Pujya Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda

Pujya Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda

January 30, 2011

Jan 30 Class: Section 1

Sevikas: Mamtha Rao and Jacqueline Gaines

Click here to view this week's Art Gallery.

Home Fun Work: Click here for another printout in our animals series. Have your child draw a picture of a cat. Don't forget to ask him/her to practice saying बिडालः (biḍālaḥ) aloud while admiring the beautiful finished drawing!

For extra fun work: Click here for a color by number page in Sanskrit.


Morning Prayers:
• Om Saha naavaavatu (click here for text)
• Vakratunda Mahaakaaya (click here for text)
• Sarasvati Namastubhyam (click here for text)
• Shree Krishnah (click here for text)
• Shree Hanumaan (click here for text)

Quiet Time: 1 minute of silence followed by our shell counting game (click here for game instructions)

Geeta Chanting: Chapter 11, Shlokas 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 (click here for text and audio)

Letter of the Week: "K is for Kindness" and "L is for Love"

Likhita Japa: None (click here for our likhita japa game instructions)

Activity: The children created a likhita japa flower mandala made of hearts. They are to fill one petal each day with "OM" and bring back to next class for show and tell (Click here to view project instructions and sample)

Comment:  Today we combined two letters in one class: "K is for Kindness" and "L is for Love." We spent some time talking about what kindness means. The kids all came up with great answers ... "sharing," "helping," and "caring" — to name a few. Okay, so kindness we all had a handle on, but how do we define "Love." And what is love, exactly?!! This was a little harder for us. So to help us comprehend the power of love we shared a story of Mahatma Gandhi and how he completely transformed a thief into a follower by showing a true and simple act of love and kindness. When the thief was caught stealing in the Mahatma's ashram, Gandhiji lovingly insisted that he this man must be hungry and he should be served lunch. The Mahatma's disciples were baffled, because they all insisted that the thief be punished for his crime. But Gandhiji remained unaffected — this man was to sit and join him for lunch!  The man, so moved by Gandhiji's genuine love and kindness, broke into tears and swore to never steal again. He became a life long follower.

We tied all this love and kindness together in our activity project today. The children colored a heart/flower mandala with water soluble pencils and then brushed the drawing with water to turn everything into watercolor paint. Their results were really lovely! Their job is to spend a few minutes each day and perform likhita japa. We asked them to only fill in one petal a day, finishing the week with the mandala border. On Saturday, they should see a very beautiful likhita japa painting — filled with love! Please have them bring their painting to class so we can see their finished work.

Next week we will begin our likhita japa game and journal keeping activities. Our sketchbooks are supposed to arrive this week, so if all goes according to plan, the kids will begin working in them next week. Please note that we will be keeping their journals for them, so you don't need to worry about making sure they are in the backpack each Sunday mornings On the last day of Balavihar, your child will be bringing his/her journal home ... and hopefully, he/she will continue to work in the book throughout the summer :-)

We are absolutely delighted with the kids' Geeta Chanting – they are doing great and it seems like nearly everyone is right on schedule! We will begin with shloka 6 in our next class. So please keep up the great work at home!

Hope you all stay warm. And if it turns out that the kids are going to get another snow day on Tuesday, I'll post a really yummy recipe for Castillian Hot Chocolate for you all to celebrate with ...

Look forward to seeing everyone again next Sunday. "M is for ...."

January 23, 2011

Jan 23 Class: Section 1



Sevikas: Mamtha Rao and Jacqueline Gaines

Home Fun Work: Here is another little friend from our "animal series" — a mouse. Click here to print out the page and have your child draw this animal. Make sure to have your child practice saying मूषकः (mūṣakaḥ) a few times while he/she is admiring his/her finished art work.

For extra Fun Work: We have posted a "connect the dots" picture for your child to practice their Sanskrit numbers (1-20) with. Click here to print this page.


Morning Prayers:
• Om saha naavaavatu (click here for text)
• Vakratunda Mahaakaaya (click here for text)
• Sarasvati Namastubhyam (click here for text)
• Shree Hanumaan (click here for text)
• Shree Krishnah (click here for text)

Quiet Time: 1 minute of some excellent quiet time! Nice shell counting, too!! (click here for game instructions)

Geeta Chanting: Chapter 11, Shlokas 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 (click here for audio and text)

Letter of the Week: "J is for Japa"

Activity: Made a Likhita Japa Painting (click here to view project sample)

Likhita Japa: See Activity above.

Comments: Well, word in the kindergarten scene is: "Angry Birds" is one awesome game!!! We spent the first few minutes talking about just how cool this game is. After posting this blog entry, this aunty is going to visit the app store to buy the game — I just gotta see what all the excitement is about.

Parents: You are definitely to be congratulated on how well your children are doing with their Geeta Chanting. We cruised through the first 4 shlokas, and barely struggled with the 5th. We will be starting shloka 6 in our first February class. Kids: we're nearly two thirds through our assignment — and you guys are unbelievable!! Keep up the good work!

