Announcements
Next Balavihar : December 8th
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Sevikas : Jacqueline Gaines, Meena Rajan
Room No : C-105
Ruchi Malaviya, Reshma Arun
Room No : C-105
Ruchi Malaviya, Reshma Arun
Room No: C-106
Hari OM Everyone !!
It was a cold morning today but the kids came in with warm smiling faces. Here is a brief of what we did in class today
Opening Prayers
Shlokas
Gita Chanting
Activities
• Concentration Time : Shell game
Alphabet Safari : G for God
Activity Time : Drawing pictures of different gifts of god
Discussing and performing puja
• Likhita Japa : Tracing Ram in sanskrit (राम)
Closing prayers and Pledge
Comments
Section 1
Today we had yet another great class with lots of energy and enthusiasm. It was an extremely cold day today but we were very happy to see that all our little kids came for the class and we had almost perfect attendance.
The class started with shlokas followed by Bhagwat Geeta chanting. We introduced second shloka today and kids are doing a great job memorizing and reciting. Please continue to practice at home everyday.
After our quiet time/meditation we began to talk about the topic of the day. The topic was 'G' for "GOD". First we started with asking the students what is God? Where does he live? etc. The kids had the most amazing answers to all of these questions. Then we discussed about the God's Gifts. We made a list of things that God has given us. We filled the entire whiteboard writing about all those wonderful gifts like gift of friends, family, house, sweets, toys , mountains, rivers, trees etc. etc. We also talked about how to take care of these precious gifts and not to misuse or abuse it.
We all performed a little Puja ceremony of Lord Ganesha. We bathed him in water. Each child got to put one spoonful of water on him. Then we all wiped the idol clean and put kum kum on his forehead. We also put some necklaces on him. We all thanked him for giving us everything. We offered him Prasad (some suger crystals) and also lighted the battery operated Diya. At the end we all put Vibhooti on everybody's forehead and had our tiny suger crystal. It was a great experience.
We all went around the class making a Krishna train, Lord Krishna gave our train lot of power to go around. We also chanted the lord's name and sang bhajan "Krishna here , Krishna there, Rama here, Rama there ".
Before we realized, it was time to go home!! Aarti and pledge were done in auditorium. Our next Balavihar class will be held on Dec. 8th. Till then stay warm and have a very Happy Thanksgiving.
Section 2
We started our class with three om's followed by shlokas and gita chanting. Most of the kids are definitely practicing their gita. We still have some kids who are not doing practice at home. We strongly encourage parents to go the gita blog so the kids can listen and practice. Your involvement goes a long way as kids become more confident at class.
Our kids are doing amazing with their silent time and shell game. They are really very quiet and almost all kids except one or two were correct. This is an amazing game and kids just look forward to it. Then we proceeded to our alphabet safari today's letter was G. Before we came to G we did go through all other letters. When the time came to guess we had everything from gita to god to gift to garden.
We discussed how aspiration, brotherhood, clean mind come together as we pray to god. We discussed how we know about god and asked the kids to illustrate what they perceive as gifts from god. Our bhajan Krishna here, Krishna there Krishna Krishna everywhere. God is one God is one God is one for everyone became very catchy as kids continued it with all the gods. We also discussed how we perform puja and say thank you to god.
We ended our classroom session with closing prayers. Today we had arati and pledge at the auditorium. This week we say thanks to god for all the bounty as we approach thanksgiving. Wish you all a very happy thanksgiving and we will see you back on December 8th.
