January 11, 2015 Class

Next Class: January 25, 2015

10:00 a.m.

Crossroads Middle School

 Class room assignments for your child:

Friday@ 7:00 p.m. — C-108

Saturday @ 2:00 p.m. — C-108

Sunday @ 8:45 a.m. — Room C-106

Sunday @ 12.45 p.m. — Room C-107

Sunday @3:15 p.m. — Room C-108

 Hari Om!

‘’Intellect is the light, the heart is the direction.”

 

Today’s lesson was ’I – for Intelligence’.  The intellect is the accumulation of knowledge, memory, and thinking. The intellect is able to analyze what the mind perceives and make inquiries. When we think in words, we are witnessing the activities of the intellect. When we compare and contrast things we are using the intellect. When we do self-inquiry, it is really the intellect doing self-inquiry.

In class we spoke about how the mind is where emotions arise and are experienced. When you feel happy or sad you are witnessing the activities of the mind.  We discussed how the Mind collects and categories impressions from the five sense. Intellect observes and discriminates useful from useless and makes decisions.  We gave different examples……on where we use our intellect.  It is a bit profound…..but they got
it! 

Engage you children in a conversation about right and wrong and ask them about how we know something is wrong for us?  What helps us know that?  Hope this will lead your child into continued learning about mind and intellect.

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Shokas

• Saha Naavavatu

• Ekadantam Mahaakaaya

• Sarasvati Namastubhyam

• Gurur Brahma, Gurur Vishnu

 

Geeta Chanting: Chapter 15, Shlokas 1, 2,3,4, and 5

Because our children are responsible for learning the first 12 shlokas, we will need to increase our learning curve a little with each class. During the fall, we only added one shloka per month. However, in order to meet our responsibilities, we will need to increase our shlokas by 2 a month. We have introduced Shloka 5 this week.  Please spend a little time with your child each day practicing.  Just 15 mins a day makes all the difference in the world. If you have any questions about tutoring, please feel free to talk with one of the sevikas. We are extremely lucky to have one of the Sanskrit teachers on our Kindergarten Team... and she will be very happy to answer any questions you might have.

Also, here is an audio blog that has archived all the Bhagavad Geeta chapters. It is a wonderful learning tool... and we highly recommend that you check it out. Here is the url:

Geeta Chanting

 

Concentration/Shell Game

Even though we've had a few weeks off... everyone jumped right into position and played our concentration game beautifully. Nearly everyone kept their eyes closed throughout this activity... exhibiting very little restlessness. This is a great indication that the children are ready to try sitting silently longer... and spend more time in focused counting. We don't usually "up" our time until early/mid Spring... so believe us when we say that these children are doing impressively well!!!

 

Yoga Stretches/Exercise

We really needed to warm up on this cold morning and we did by doing Sun Salutations!  Kids enjoyed stretching and warming up.

Story Time
We did the classic story “The Thirsty Crow”. 

Likhita Japa

At this time of the year we like to introduce the children to creative likhita japa. Up until now they have been using the tracing sheet to learn the writing strokes for Raama (in Sanskrit). However, we have been noticing that the children are feeling pretty confident with their writing, so we are now ready to express our love and gratitude for God creatively, using colors and shapes. Please note that from this point onwards, your child will most likely not be able to finish their likhita japa art during class time. Therefore, they will be bringing home their paper to work on during the week. We encourage your child to bring their finished work with them to the next class. We will be having a "show and tell" segment where the children can share their artwork... and feelings, if they want to.