Sevikas: Mamtha Rao and Jacqueline Gaines
Home Fun Work:
• Click here for राम tracing sheet.
• Click here for ऊँ नमः शिवाय tracing sheet.
• Click here for the next drawing in our Animal Series
Extra Home Fun Work: Click here for an abstract "Color by Number" page in Sanskrit.
Morning Prayers:
• OM Saha Naavavatu (click here for text)
• Vakratunḍa Mahakāya (click here for text)
• Sarasvati Namastubhyam (click here for text)
• śrī Hanumān (click here for text)
• śrī Krishnaḥ (click here for text)
Quiet Time: 1 minute of silence and shell counting game (click here for instructions)
Geeta Chanting: Chapter 11, Shlokas 1 – 7 (click here for text and audio)
Letter of the Week: "S is for Smile"
Focus Game: "Try to make me laugh!"
Likhita Japa: Finished Lord Shiva Mandalas for our journals. Some children worked on Lord Krishna's peacock feather.
Ending Prayers:
• Om Poornamidaḥ (click here for text)
• Chinmaya Mission Pledge (click here for text)
Comments: First we want to welcome Gowri to our class! Today was her first day in Balavihar and we are extremely happy to have her join us. We hope that she will have lots of fun with all of her new friends every Sunday!
Well, we certainly had a tremendous amount of energy in class today. If you happened to be in the hallway this morning, you no doubt heard the children proudly chanting The Geeta (and the Alphabet Safari :-). Great going, Kids — we hope you keep up the energy for the competition in April!
After our morning disciplines, we settled into our lesson for today — "S is for Smile." We talked about the scientific studies that have been discovered about smiling ... 1) that it's good for your health; 2) it takes more energy and muscles to frown; and 3) it's contagious! Smiling definitely makes the world a much happier place and no one is immune to a happy smile. A genuine smile can take all the sadness away and before you know it everyone around you is smiling! To prove our point, we had the children try to keep a frown on their face while the aunties laughed away. As you can imagine, everyone was roaring with laughter before we knew it. We mustn't forget Gurudev's instructions: "Keep smiling!"
Happily, we had 20 minutes to work in our likhita journals today. Some of the children completed the Shiva Lingams from last week, while other children worked on Lord Krishna's peacock feather. Parents: these children are doing amazingly well! We can't wait for you to see all of their work at the end of the school year. They are becoming very focused and showing a lot of confidence in their writing. We are also pleased to see so many Home Fun Work pages at the beginning of class. It's wonderful that your children are doing their likhita japa at home. Please take a few minutes and look at their great work in our weekly art gallery (slideshow above.)
We started Shloka 7 today in our Geeta chanting. It was very clear that these kids have been working during the week :-) Because the preliminaries are the end of next month, we are going to introduce shloka 8 at the end of March. This will give us four classes to practice chanting all 8 shlokas before the competition begins. Please take a few minutes and register your child for the competition. For your convenience, online registration is available. (click here for registration.)
No doubt about it — spring is around the corner. Aunty reminded us that we are having a time change next weekend, so make sure you remember to set your clocks. In the meantime, enjoy this marvelous weather. It's such a joy seeing some of the color shifts in nature ....
Hugs to all of your kids. Look forward to our next party with God!!!
