October 4th----Class 3!!!!!

We ALWAYS start our class with 3 Oms

Did our opening prayer "Om Sahana vavatu...."

We welcomed our new friends (Abhigna and Taalin)

Took attendance in a little unique way: Harish uncle would call the attendance for the person and another friend will say whether or not that person is present. This exercise was to help them know each other and remember their names. After all our classes name is Premam and you cant love someone without knowing them. (This is how I said to them so they understand and make effort to know their friends)

We talked about Ganesh Chaturthi that was couple of weeks ago....and the children said they didnt know what it was or when it was. Not celebrated at home.

Told them the story of how Parvati mata created him from sandalwood, how Shiva unaware of his son cuts his head off, how the soldiers were asked to go and get the head of the first persons head. i explained why hes a special God and why we worship him before praying to any other God. Talked about his favorite food being laddoo and modak, hoping they would remember eating that atleast, but no! Not much luck! So for future reference even if you cant make any laddoos at home, please buy for celebrations that will reinforce the importance for children.

We talked about Gandhi ji---hes called the father of our nation! He was born in Porbandar, Gujarat. He was one of the freedom fighter who helped India become free from the britishers. (Not sure how much they understood or remembers but as they grow, we need to expose them to material that might not click right away but it does get registered in their knowledge.

We ate snacks--popcorn, went to bathroom and did coloring of 2 images (Gandhi ji AND Ganesha) so we could talk to parents without being distracted.

Things to pack for their backpack for next class (10/11):

Pencil/s

2 sided Folder

crayons

water bottle

class books

Snack (if they have allergies of any sorts)

We will start our curriculum starting this Sunday, lets have a GREAT year together!!!!!!

Meena Arvind

November 22nd--- Class 8!!!!!!

Hari om parents!!

We started the class with 3 Oms,
Chanted "Om Sahana vavatu...."

Chanted "Vakratunda mahakaya...."

Chanted "Saraswati namastubyam....."

 

We did our attendance little different today. Took us few extra minutes to this but yet AGAIN this was the effort to help children become more comfortable and open up in class with their friends. Our class name is Premam and need to keep the love in the air in the class among the children and teachers!!!

 

We had each child going around the class and wishing each child "Hari om" with their name. For example--Hari om Meena-aunty if they wished me. 

Topic C is for: Cleanliness

I asked them about their feelings after this experience to lead them into the next topic of our learning for the day. They said they were ALL very happy at the end of this exercise. I asked how many feelings are there? They listed:

Angry, sad, silly, funny, happy, surprised, etc. We talked about how each feeling makes us feel. For example--We may be angry but ultimately what "feeling" does it give? It makes us sad. Surprised is mostly happy feeling, etc.

 

 

Asked many open ended questions such as (still leading upto the topic):

• What is clean? (they said when you clean your room its clean :-))
• What is dirty? (they said that has mud, dust, dirt, etc)
• How do we keep your body clean?
• They said by:
• Taking shower
• Combing hair
• Putting new clothes on
• Putting lotion on
• How do we keep our environment clean?
• They said by:
• Putting chocolate wrapper in the trash
• By putting empty bottles in the recycle
• By cleaning your room
• By cleaning up your toys in the room
• How do we keep our mind/s clean? (Finally getting to the REAL question)
• They said:
• By taking shower?? NO
• By cleaning our room?? NO
• So I said:
• By saying NO bad words
• By seeing NO violent TV shows
• By hearing NO bad words
• Being nice to others
• By NOT fighting
• Loving everyone
• Going back to our "feelings" I re-emphasized that every feeling that makes us happy is clean, and the feelings that makes us sad/angry are dirty. So just like how we keep our bodies, surroundings clean, we MUST our minds clean. If we are happy, everyone around us are happy!!!

