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A wonderful on-line tool to help your child
with The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 13.
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with The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 13.
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• Next class is on Sunday, Oct. 7
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Opening Prayer:
Stotras:
Quiet Time/Activity: Shell Dropping Game
Gita Chanting: Chapter 13, Shloka 1 (On-Line tool to help with memorization and pronunciation)
Story: Why Ganesha Ate Too Much
Bhajan: Ganapati Ganapati
Sanskrit Learning:
• Mama Nāma
Likhita Japa: Learning how to write ऊँ.
(To help the children remember how to properly write ऊँ, explained that there are four steps: First you write a "3," then you must add Lord Hanuman's tail, next comes the moon, and then the last thing you draw is a bindu.)
Craft/Activity: Coloring Page of Lord Ganesha
Comments: Parents, before we get into a lengthly recap of our mornings activities, we just have to say: "Your kids were absolutely amazing, today!!!" In fact, the aunties thought they were in the wrong class... we could've sworn that these were the kindergarteners :-)
So, on that happy note... we'd like to officially welcome and congratulate all of our young friends on successfully completing our very first Balavihar class for this year. Not one tear was shed... and not one request to use the bathroom. Thank you very much, parents... for helping us get started on the right foot!
As most of you probably know, our ashram hosts an annual Gita Chanting Competition (which is held in the Spring.) Your child will be responsible for memorizing the first 7 shlokas of Chapter 13. So, rather than springing this on the kids in the middle of the year, we have planned to make this chanting part of our weekly curriculum. We started our first shloka today... and the kids did fabulously well! Just so you know, we will be introducing one additional shloka at the beginning of every month. When we have reached Shloka # 7, then we will continue to chant all of these throughout the year. Please work with your child at home throughout the week. With just 5 or 10 minutes of daily practice, you will be amazed at how perfect your child's pronunciation will become... not to mention how comfortable he or she will be sitting in front of the judges. So, we really encourage you to begin your studies now :-) Hopefully, within a few days we will be posting some audio links for you to use with your child. So, please check back in the middle of the week to see if we met our goal :-)
We decided to use a Sanskrit Learning Game to introduce ourselves to one another. After jumping around for a few minutes to burn off some energy, we sat in a circle and tossed a ball to someone. The person who caught the ball, then had to say "मम नाम ___________" (mama nāma (my name is _________.) By the end of this segment, we learned that we have lots of beautiful names in our class... to match all those beautiful faces and smiles.
Before closing, we also have to share how impressed we were with the children following instructions on the proper writing strokes for ऊँ. Even though there were just a few children who were confident in the writing strokes... everyone listened carefully and followed the correct writing sequence when writing on their tracing sheets. So, our guess is that we will be able to advance into learning how to write राम sooner than we thought :-)
We hope that your child had a fun day in class... because we can assure you that the aunties did! We look forward to seeing you on October 7. Same place. Same time.
But in the meantime, definitely get outside and enjoy this glorious weather that we have been blessed with!!! Nothing is more refreshing than breathing in that fresh clean air...
Lots of hugs to all of our young friends!! ♥♥♥
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Fun Homework
Print out and color this picture of our Pujya Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda.
