Hari OM Everyone,
All the kids were very excited to see the Spirit Day scores displayed on the TV and a bit disappointed that our team Arjuna's Arrows only placed second. We told them there are more ways for them to earn points to take our House ahead - they were all very enthusiastic about participating in Shlokathon, Art contest and the Story telling. Please register them if you haven't already. Those who have memorized Gita verses, please register them for the Gita competition on March 30th. All participants get a beautiful medal and blessings from Swamiji. You can also send the video recording to earn more points for our House. 🙂
We did our daily prayers and then the Dasavatara Stotram and Guru stotram. We started the first verse in Madhurashtakam. When we told them it describes how sweet Krishna was and asked them to imagine baby Krishna and how He would have looked, they all got so excited - they started telling us the childhood stories of Krishna! We told them they would have the pleasure of listening to all those stories next year in 4th grade where the topic is Krishna Krishna Everywhere. We just repeated the first verse a few times. Please play this version for them when you can so they get familiar - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkyLB2uXTTg
We then quizzed them about the Dhruva story and Ambarisha story since we are going to be doing that for the Monthly program. Most of them remembered quite well - we added more details. When we talked about Dhruva's tapas we asked them about the 4 legs of the bull Dharma that we had learnt about in the beginning of the year and they remembered all of them - Austerity, Purity, Kindness and Truthfulness. They also remembered the boat we made earlier in the year to discuss about creation and pralaya!
It seems like there's going to be a tough competition for the character of Dhruva - everyone was trying to prove that they can stand on one toe!! 🙂 We took the opportunity to chant Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya 12 times. We will hand out the roles in the next class.
We learned verses 65 and 66 from Swamiji's video. We would like all children to memorize at least the 66th verse - sarva dharmaan parityajya maam ekam saranam vraja - we told them how it related to the theme of our stage performance - we want all of them to chant it from memory in May. Please help them learn this. We discussed how Ambarisha was a great devotee and linked it to the 9 modes of devotion that we learnt about in the Prahlada story.
They have now got the idea of making connections between what they hear in class and what they know and are excited to share!
Some useful links -
Registration form for storytelling - Last date for registration March 31st - last date for submission - April 30
Registration form for Art - Last date for registration and submission of audio - March 31st
Link to Swamiji's youtube video of Geeta -
Jayashree & Suja
