Saturday, September 29, 2018

Picnic time

Hari om
Although it started off as a wet rainy day, nothing could dampen our spirits. Seeing the wonderful beaming smiles of the little ones in the Amrutham Madhuram class even Surya Deva decided to show up.

We went back to our roots following the gurukulam system. Under the big blue sky on the green grassy meadow.

We started off as usual with our invocation prayers. This was followed by our bhajanavali. We revised the Ganesha bhajans.

Do you all know how the River Kauveri came into existence? Talk to your lil ones. They will tell you the beautiful story of how naughty lil Ganesha was the reason Kauveri flows from Coorg.  They got to see how the pot fell on the ground and all the water spilled on the floor. Oh what fun!

Children love funny stories. They wanted to listen to the Ganesha Kubera story and all of them enacted it.

We had a short snack break.

Then we had a small game of passing the Ganesha. It was based on Ganesha trivia. And let me tell you they all had me floored with their enthusiasm.

This was followed by exercises. Reaching up to the sky with our jazz hands and dropping down to the beautiful mother Earth. And we sang the butterfly song while doing our butterfly exercises.

We concluded the class with our 3 ॐ and  prayers.

Sunday, September 16, 2018

When Ganesha came visiting

Hari 🕉

Today was the first official Balvihar after the open house last week.
We began our class with 3 🕉 followed by our starting prayers. This was followed by small stretching exercises.

We welcomed Lord Ganesha into our class by singing songs.

Today we sang
1. Single tusk Ganapati ekadanta
   Big belly Ganapati lambodhara
   Remover of obstacles vignanashaka
   Supreme Lord my Vinayaka
   Lord of all spirits gananayaka
   Elephant faced God gajanana
   Bent trunk Ganapati vakratunda
   Son of Parvati umasuta

We sang with lots of actions. Please ask your children to teach you how to sing the song with actions.

2. Mooshikavahana modakahasta
   Chamarakarna vilambitasootra
   Vaamanaroopa maheshwaraputra
   Vighnavinashaka paata namaste

This also was recited with actions which the children enjoyed doing.

3. Vakratunda mahakaya
   Suryakoti samaprabha
   Nirvighnam kurumedeva
   Sarvakaryeshu sarvada

We shared the story of how Ganapati tricked Kubera. It was such a fun story. You should ask your children how Ganapati cried for food, because he was hungry. They loved the story and participated by enacting some of the parts.

We took a short snack break followed by our arts and crafts activity for the day. We made a Ganesha mask using paper cup and color paper. The children were very proud of their Ganeshas.

For today's Likhitajapa we colored 🕉 . The children were very focused and quiet during the activity. The teachers sang today's bhajans while they were busy with their Likhitajapa. It was a unique experience for all of us.

We concluded the day by chanting the closing prayers.