January 30th Class

Prayers:

* ॐ सहनाववतु - Om sahanaavavatu (My prayers, pg. 6)
* वक्रतुण्ड महाकाया - vakratuNDa mahaakaayaa
* सरस्वति नमस्तुभ्यम् - saraswati namastubhayam (My prayers, pg. 44)
* गुरुर्ब्रह्मा - gururbrahmaa (My prayers, pg. 9, 3rd shloka of 'gurustotram')
* समुद्रवसने देवी - samudravasane devI 


Meditation: 1 minute

Geeta Chanting: Chapter 11, shloka 1 - 9

Story: raavaNa carries off sItaa; a friend in need

Words of the week: dharma; adharma; puShpaka vimaana

Likhita japa: Practice writing 'राम'

Activity: Coloring pages of raavaNa carrying away sItaa; raavaNa chopping off jataayu's wings

Game time: Do you know your boundaries - game. 

End of class:

• ॐ पूर्णमदः - Om poornamadaH.

Comments:

Rashmi aunty and Kusuma aunty:
It was a lot of learning and thinking today!  After the initial prayers, we did the quite time, doing raama japa in our minds, thinking of his calm composure and pleasant demeanor.

Before doing the gIta chanting, as promised, Rashmi aunty brought a picture of the 'viShvarUpa' of Lord kriShNa.  We are learning chapter 11 where bhagawan shows his 'viraat swarUpa' to arjuna.  Seeing the picture of the 'viShvarUpa' helped us visualize what were were speaking of.  We have been practicing well.  Keep it up everyone!

In today's story, we saw how when sItaa aspired to have the golden deer for her pet, raama went after it, instructing lakShmaNa to keep an eye on sItaa at all times.  The deer led him deep into the forest.  Then raama decided to shoot the deer with his arrow.  The strangest thing happened then.  The deer turned into its true form maarIcha.  He then impersonating raama's voice, cried out to lakShmaNa and sItaa as if he were in trouble!  Surprised, raama rushed back to their 'parNa kutIra'.  But alas!  There was no sight of lakShmaNa or sItaa!!

When they had heard the cries of maarIcha, sItaa had got very concerned.  She urged lakShmaNa, against his will, to go after raama.  He had drawn a line with his arrow, around the ashram, asking her NOT to cross the line.  When he was gone, raavaNa had come disguised as a hermit, asking for alms.  An unwitting sItaa had stepped out of the line to offer him food.  He then had seized her on to his 'puShpaka', the aerial chariot and headed south.  She had tried desperately to escape from his clutches to no avail.

On hearing the cries of sItaa, the old king of birds jaTaayu (an eagle) had bravely tried to stop evil intentions of raavaNa.  But he brutally chopped off the wings of jaTaayu.  sItaa had no one to cry for help....  She was in raavaNa's clutches who took her to lankaa.  He asked her to marry him, but sItaa would not budge from her dharma.

After coloring tasks, we played a new game called 'Do you know your boundaries?'  The task was, aunty would say a particular scenario.  Everyone was required to respond according to what they thought, if the scenario was within acceptable boundaries of behavior or not.  If it was, they had to stand on the carpet.  If it was an immoral or un-acceptable behavior, they had to show it by standing out of the boundaries of the carpet.  Our kids sure knew their boundaries!  Parents, do ask them what moral values we have been discussing in class and what aspect impressed them most.

We then would up the class with our ending prayers.  See you all next Sunday.  Stay warm everyone.

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Ruchi aunty and Meera aunty:

Today's class was fun and we started with our morning shlokas followed by 2 minute meditation. All of us did excellent and at the end of two minute we all shared how many times we all chanted Sri Rama's name. As always we practiced Geeta Chanting. We did upto 11th shloka. We had a few volunteers who recited the shlokas independently. Good job everyone. We have 4 more shlokas to learn and we will be all set to participate in the Geeta Chanting Competition.

Story time was very interesting and captivating as we all learned about the "The Golden Deer". All of us used our imagination to describe how beautiful the golden deer was and how Sita wanted to have him. We also had a discussion about how to be always careful when you find something too good to be true. You have to ask questions and think before blindly accepting something. We also heard the story of how Ravana kidnapped helpless Sita.

After the story time we had the coloring session. We all colored chapter 18 and 19th. Some of us tried to color the unfinished pages.

