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