Oct 21, 2012

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A wonderful on-line tool to help your child
The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 13.

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• Next class is on Sunday, Oct.28
• Cord Walkathon Sunday, Oct. 28

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Opening Prayer:

• OM Sahanaa vavatu

Stotras:

• Vakratunda Mahaakaaya

• Saraswathi Namasthubyam

• Gurur Brahma

Quiet Time/Activity: Shell Dropping Game

Gita Chanting: Chapter 13, Shloka 1 (On-Line tool to help with memorization and pronunciation)

Story: "Stone Soup" by Jon J. Muth

Bhajan: Ganapati Ganapati

Sanskrit Learning: Krishna Vadati

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.)

Comments: 
It is said that.....Children learn quickly. The younger they are, the more they learn.  Today we saw this on many occasions.  Its truly a delight for us to be a part of this process.

 

We started our class with chanting Om three times and then did our Stotras.  The kids were able to lead us through the stotras and they knew which God/Goddess we say each of the prayer for.  This is tremendous, considering its just the begining of the year.

 

We did amazing during quiet time.  The children are doing well as little meditators.  After quiet time we did our Geeta Chanting. We continued to practice the first shloka.  Today we tried chanting as a group, and the kids did an awesome job again.  Thank you parents for helping them practice at home.  We seemed to be ready to move to the next shloka, which we will start in November.

 

Today at story time we heard the story of  'The stone soup'.  We saw how the journey three monks to find true happines leads them to make Stone Soup for the entire village.  They discovered, along with the villagers that true happiness lies in sharing and caring.

 

After this inspiring story we went on to do our Likita Japa.  The past couple weeks we have been practicing to trace Om.  Today we tried to write it by ourselves on a white board.  The kids did an great job.  They are so ready to learn to write Rama.  We will start with that next class.

 

Once we were done with all that writing, we needed to move around a bit. So we played a game of Krishna Vadati.  It was so much fun. We continued this energy into our bhajan singing.  The kids love to go really fast on Ganapati Ganapati bhajan.  It was lots fun and of course exhausting.  So we settled in to read a book called Wangari's Trees of Peace: A true Story from Africa by Jeanette Winter.  It was a story of this strong and determined women who did good for her world.  

 

Since we were in the mood to read we also started on another book which was full of Alphabets and India.  The book is called  'I is for India by Prodeepta Das'  We only made it upto  'I'.......we hope to finishit next week.

 

We ended our class with our closing prayers.

 

Looking forward to see you all next week (Oct 28th) at the Cord Walkathon!