Before we knew, it was time for aarti and pledge and then time to go home.

Stay warm everyone and we will see you all next Sunday. 

January 23rd Class

Prayers:

* ॐ सहनाववतु - Om sahanaavavatu (My prayers, pg. 6)
* वक्रतुण्ड महाकाया - vakratuNDa mahaakaayaa
* सरस्वति नमस्तुभ्यम् - saraswati namastubhayam (My prayers, pg. 44)
* गुरुर्ब्रह्मा - gururbrahmaa (My prayers, pg. 9, 3rd shloka of 'gurustotram')
* समुद्रवसने देवी - samudravasane devI 

Meditation: 1 minute

Geeta Chanting: Chapter 11, shloka 1 - 8

Story: khara & dUShaNa; golden deer

Words of the week: sUrpanakhaa; khara; dUShaNa; maarIcha

Likhita japa: Practice writing 'राम'

Activity: Coloring pages of raama waging war with khara & dUShaNa; sItaa spotting the golden deer frolicking in the forest.

Game time: Zip-zap-zom with 'raama-lakShmaNa-sItaa'

End of class:

• ॐ पूर्णमदः - Om poornamadaH.
• aarti and pledge in the auditorium.

Comments:

Rashmi aunty and Kusuma aunty:
It was a cold cold winter's day and yet all our little friends made sure they made it to the balavihar class!  We loved seeing you all. 

After our morning routine, we practiced chanting the geeta. The kids were really comfortable with the first 4 verses.  We worked on the next 4.  It was fun learning to pronounce the new and difficult words which are tricky.  But by the end of it, we all got a hang of it.

To begin with today's story segment, we needed to know where to begin with.  Our awesome kids gave us the 'facts and figures' and filled us in :).  Then on, we saw that sUrpanakhaa goes and complains to her  brothers khara and dUShaNa about raama and lakShamaNa.  She tactfully leaves out the parts where she was bothering the brothers.  So her brothers come with an army of rakShasa-s against raama.  raama destroys them all wielding his bow called 'kodaNDa'.  Then sUrpanakhaa goes to lanka to complain to her older brother raavaNa about her nose and ears being cut off, as well as the deaths of their brothers khara and dUShaNa.  She also lies to him and tells him that she was there, trying to obtain the beautiful sIta as a bride for raavaNa himself and that is when these incidents followed!  An infuriated raavaNa decides to avenge all the misgivings of raama and lakShamNa.  Also, on hearing the description of sItaa's beauty, he started to hatch a plan to obtain her as well. 

He met with maarIcha, his raakShasa friend, who after being brandished badly by raama at vishwaamitra's yagna, had become a hermit.  He was a great magician too.  raavaNa asked him to disguise himself as a golden deer to entice sItaa.  When raama stepped out to get the deer, he would abduct sItaa.  Having seen raama's valor in person, maarIcha advised him against such a ploy.  But raavaNa was adamant.  He would not heed to any words of wisdom at all.  He was focused on getting what he wanted and threatened to kill maarIcha if he did not cooperate.  At that, maarIcha told him, he would rather die at the arms of raama rather than raavaNa.  He disguised as  a beautiful golden deer with silver spots and jewel embellishments!  This never seen before, one of a kind, deer, started prancing gracefully in front of raama's kutIram, so that sItaa would spot it.  And she did! 

We were all so curious as to what would happen after that, but... we had to stop!  We are all very eager for the next part of the story now.  After coloring the pages with the stories we'd heard today, played a new game called 'zip-zap-zom'.  Everyone stands in a circle.  One person 'zip-zap-zom'-s someone across the circle.  That person immediately 'zip-zap-zom'-s someone else, so on and so forth.  But ours being a raamaayaNa class, we brought in a twist.  The words were 'raama-lakShamNa-sItaa'!  Everyone had so much fun saying it faster and faster and passing on the 'zom' to someone else :).  We then finished the class with our ending prayers and made our way to the auditorium.

See you all again next week.  Until then, stay warm and keep practicing.

