Sevikas: Vasudha, Bala (Section 1)
Jayashree, Shubangi (Section 2)
Announcements
Our next class in Mercer County Park. Attendance will be taken on this day. We will assemble and have a short class followed by the walkathon and raffles and prizes. There is a smaller trail for families with young children. There will be arts and crafts etc set up to engage the children after the walk and there will be food as well. Please hurry up and register as part of the KG team at cord.dojiggy.com .
October 16 Class Schedule
Prayers
AUM Chanting
Sahanavavathu
Vakratunda Mahakaya
Saraswathi Namasthubhyam
Buddhir Balam
Gurur Brahma
Brahmarpanam
Ekadantam Mahakayam
Bhajans
Great God Ganapathy
Come Here My Dear Krishna Kanhaiya
Geeta Chanting: Chapter XII first and second shloka.
Story Time and Letter(s) of the day: 'C' is for Cleanliness
Activity: Diya out of clay
Likhita Japa: OM
Closing Prayers:
Arthi (first 2 stanzas)
Pledge
(SECTION 1)
Comments:
We had a very energetic class today.
Our morning prayer session was very clear and loud singing. The kids remembered the sequence of the prayers. After the prayers, we brainstorm with them as to which prayer is to which God and why.
GITA CHANTING: We revised the first shloka with the kids. Couple of them had memorized. Few of them needed prompting. With more practice at home with parents and siblings, they will be able to meorize faster. We moved on to the second shloka today.
The letter of the day was C for CLEANLINESS. We had the entire class contibuting towards different means of cleaning. They learnt why and how we need to keep our surroundings, ourselves and our mind clean.
We then showed them three clear glasses of water - we applied one glass with mud outside and asked them if they would drink clean water from a dirty cup, majority of them said no, couple of them felt they could use a straw etc., we moved on to the second glass and when we were adding the mud into the water, the whole class was yelling NO, YUCK, DIRTY etc., even before we asked if they would drink the water. We then added sugar in the 3rd cup which was clean inside and outside . The very thought that sugar was being added, the kids went crazy, they said we like anything that is sweet and clean.
ACTIVITY:
We all made clay lamps to take home, since it is Diwali soon. We discussed as to why we light lamps and what good it does to us. Hope you all got to see the lamp they made. If it got out of shape you can help them make it again.
REMINDERS:
Our morning prayer session was very clear and loud singing. The kids remembered the sequence of the prayers. After the prayers, we brainstorm with them as to which prayer is to which God and why.
GITA CHANTING: We revised the first shloka with the kids. Couple of them had memorized. Few of them needed prompting. With more practice at home with parents and siblings, they will be able to meorize faster. We moved on to the second shloka today.
The letter of the day was C for CLEANLINESS. We had the entire class contibuting towards different means of cleaning. They learnt why and how we need to keep our surroundings, ourselves and our mind clean.
We then showed them three clear glasses of water - we applied one glass with mud outside and asked them if they would drink clean water from a dirty cup, majority of them said no, couple of them felt they could use a straw etc., we moved on to the second glass and when we were adding the mud into the water, the whole class was yelling NO, YUCK, DIRTY etc., even before we asked if they would drink the water. We then added sugar in the 3rd cup which was clean inside and outside . The very thought that sugar was being added, the kids went crazy, they said we like anything that is sweet and clean.
ACTIVITY:
We all made clay lamps to take home, since it is Diwali soon. We discussed as to why we light lamps and what good it does to us. Hope you all got to see the lamp they made. If it got out of shape you can help them make it again.
REMINDERS:
Please register for the CORD walkathon
Please take the children to the restroom before the class.
Please do not send in any bags or folders with them.
If you have any spare art supplies please donate them to the class.
==================================================================
Please register for the CORD walkathon
Please take the children to the restroom before the class.
Please do not send in any bags or folders with them.
If you have any spare art supplies please donate them to the class.
==================================================================
(SECTION 2)
Comments:
We had a great class today. We had one more new friend Akhil join the class today.
We started off with the initial prayers and then learnt the new prayer Ekadantam Mahakayam once more as many of them are confusing it with vakratunda mahakaya :-) After that, we did the Bhajans which they seem to remember very well and we learned a little bit more in Come Here My Dear Krishna Kanhaiya..They were all very enthusiastic to come to the front and do it on their own.
We then tried to find out who had memorized the first shloka of the Gita. Jayashree Aunty had brought scented stickers for those who could recite it. Five or six of them managed to say it with a little bit help and got their reward. Jayashree Aunty has a lot more stickers to hand out next week - so parents, please help them to memorize the first couple of Shlokas. We repeated the first shloka and also started learning the second shloka today.
After a brief recap of the earlier letters in our Safari, we moved on to the next letter - C for Cleanliness. Some of them already knew what it stood for, from their book or from their older cousin/friend, so we could not play the guessing game :-) Anyway, we discussed how it is nice to have a clean body, clean surrounding and similarly a clean mind. And how do we keep a clean mind? By not thinking bad thoughts, or not saying bad words or doing bad things and not watching bad TV shows etc. We then showed them three glasses of water - one with mud outside, one with mud inside, and one which was clean inside and outside and had sugar added to it - and asked them which one they would like to drink from. We then discussed that similar to taking a shower to clean our body, we need to do our prayers to clean our mind.
We had a quick discussion about Diwali before doing a Diya out of clay. After that we had just a few minutes to do Likhita japa before concluding the class.
We are very grateful to Aniruddh's mom for volunteering to help out in class today. It made a lot of difference. Thank you.
REMINDERS:
Please register for the CORD walkathon
Please take the children to the restroom before the class.
Please do not send in any bags or folders with them.
If you have any spare art supplies, like markers, gel pens, glue sticks, clay etc please donate them to the class.