We took bathroom break and colored 3 monkeys of Gandhi ji which emphasize on:
See no evil
Hear no evil
Speak no evil

Next topic D is for: Daddy!!
After several typical answers for D is for, Aakash said D is for dad. Right on! We had barely 20 minutes left for this topic but I felt I wanted to focus more on keeping minds clean.

• Who is Daddy?
• Daddy is the head of the family who takes care of the family.
• What does Daddy do?
• Daddy protects the family just like the Lord Vishnu is the protector of the world.
• When we celebrate Father's day, what special things we do for our Daddy?
• Some said:
• Give presents
• Make him happy
• I asked if they knew why we celebrate Father's day? They all look confused like there needs to be a reason to celebrate Father's day?

Told them a story on why we celebrate Fathers day--it was a shortened version due to lack of time.

• There was a girl named Sonora, lived in Washington
• She was raised by her father as she didn't have a mother. (didn't use the word mother was dead--didn't want to give them sad feeling)
• After Sonora grew up, she realized it was a lot of hard work and sacrifice to raise children.
• She wanted to honor her dad for all the hard work so she chose June 19th--her fathers birthday to honor all fathers.
• 60 years later, President Johnson declared Fathers day on the 3rd Sunday of the month of June.

I asked them all to do a little Homework:
"To hug their father and say "Thank You" for taking care of the family"

NO class next Sunday, Next class is on December 6th!!!
Vikram's family has signed up for snacks for next class-please let us know if you cant make it to the class.

See you then,
Prem and Om
Meena Arvind

November 15th---Class 7!!!

Hari om parents,

Due to the short class today, instead of doing a BLOG I am writing email to wrap up the class details.

We started the class with 3 Oms,

Chanted "Vakratunda mahakaya...."

Chanted "Saraswati namastubyam....."

Took attendance and rewarded 4 children (1 was missing) with stickers for having a perfect attendance since the beginning of Bal vihar. I counted 5 classes deducting the back to bal vihar and open house.

The children that received the perfect attendance rewards are:

Anushri

Vibhu

Sahana

Roshan (missed the class today)

I gave everyone their respective roles and dialogues and went through the sequence twice to make sure they understood the sequential order of their roles and dialogues.

Gave them snack to give that extra boost and I think they did GREAT at the play given the fact that there was NO practice, very little prompting and being in front of SO many parents.

A BIG thanks to Soumya for saving the day. She made the 10 heads of Ravana on such a short notice. Parents, please check emails for updates so you dont miss any important reminders.

After all you left, we had 10 minutes to sum up the story from Friday and learned a new shloka:

"Shri Rama rama rameti,

Rame raame manorame

Sahastranama tattulyam

rama nama varanane"

We will have our regular class next Sunday, November 22nd. We will be celebrating Diwali/Thankgiving (gratitude) with our Balvihar family next Sunday. Please sign up to bring a dish at the below link:

Thanksgiving lunch & Swamiji Bhiksha Potluck

Details for the Diwali/Thanksgiving Lunch:

When: November 22nd 2015

Where: BRHS Cafeteria

What time: 12:30 - 2 pm

Why: To celebrate Diwali/Thanksgiving with our Balvihar family

				Thanksgiving lunch & Swamiji Bhiksha Potluck Potluck URL: http://www.luckypotluck.com/potluck/ThanksgivingLunchSwamijiBhiksha
				View on www.luckypotluck.com	Preview by Yahoo

Have a great week ahead and see you next Sunday!!!!

Meena Arvind

p.s. Please share pictures/videos so I can compile it ALL and put it on Picasa so parents that werent able to make it can still be part of our play. Thank you!!!

November 1st 2015...Class 6!!!!!

Hari om parents!!!!

We had rather a small class today but very eventful and lots of learning took place. As you can tell that KG's curriculum is definitely a bit more than our Pre-K last year. So every class we need to stay tuned to be able to finish the curriculum. We may miss few days because of snow etc and we also try to spend some time for festivals, etc to incorporate it well in their learning. So please, don't miss any class so they can have good continuity and so that they don't miss out on whole bunch when they are out.

