Hari Om Parents and Children!
It was lovely seeing everyone after the Navratri break. Below is a summary of what we did in our last Sunday's class on Oct 17th.
- We started our class with 3 Oms followed by Sahana vavatu
- OM saha nāvavatu saha nau bhunaktuand then also said the following 3 Chants listed below
saha vīryam karavāvahai
tejasvināvadhītamastu
mā vidviṣāvahai
OM śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ
Om Sri Ganeshaya namaha, Om Sri Saraswathye namaha, Om Sri Sat Gurubyoh namaha
- We continued to revise the shloka for Lord Ganesha-
Vakratunda Mahaakaaya sooryakoti samaprabha
nirvighnam kurume deva sarva karyeshu sarvada
- And the one we learnt for Saraswati-
- It was time to then move on to a few Yoga stretches and poses. We did a tree pose, a lion pose and our butterfly pose.
- After Yoga we began our Gita Chanting from this week. We chanted Bhagavad Gita : Chapter 2, Verse 39 from our handbook.
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We moved on to our favorite activity of listening to a story and then doing a craft-- Our story was called " Saraswati Mata and Gandharvas" The story telling session had us hearing the story and an interactive activity in between where our kids were asked to draw a flower to show their artistic skills like the Gandharvas . We saw some pretty flowers!! Our story was-
In the heavens lived some beautiful people. The gandharvas are people who live in heaven. They love to dance, sing and paint. They are the artists of heaven. They can sing for hours and hours. If someone is singing very nicely they all stop what they are doing and listen. They love to play so many different instruments and loved to draw and paint. The gandharvas are very fun, playful people. In heaven there is a also special juice called "Soma" and this juice is so yummy and sweet. This juice makes you feel strong and if you are sick it makes you better. So everyone loves the Soma juice and everybody wants it. Usually, everyone shares and is happy to share. One day, the gandharvas were in a very naughty mood and they stole all the Soma juice! There was no more Soma juice for anyone else! "Oh No!" Everyone else came looking for the juice and shouted "Oh No! There is no juice! Someone took all our juice!" They got angry and were huffing and puffing. Some of them got sad and started crying. They didn't know where to look and how to get it back. Mother Saraswati heard the commotion and came to ask, "What happened?" They replied, "Someone stole our juice waaaaah!" "Oh dear, don't cry", Saraswati Mata said, "I will help you get your juice." She closed her eyes and she saw that the gandharvas were hiding with the juice. So now, what will she do? What do the gandharvas love to do? Sing and listen to music! So mother Saraswati went to the garden where they were hiding. She sat on a bench and she started playing her veena. It sounded so beautiful that everyone's heart was dancing. She started singing and her song was so beautiful the people's hearts were flying. Then she stopped. The gandharvas came out of hiding and said, "Please play your veena and please sing some more. Please teach us to sing like that." She smiled at them and said, "Yes for sure, I will but only if you give the Soma juice back." The gandharvas ran and gave alllll the Soma juice back. They quickly come back to mother Saraswati and she started to sing again. They all listened so happily and they all danced with joy.
- It was then time to make our craft which was a musical instrument! All the kids enjoyed making and then playing their musical instrument!!
- We wrapped up our class this session by then moving into the main session link to join and perform the Saraswati Puja. It was really encouraging watching all our kids dressed in lovely Indian attire and sit and perform the puja
We enjoyed interacting with all of our kids and hope all of you enjoyed our class as well.
Our next class is on Sunday Oct 24th @ 9.15am. Zoom link is the same as our last class and we will send out a reminder via our class whatsapp ahead of the day. Attached is link to our Bala Vihar handbook for this year.
Pranams,
Vidya and Pramila