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Ruchi aunty and Meera aunty:

January 9th Class

Prayers:

* ॐ सहनाववतु - Om sahanaavavatu (My prayers, pg. 6)
* वक्रतुण्ड महाकाया - vakratuNDa mahaakaayaa
* सरस्वति नमस्तुभ्यम् - saraswati namastubhayam (My prayers, pg. 44)
* गुरुर्ब्रह्मा - gururbrahmaa (My prayers, pg. 9, 3rd shloka of 'gurustotram')
* समुद्रवसने देवी - samudravasane devI 


Meditation: 1 minute

Geeta Chanting: Chapter 11, shloka 1 - 7

Story: agastya; shUrpanakhaa

Words of the week: agastya, shUrpanakhaa

Likhita japa: Practice writing 'राम'

Activity: Coloring pages of raama meeting sage agastya; lakShmaNa chopping off shUrpanakhaa's nose

Game time: Instead of playing a game, we invited the parents into the class and showed them the coloring books.  The children proudly showed all their hard work to their parents!

End of class:

• ॐ पूर्णमदः - Om poornamadaH.

Comments:

Rashmi aunty and Kusuma aunty:
It was so good to see everyone.  We sure had a long break.  Happy New Year all!

We did the morning prayers easily.  But most of them had forgotten 'samudravasane devI..'  We learnt and practiced it again.  After meditation time, we learnt 7 shlokas of gIta.  The competition is coming up fast.  It is in the first week of April, for which 1st graders have to learn 14 verses. Practice with them regularly.

During story time, we heard how raama and lakShmaNa destroyed lots of demons in the forest who were troubling the sages.  When sItaa got concerned for their well being, raama consoled her saying that he is here to do his duty as a kshatriya and protect the saadhU-s.  We then heard about the great maharshI agastya.  We heard how stopped the vindhyaa mountains from growing too tall.  Just his appearance made the mountains to bow down to him in reverence and they plateaued across the central part of India.  Once when all the great sages went towards the himaalayaas, their strength was so great that it was tipping the balance of the earth.  Lord viShNu requested sage agastya to stay in the south, to keep the balance!  Such was his valor.  Lord raama visited this great sage and got his blessings.  By then, almost 10 years of their exile had passed.  Sage agastya suggested a serene and beautiful place called pa~nchavatI for them to spend the rest of their time in the forests.  lakShmaNa quickly built a neat hut for them to live.  They met jaTaayu, the eagle bird, who promised to look after sIta's welfare when raama and lakShmaNa were out.  One day shUrpanakhaa (raavaNa's sister) came by and wanted raama to marry her.  When raama refused, she asked lakShmaNa.  When he too refused, she was infuriated and went after sIta.  Seeing this lakShmaNa cut off her nose and ears.  She went away screeching.  We have stopped the story at this point and very curious to know what happens next.

We did the coloring pages.  By then, it was time for parents to pick up the children.  They all showed their books to their parents.  Parents, please remember to purchase the 'My prayers' and 'Bala Ramayana' books for your children.  They are the prescribed texts for their curriculum.  We will meet again in 2 weeks kids.  Until then, keep practicing the shlokas, gIta and the morals we have been learning!

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Ruchi aunty and Meera aunty:

Welcome back to Balavihar and Happy New Year to you all! Although today was yet another chilly day, our warm smiles made us all cozy and cheerful. Most of us came to class on time. We all had a lively discussion on what we did during the winter break. We all shared our favorite thing to do during winter. Almost everyone agreed that making snowman was their most favorite winter activity.

Coming back to our class schedule,we did a quick recap on class rules and then started with our morning shlokas followed by two minute meditation. Everyone sat quietly for two minutes and then we did the Geeta Chanting. We introduced ninth shloka. Parents please register your children for the competition.Please visit the CMTC website for more details. We all are chanting very loud and clear. Good Job everyone. Please keep practicing.

After stretching and doing some yoga moves we all got ready for the story time. We did a recap of what we have covered so far and had a little question/answer session on the various lessons we have done so far. After this we moved on to the story of Rishi Aagastya and his spiritual powers. How Rama,Sita and Lakshmana moved to Panchvati and build their ashrama there. How Lakshmana build a little cottage with bamboo poles and grass. Even though Rama and Lakshmana were Prince,they had practical knowledge on how one should adapt oneself to circumstances. We also did the story of "Surpanakha".

By the time  the story time got over, it was almost time to leave so we could not do coloring but we had just enough time to play "Zip-zap-zop!! It was a lot of fun. Ask your children about the game.

The class ended with aarti and pledge.

There is no class next week. So we will see you on 23rd of January. Dress warm and enjoy the snow!!

Hari Om!