Today's letter was "J is for Japa." Other than "B is for Brotherhood," this letter is probably one of our favorites! We posed the question "What does OM mean?" to the kids. Seeing that we say this all the time, we should probably understand it, right? Lots of really great answers were offered: "Peace," "Happiness," "Love," and "God." We then asked them "If we wanted to write one word for all the Gods and all the great things in the world, what would we write?" The room remained silent for a few minutes and then someone shouted out "OM!" That was the magic answer!! We talked about how OM is everything — all sounds, all Gods, the universe (and other universes) etc. OM was everything we could see, and everything we could not see.

We then talked about what Japa was (the recitation of the Lord's name with complete love) and what are all the great benefits we gain from performing japa. For example: we get a heart filled with love for God, tremendous peace, calmness, amazing concentration — and the ability to see the world clearly. After discussing the different ways we can perform japa (mentally, verbally and written) we settled down to do our activity. We made a likhita japa painting. (Please be sure to take a few minutes and view the children's work in the gallery above.)

Our activity began with a simple game: The children were asked to choose one pen color to write OM in their mandala with. However, when their mind shifted from saying OM, they were supposed to put that pen down, pick up another color, and continue writing. These kids were able to sit very quietly for about 10 minutes, completely focused on this activity before we heard any restlessness. Absolutely fantastic!! Some of the older kids can't even sit this long without talking :-) Anyway, this is an activity we will continue to do for the remainder of the year ... and hopefully, we will see the number of colors on the paper reduce with every week :-) We will be keeping a journal of this activity, and at the end of the year each child will be able to see how much stronger their concentration has become as a result of likhita japa.

We want to extend a very big "Hari OM!" to our new friend, Swathi, who joined us for the first time this morning. We are really happy to have her be part of our Sunday morning fun.

Okay, now it's time to go check out "Angry Birds."

Hope everyone stays warm — and we look forward to seeing you again at our next Party with God ...

January 9, 2011

Jan 09 Class: Section 1

Sevikas: Mamtha Rao and Jacqueline Gaines

Click here to see this week's art gallery.

Home Funwork:
• Practice writing राम (Raama) Click here for the tracing sheet.

• Print out the following two activity pages and have your child draw the animals. Practice pronouncing the words, in Sanskrit, with them.

For extra fun: Click here for the Flashcards (at Quizlet.com) to learn some animal names in Sanskrit. This aunty uses Quizlet  flash cards to study with. They are really fun — in addition to using them for learning, you can also play games and test yourself :-)

Click here for more card sets and have fun!! We will continue to add learning sets throughout the Balavihar year — so be on the lookout ;-)

Morning Prayers:
• OM saha naavavatu (click here for text)
• Vakratunda Mahaakaaya (click here for text)
• Sarasvati Namastubhyam (click here for text)
• Shree Hanumaan (click here for text)
• Shree KrishnaH (click here for text)

Quiet Time: 1 minute of silence with very accurate shell counting!  (click here for game instructions)

Geeta Chanting: Chapter 11, Shlokas 1, 2, 3 and 4 (click here for audio and text)

Letter of the Week: "I is for Intelligence"

Story: Ganesha Circles His Parents

Activity: Drew an elephant (click here for activity page)

Likhita Japa: None (click here for tracing sheet)

Comments: Boy it sure was great to be back in class again today. All of our young friends were well rested and ready to go — on time!

We began our very busy class with our morning prayers. We added a new prayer, "Shree Hanumaan" to our weekly curriculum. The children did a super job in repeating the shloka after the aunties. We also spent some time talking about what this prayer means.

After our morning disciplines, we then moved to our letter of the day: "I is for ....." We got lots of great answers from our friends ... some of which were pretty sophisticated, we might add. "I is for Infinity," "I is for Impossible," "I is for India," and "I is for Indra." Then someone shouted out the magic word — "Intelligent."  That was it!!!

We spent a good chunk of time talking about "What is a mind?" and "What is Intelligence?" "What is the difference between the two?" "How are we different from animals, who also have a mind?" We discussed how our mind is responsible for learning about things. And that also our emotions — happiness, sadness, fear, etc. come from the mind. But that our intellect is far more subtler. This is what is responsible for our actions. Our decisions about how to act, in a "right" or "wrong" way, is based on using our intellect. Not easy stuff to digest ....

And so, to illustrate this concept a little more concretely, we told the story of Lord Ganesha circling the world for the celestial fruit. Ahhh .... just what we needed — this definitely helped us understand more clearly!!

We are sorry that we were not able to do our Likhita Japa segment today. Time ran out. Please print out the tracing sheet (above) and have your child continue to practice at home. We have another mini-break coming up and we certainly don't want the children to forget the writing strokes. We will be introducing journal keeping at the end of January ... with their very own personal likhita japa book.

In the meantime, stay warm. Forecast calls for more snow — go figure. Kids, we'll keep our fingers crossed for a "Snow Day." Drink lots of hot chocolate ....

And keep practicing your Geeta shlokas. You guys did great today!!

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Jokes from some of the kids during our circle time:

1) What do a tree and elephant have in common?
a trunk

2) Why was 5 afraid of 6?
Because 7 8 9.