Please read below for our class details:

We started our class with 3Oms
-Opening prayer--"Om Sahanavavatu...."
-Called on Ganesha to take away our distractions:
      (Some of us were in Poconos and wished we were still there, few were hoping to be playing soccer, others were tired from getting an extra hour of sleep due to day light savings time ended, etc etc.)
Recited: "Vakratunda mahakay....."
Now as we were ready to learn we called upon Saraswati mata who gives us knowledge.
Recited: "Saraswati namastubhyam......"

The ENTIRE class we talked about Ramayana!!!! With Diwali coming up, we wanted to make sure children knew what's the story behind Diwali and why we celebrate it.

As always I talked/told the story first and then showed the video that replicates the same story. We have different children who learns differently. Some are auditoria and others are visual. So I try to reach to both audience by giving a little of both. I broke the story and the video into 6-8 minute so they can concentrate on each part without losing interest. At the end of the video (I would recite the story first) I would ask them questions on what happened to see if they remembered. We split the group in two teams. Team Rama and Team Krishna---both Avatars of Vishnu!

First part
King of Ayodhya--Dashratha
He had 3 queens: Kaushalya, Sumitra and Kaikeyi
He couldn't have children so the sages' advised him to do the yagya. Upon completion of the yagna, he had 4 boys:
Kaushalya mata gave birth to Rama
Sumitra mata gave birth to Lakshmana and Shatrugana
Kaikeyi mata gave birth to Bharata

As they were growing up, they learned how to be a good archer, horse rides, respect their elders and gurus/teachers, etc.etc.

Second part:
Sage Vishwamitra and the prince Rama along with Lakshmana went to the city of Mithila. King Janaka was marrying his daughter Sita, (didn't go into details about Svayamvar) Instead said that King Janaka had a condition that  whoever can break the special bow can marry his daughter Sita. Also mentioned that someday when they are ready for marriage, their mommies and daddy will want to make sure that the boy/girl is Indian, from a good family, is good by nature, etc.etc. Rama broke the bow and he marries Sita.

Third part:
Dashratha was getting old and wanted to renounce Rama to be new king who can take care of the kingdom and all his duties. Everyone were overjoyed by this news except one person. Kaikeyi's maid Manthara heard that and instigated Kaikeyi that if Rama becomes the king then her son Bharata will be a servant to his brother and will not become the king. Kaikeyi asked Dashratha that Rama should be send to the forest for 14 years. Rama, Sita and Lakshmana goes to the forest.

Below is the link to the video that we watched in the class, if the children who missed wants to get caught up.

You Tube Video: Ramayana story

We ate animal crackers for snack and took our bathroom break.

We did coloring to a picture of Shravan.
Hes known to be the most obedient son. His parents were blind and Shravan would carry them like a see saw on his shoulder. One time the parents were thirsty and asked Shravan to get water. He let them down from his shoulder while he went to get water. A king was near that river and upon hearing the sound by the river, he thought it was an animal and shoots him with his arrow. When he goes near to see, it was Shravan. Shravan tells the king about his parents and requests to take water for them as they are thirsty and waiting for water. The king takes water to Shravan's parents but also is honest and tells them what happened and that their son is not coming back. Both parents gets very sad but also angry at the same time. They "cursed" the king that you shall also suffer for your son the same way. Any guesses who the king was? It was King Dashratha and yes he does suffer for his son when Rama goes away to the jungle.

Talked about Karma--What goes around, comes around (from the story of Shravan) Also another way to say it is "What you give is what you get" If you are nice to others, others will be nice to you. But if you aren't nice to someone, someone or the other will not be nice to you. So its very important to be nice and make nice choices in life.

Ending shloka:"Om Purnamada, purnamidam......"

 
Aakash is signed up for snacks for the next class, let me know if you cant be there and I can move the next person up the queue.

NO class next week, next class is on November 15th!!!

Meena Arvind