Next Class: Jan 29 2012
Sevikas: Vasudha, Bala (Section 1)
Jayashree, Shubangi (Section 2)
Announcements
Additional classes for 'gItaa chanting' of 12th chapter are being offered on Fridays from 7 pm to 8 pm, at the Ashram. Anyone is welcome to attend. Registration for the Gita Chanting competition is now open. Please click here to visit the registration page. The audio for the Ch XII is also available at this site.
Jan 22 Class Schedule
Prayers
AUM Chanting
Saraswathi Namasthubhyam
Buddhir Balam
Gurur Brahma
Brahmarpanam
Bhajans
Khate Bhi Ram Kaho
Geeta Chanting: Chapter XII first four shlokas
Story Time and Letter(s) of the day: 'J' is for Japa
Activity: Concentration game and Rangoli pattern/LIKITA JAPA coloring
Likhita Japa:
Closing Prayers: Asatho Maa Sad Gamaya
Purnamadah
Arathi (first 3 stanzas)
Pledge
We were very grateful to have Varun's mom helping us in class this week. We tried the Rangoli pattern from the previous week once more. Some of the children remembered it well and finished it even before Auntie did. The rest of them found it much easier to complete it since it was their second week doing it. We will color it in class next week before we send it home for parents to admire :-)
(SECTION 1)
Comments:
After the initial prayers and bhajans we practiced Gitaa chanting. We learnt the 5th shloka today.
The alphabet for the week was J for JAPA.
We learnt the meaning, why we should do Japa (for concentration and focus), Why we need to focus( to succeed in all the activities we do ) and different ways to do Japa(repeating God's name by chanting or by writing) and our attitude(devotion) when we do Japa.
Story of the day was about sage Valmiki, who was transformed from being a robber to a great sage, by repeating the Rama mantra, with devotion, for ages.
We also tried repeating 'MaraMara' for a few minutes and could hear it become 'RamaRama'.
We then learnt a new Bhajan - Khate bhi Ram Kaho...with action to teach us to repeat the Lord's name when doing any action. We had fun adding our own new actions.
We did silent OM likita Japa on our JAPA coloring sheet. The challenge was, that the kids had to do silent Japa of OM, and write it on the sheet too.
After this we played concentration game to see if the Japa helped us stayed focused. The kids were shown 30 objects, after a minute's silence they had to recall them. They could recall 26 things, which was pretty good. The kids want to play this game more often, which we will in our future classes.
REMINDERS:
Please practice the shlokas and Geeta at home with the children.
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.
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(SECTION 2)
Comments:
After the initial prayers, we had a few kids come up and lead us for the Bhajans. We reviewed the previous letter 'I' for intelligence and then moved to 'J' for japa.
We explained what 'Japa' is and how it helps to increase concentration and focus which are essential to succeed in any task. Japa is repeating God's name with devotion. We told them the story of Sage Valmiki - how he was a robber in the forest before and with Sage Narada's help, he tried to learn the Rama mantra - but could not even pronounce it correctly - but repeated 'Mara' with devotion for a lot of years and finally became a great sage. We also tried repeating 'MaraMara' for a few minutes and could hear it become 'RamaRama'. We then did in our minds for a couple of minutes. The entire class was extremely silent. After this we split the class into different teams and played the concentration game where they had 1 minute to observe about 20-25 assorted items and then recall it. They all did pretty good - the winning team had 17!
We then learnt a new Bhajan - Khate bhi Ram Kaho...with action to teach us to repeat the Lord's name when doing any action. We had fun adding our own new actions.
We were very grateful to have Varun's mom helping us in class this week. We tried the Rangoli pattern from the previous week once more. Some of the children remembered it well and finished it even before Auntie did. The rest of them found it much easier to complete it since it was their second week doing it. We will color it in class next week before we send it home for parents to admire :-)
We then practiced our Gita Shlokas - almost all of them are comfortable with the first two. We revised the third a few times before learning the fourth. The Gita chanting competition website has the audio for all the shlokas. Please help them practice at home. We will see them all next week.
REMINDERS:
Please practice the shlokas and Geeta at home with the children.
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.
