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Children are not vessels to be filled but lamps to be lit.
- Swami Chinmayananda
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Oct 24, 2021 - Shishu Vihar (Sunday AM)

 Hari Om Parents and Children!

 

Below is a summary of what we did in our last Sunday's class on Oct 24th.

We started our class with 3 Oms followed by Sahana vavatu

            OM saha nāvavatu
            saha nau bhunaktu
            saha vīryam karavāvahai
            tejasvināvadhītamastu
            mā vidviṣāvahai
            OM śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ
    and then also said the following 3 Chants listed below
        Om Sri Ganeshaya namaha, Om Sri Saraswathye namaha,  Om Sri Sat Gurubyoh namaha


Shlokas -- We continued to revise the two shloka from our prior classes and learnt a new one 

Vakratunda Mahākāya

Vakratunda Mahaakaaya   sooryakoti samaprabha

nirvighnam kurume deva   sarva karyeshu sarvada

Saraswati Namastubhyam

            Sarasvati namastubhyaṃ  varade kāmarūpiṇi

            vidyārambhaṃ kariṣyāmi  siddhirbhavatu me sadā

          Karāgre Vasate Lakṣmīh

           Karāgre Vasate Lakṣmīh  karamūle sarasvatī

           karamadhye tu govindaḥ, prabhāte karadarśanam

 

Yoga  -- We moved on to a few Yoga stretches and poses. We did a tree pose, a lion pose and our butterfly pose. 

Bhajans ---  We then sang our two bhajans

           1) jaya jaya devii, jaya jaya devii, durgaa devii sharaNam

              jaya jaya devii, jaya jaya devii, durgaa devii sharaNam

             kanaka durgaa devii sharaNam, kanaka durga devii sharaNam

         

        2) Great God Ganapathi, I bow to Thee,  Elephant faced One, I bow to Thee 

Delight of Lord Shiva, I take refuge in Thee,  O big bellied son of Mother Parvathi 

Infinite Om, Oh I bow to Thee , You ride on your mouse and win Victory 

Meditation/Numbers and colors --- After bhajans we played our meditation game. Our kids did an awesome job of closing their eyes and counting in their mind. We learnt how to tell the numbers from 1 to 10 in Sanskrit :

 1. One  (ekam)                  2. Two (dve)                 3.Three (treeni)     4. Four  (chatvaari)           5. Five (pancha)           6. Six (shat)

 7. Seven (sapta)               8. Eight (ashta)              9. Nine (nava)      10. Ten (dasha)                

We learnt how to say colors in Sanskrit like

Red – Raktaha                                              White - Shvetah

Yellow – Peethaha                                        Black - Krishnaha

Blue – Neelaha                                             Green – Harithaha


Gita -- Before we moved to story we revised chanting the Bhagavad Gita : Chapter 2, Verse 39 from our handbook.

Story --- With Diwali coming up our story for this week was 'Mata Lakshmi comes to visit' The story goes like this -

On Diwali day, Mata Lakshmi comes to visit us. She comes flying on her owl and she reaches India and visits so many people. We have to be ready for her when comes. Mata Lakskmi doesn't like messy houses. As she comes visiting houses, she stops by the first house and sees that the house was dark and not decorated at all. So, she says ok let me go to the next house. In the next house she sees there are beautiful flowers/thoran decorated outside the house with lovely rangoli but the house was dark with not lamps lit. Mata Lakshmi is still not sure and says " ok let me see the next house". The next house had lovely rangoli and decorations outside the house and there were also lamps lit outside - but when she opens the house, she sees the house is dusty and very messy. Oh no!  Mata Lakshmi says "hm.. Let me see another house first then". As she goes to the next house, she sees there were so many lights, and people were so loud having a party that she decided 'I think I better go back home". While she was riding on her owl on the way back home, she saw one small house, beautifully decorated with lamps, lovely flowers and thoran outside and pretty rangoli. She opened the door and sees this house is clean and notices a young girl sitting inside praying to Lakshmi Devi with sweets and fruits as offerings. Lakshmi Mata was very happy she finally could come into a house that was ready for her on the auspicious day of Diwali and blessed the girl with wealth and prosperity. 

We heard the story on how we get our house ready for Diwali. It was then time to make our craft which was a Thoran with paper flowers and leaves. 


Closing Prayer --  We wrapped up our session with our closing prayers

             Om pūrṇamadaḥ pūrṇamidam pūrṇāt pūrṇamudacyate

            pūrṇasya pūrṇamādāya  pūrṇamevā vaśiṣyate


Our next class is on Sunday Oct 31st @ 9.15am. Please remember to wear Yellow for our house color!!  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 a link to our Bala Vihar handbook for this year.

 

Pranams,

Vidya and Pramila