craft from Artsy Momma.

The kids enjoyed the novelty of painting with the pipe cleaners (painting with unusual materials is always a hit!), and their paintings turned out beautifully.

Treat Boxes

And, of course, since it was a holiday, we couldn’t forget the treats! I found these great treat boxes at the Dollar Tree in the section for wedding showers. They came flat, which made them easy to decorate, plus Monkey had fun “building” his box once it was done.

And they were just the right size for the pencils, stickers, and lollipops I had gotten for them. In fact, Monkey’s treat box remained in his room as a holder of miscellaneous treasures for quite some time.