November 20th Class

Beginning prayers
      ·       'om' chanting - 3 times

·       Meditation 

·       sahanaavavatu

·       gurustotram verses 1-8 and 14

Gitaa chanting

·        bhagavadgItaa 12^th adhyaaya 1 -  5 shlokas

Story time

·         varaaha avataara

·         jaya and vijaya

Chanting/Songs

·        raama hare (4 verses)

Quiet time

·         Writing ‘om namo’ in Sanskrit

Game time

·         The attitude of gratitude - sharing the list (home work) of what we are grateful for

Ending prayers and pledge

·        pUrNamadaH pUrNamidam

·        chinmaya aarati 

      ·        om jaya jagadIsha hare

      ·        pledge

Comments:

Rashmi Aunty and Indira Aunty:

Our class started omkaara and meditation.  Meditation is coming along very nicely.  The children are able to focus and 'guard their thoughts', while chanting their favorite mantra or concentrating on their breath.  We learnt new verses in gurustotram.  Now we are comfortable with the words till the 8th verse.  The gIta chanting is coming along slowly.  The children are comfortable with the words until 3rd verse.  We were supposed to learn till 6th today, but since some of them were not sure about the 4th and 5th verses, we stopped at that.

In the story time, we heard the story of the varaaha avataara.  As we had seen in the previous story, hiraNyaakSha was looking for a good fight.  He came looking for viShNu.  At that time, lord brahma had created the first man and woman named manu and shatarUpa.  They needed a place to start their lives.  But 'bhu' (earth) was buried deep in the waters during the pralaya.  Even as brahma was contemplating on what to do about it, a thumb sized boar (varaaha) came out of his right nostril and grew in size.  It was none other than viShNu himself.  Even as he was lifting the earth from under the waters, hiraNyaakSha found him and enraged him.  So varaaha balanced the earth on his tusk, then clawed and slayed hiraNyaakSha.

The back ground story for this was that, once when jaya and vijaya were guarding the gates of vaikunTha (viShNu's home), the 4 sanath kumaaras visited.  They did not allow them to enter and insulted the rishis too.  So the rishis cursed them to be born as asuras on earth.  They were born as the evil sons of diti - hiraNyaakSha and hiraNyakashipu.  Lord viShNu had promised them that he would personally come to redeem them.  Hence, he did that in varaaha avataara, for hiraNyaakSha.

The children were so good.  They knew the stories they had heard so far and were asking very smart and thoughtful questions.  We could clearly see that their mind's wheels were running and imagining all the scenes!

We then sang 'raama hare...'.  The likhita japa of 'om namo' is coming along beautifully.  They shared their homework questions answers.  They had all written so wonderfully what they were all thankful for!  It was very heartening to hear their answers.  Please check with them what they liked best and what part of the class they enjoyed.

We ended the class with ending prayers and pledge.  See you all in two weeks.
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Alka Aunty and Prasad Uncle: 

November 6th Class

Beginning prayers
      ·       'om' chanting - 3 times

·       Meditation 
·       sahanaavavatu
·       gurustotram verses 1-6 and 14

Gitaa chanting

·        bhagavadgItaa 12^th adhyaaya 1 -  5 shlokas

Story time

·         sage kashyapa

·         hiraNkyaakSha 

Chanting/Songs

·        raama hare (3 verses)

Quiet time

·         Writing ‘namo’ in Sanskrit

Game time

·         The attitude of gratitude - making a list of what we are grateful for - homework

Ending prayers and pledge

·        pUrNamadaH pUrNamidam
·        aarati and pledge in the auditorium 

Comments:

Rashmi Aunty and Indira Aunty:

We started the class with 3 'om's.  After the initiating prayer, we learnt about meditation.  While brainstorming about what meditation means, we were quite astounded to learn how much the children already knew about it!  The answers were 'thinking of God', 'not thinking of anything else', 'focusing', 'saying God's names',  'having good thoughts', etc.  Also one of the answers that really caught us was 'guarding our thoughts'!!  They couldn't have put it any better!  After understanding that the easiest way to do that is focusing on our breath, which we apparently do aaall the time :).  We spoke about how the air that we inhale feels cool and what we exhale feels warm.  We turned off the lights, focused attention on the breath and calmed the minds.  Parents, we request you to come to class in time.  If the child walks in during meditation, the rest of the class will get distracted.  If you come during that time, unfortunately, we would have to request you to stand out till the lights are on. At the same time, we are happy that most of the children come on time!  

After that we chanted the gurustotram and learnt the words to verses 6 and 7.  We then did the gItaa chanting.  Most of the children were comfortable with the words for the first 3 verses.  We worked on learning the words for the 4th and 5th verses.  We are having fun with the tongue twisters when we are learning them for the first time :). 

Then was recap time.  We retreaded on the story of matsyaavataara and the children had all the answers.  We then went into the story of sage kashyapa.  His wife was diti.  One day, while sage kashyapa was performing his pooja and rituals, diti disturbed him as she was bored.  Even when the sage told her not to do so, she did not listen.  So, the sage left his pooja.  Later, diti realized her mistake and how she had been stubborn.  When she apologized, the sage told her that it was too late.  She was going to reap the fruit for her wrong actions, two in number.  One for her selfishness, the other for disobeying him.  They would come in the form of her two sons who will become demons and cause havoc in the 3 worlds.  She regretted, but had no choice.  As we sow, so shall we reap!  Her twin sons were born after a 100 years.  They were named hiraNyaakSha and hiraNyakashipu.  They grew not only in size but in pride and vanity too.  Everyone were scared of them and would hide at their very sight.  hiraNyaakSha would go challenging for fights.  Once when he challenged varuNa, the sea god, he tactfully directed him towards Lord viShNu.  He said only He can give hiraNyaakSha a good, satisfying fight!  We stopped the story under this suspense :).  We will continue it in the next class.

We sang the first 3 verses of 'raama hare'.  Then we wrote 'om namo' in devanaagari.  Some of them were so good at it already that they wanted to learn 'naaraayaNaaya' also, to complete their prahlaada mantra.  We will work more on this in the coming classes.

We have a homework this week.  We want to focus on what we are thankful for in our lives.  The children will give a good thought for the blessings they have in life and they are grateful for.  They will list out 10 or more such things they are grateful for.  This is called the 'Attitude of Gratitude' list.  Parents, please encourage them to think on their own.  It is wonderful to hear their thoughts and how deeply they think!

We finished with pUrNamadaH pUrNamidam and went to the auditorium for aarati and pledge.

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Alka Aunty and Prasad Uncle: