Stained glass flowers
We are back to studying the different pastimes of Lord Krishna. Last week we discussed the story of Krishna and Balaram's education. Under the guidance of their teacher Sandipani Muni, they learned many arts and sciences. One of these arts was the art of flower decoration.
Srila Prabhupada writes in the Krishna book - "They learned how to decorate with flowers. This art of decorating can still be seen in various temples of Vṛndāvana during the summer season. It is called phulla-bāḍi. The dais, the throne, the walls and the ceiling are all fully decorated, and a small, aromatic fountain of flowers is fixed in the center. Because of these floral decorations, the people, fatigued from the heat of the summer, become refreshed."
Seemed like a good excuse to experiment with some flower decorations ourselves. We took some contact paper and set it up on the table, sticky side up. Different kinds of flower petals were broken and arranged on the paper to make beautiful designs.
Another piece of paper was then stuck on top, to create some beautiful stained glass effects. These now adorn my glass door.
Just another opportunity for the children to experiment with different material and make some art too!
Srila Prabhupada writes in the Krishna book - "They learned how to decorate with flowers. This art of decorating can still be seen in various temples of Vṛndāvana during the summer season. It is called phulla-bāḍi. The dais, the throne, the walls and the ceiling are all fully decorated, and a small, aromatic fountain of flowers is fixed in the center. Because of these floral decorations, the people, fatigued from the heat of the summer, become refreshed."
Seemed like a good excuse to experiment with some flower decorations ourselves. We took some contact paper and set it up on the table, sticky side up. Different kinds of flower petals were broken and arranged on the paper to make beautiful designs.
Another piece of paper was then stuck on top, to create some beautiful stained glass effects. These now adorn my glass door.
Just another opportunity for the children to experiment with different material and make some art too!
Friday, September 13, 2013
Prabhupada crafts
For the past 2 weeks, we have been studying about the life of Srila Prabhupada. I have been using this great comic by Bala Books that I found on iskcondesiretree to teach this theme. Srila Prabhupada's life story has been presented in a very simple language with beautiful illustrations. We also did some cute and simple crafts to help bring his story to life. I will share some of them here.
One craft we made was Srila Prabhupada in his Matchless Gifts storefront. This storefront was the first ever ISKCON centre - Srila Prabhupada had rented it in New York and he would give Bhagvad Gita classes 3 times a week in the store. Before being rented by him, it was a shop that sold antique objects. The name Matchless Gifts had been spray painted by the previous owner. It turned out to be quite symbolic, because eventually Srila Prabhupada did distribute the 'Matchless Gift' of spirituality to the world from there!
We used tissue boxes cut vertically in the middle to create the shop. The children decorated the outside of the box with coloured paper and we stuck a little rectangle sign in the front with the name 'Matchless Gifts'.
 |
| Decorating our 'matchless gifts' |
We then stuck a picture of Srila Prabhupada sitting crosslegged in the front - in a 3dmanner. So simple, engaging and fun!
 |
| Final result |
 |
| Sadly, I didnt take any pictures of what we did - but the original idea was taken from here |
We also made a very nice collage about What Srila Prabhupada taught us. We cut relevant pictures from old ISKCON Back To Godhead Magazines and stuck them around a picture of Srila Prabhupada.
 |
| Our collage |
Friday, August 2, 2013
Exploring Patterns
This week, we were exploring patterns at Kanhas.
Initially, I introduced patterns through blocks. We have some nice geometric blocks in different colours which the children used to make patterns and shapes.
 |
| Exploring patterns in blocks |
 |
| Such a clever pattern - geometry and colour have been taken into consideration by the child |
We then looked at patterns through colouring. The children were given mandala designs and I marked alternate sections of the design with 1s and 2s and asked them to colour all the 1s the same colour etc. This helped them understand patterns better.
 |
| Colouring in a pattern |
We then did a craft activity where they had to paste on craft sticks in a particular pattern.
 |
| Vasudev and Devaki in jail - patterns in the prison bars! |
We also made button necklaces where they had to thread in buttons in the pattern of their choice.
 |
| Patterns in buttons - just see how the child has incorporated size in the pattern |
 |
| Great fine motor skills practice as well! |
Finally we did some pattern worksheets. The children had to identify and draw the missing item in a pattern. All of them aced it - even some of my 3 year olds :)
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Carving the form of Lord Jagganath
When we did the part where the deities were carved from wood, I wanted the children to experience carving too. A little thought and then it struck me - Why not carve the beautiful face of the Lord in a pumpkin! What an easy way to dovetail Halloween pumpkin carvings into a devotional activity!
 |
The children worked in pairs drawing the eyes and smile of Lord Jagganath, Baladev and Subhadra. I then carved out the eyes and smile - The activity was kept very simple and I did not let the children use the knife for safety reasons. They watched me carve, and enjoyed it just as much. |
 |
| Subhadra's smiling face |
Later on, we decorated the beautiful face of the Lord with sequins and blue tag - adding the earings, bindi and other decorations.
 |
| Decorating the Lord |
Soon we installed our pumpkin deities and the children were offering obeisances. An whole hour spent absorbed in devotional service to Lord Jagganath!
 |
| Jagganath, Baldev, Subhadra ki jai!! |
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Gratefulness
Kanhas preschool is about sowing the seeds of vedic culture in the lives of young children. One of the main aspects of Vaishnav culture is gratefulness. The first step is to see God's hand in all the little blessings of our life. Eventually, we can see His presence in all aspects of our life and then, gradually, we can become Krishna Conscious at every moment.
For a small child, the first people he needs to be grateful to are his parents. Gradually, that gratefulness can extend to nature, society and finally Krishna.
While studying the pastimes of Lord Narsimhadev, I found some good opportunities to teach gratefulness. Hiranyakashipu, the demon father of a little boy Prahlad, initially began his parenting by training his son in the science of cheating, exploitation and tyranny. When his lessons failed, he began abusing the child in horrific ways - leaving no stone unturned in his attempts to murder the boy. Little Prahlad was crushed by Elephants, thrown off a high cliff and burned in hot oil - he survived only because of the mercy of the Supreme Lord.
This story seemed to be an excellent time to get the children to thank their own loving fathers for all the protection and Krishna Conscious support that they are giving them. We decided to make a small gift for dad.
I found the original idea at DLTK's crafts for Father's day. We modified it for somewhat for a younger age group. Initially we placed some contact paper - with the sticky side up and stuck pieces of coloured cellophane paper on it. We then stuck another contact paper on top of it to create a pretty stained glass effect. After that I cut out the word dad on an A4 size card paper for each child. They stuck it on top of the stained glass for a very pretty thank-you gift!
 |
| Thank you dad! |
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Super cute crafts for Ramayana theme
 |
| Little monkeys (pun unintended) |
Crafts always make stories come alive and satisfy a child's need for creative exploration. It is a fun way to develop fine motor skills, numeracy (measurements, shapes, counting), construction and imagination. Throw in social skills like co-operation, sensory experience, a sense of accomplishment and building of self-esteem and crafts suddenly become an invaluable aspect of preschool curriculum.
We do atleast 1-2 crafts daily and it is always a challenge for me to find different, engaging ideas for the children. I will discuss two crafts today that blended into our current Ramayan theme and turned out to be particularly cute and fun.
The first one was golden deer hats. They represented the famous demon Marichi's disguise that tricked Lord Rama and Lakshman away from Seeta.
 |
| Little Marichs |
Each child was given strips of card paper and golden paper. They glued the 2 together and stuck on the googly eyes and pompom nose. This completed the face which was then looped around to fit their heads as a hat. They then traced out their palms on glitter paper and cut them out to make the horns. The horns are flopping in the pictures - I should have given the kids stiffer paper I guess.
The second one was Hanuman masks. I took the original idea from the DLTK website -here. We added crowns to the mask to get this cute outcome.
 |
| Jai Hanuman! |
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Hibernation
This week, I thought I will talk a little bit about the science we do at Kanhas. We did hibernation recently and the session went really well, so here goes.
I began the class by talking a little bit about winter sleep. Children as young as the ones in my class have an absolutely vague concept of time. So telling them that animals sleep for 6 months in winter doesn't really make much sense to them. So I sort of elaborated on how they sleep all day and all night for days and days.
After that we did a wonderful story - The Bear Snores on by Karma Wilson.
Books like this one are ridiculously expensive and not available in my local library either. However, I was lucky enough to find a ppt online which I downloaded and printed out to create my own copy (crudely illustrated but with the original text - which matters :) )
Books like this one are ridiculously expensive and not available in my local library either. However, I was lucky enough to find a ppt online which I downloaded and printed out to create my own copy (crudely illustrated but with the original text - which matters :) )
The tale is a really funny one about a bear who keeps sleeping while different animals gather in his cave and have a party. Presented as a poem it has lots of new sound words...and some really good action words as well.
Once we had read and understood the story we had a great time role playing it. The children enjoyed making all the different sounds - snoring, slurping, chirping and burping their way into multiple acting outs of the same script.
By the end of it we had totally understood how hibernation means constant deep sleep. Now all I had to do was drive home the point about winter. We did that by making cute bear caves - 2 paper plate halves stuck together with a little flap that opened up to reveal a sleeping bear.
We ensured the bear was snowed in by sticking lots of cotton on top.
We ensured the bear was snowed in by sticking lots of cotton on top.
 |
| Hibernating bear! |
 |
| Look at my cave! |
Thus my preschoolers enjoyed a great introduction to hibernation - but how to connect the topic to Krishna? Simple - we concluded with a short discussion on how if we sleep too much - Krishna will give us bear bodies. The purpose of human life is not for sleeping but for understanding God!
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Simplifying the Mahabharat
 |
| Coloring the Mahabharat! |
Our theme at Kanhas last month was the Mahabharat. There are multiple reasons as to why I chose this theme right at the beginning. The Mahabharat is a natural introduction to Lord Krishna and his pastimes. It has plenty of characters and themes from which I could introduce most of the alphabet. It is essentially about brothers, parents and friends - concepts that 4 year olds are familiar with. Most importantly it establishes many moral values like tolerance, humility and surrender to God in a very simple way. It also has some very strong evil characters who highlight what behaviour is not acceptable - important information for little children.
The challenges I faced while doing this theme was the simplification. The Mahabharat is a complicated story with a large number of characters with difficult names. It also has many unconventional relationships - Kunti and Karna, Draupadi and Pandavas etc as well unconventional incidents - Pandavas birth, Kauravas birth, stripping episode etc. I didn't want the children to be lost in a strange world of names nor did I want to introduce overly adult ideas to them.
I decided to select a few stories that would cover, broadly, the life of the Pandavas. These stories were all highly dramatic, fun and easy to narrate. Each story set the theme of the day and we proceeded to learn our academics from them.
For eg - I began with the story of Vyaasdev dictating the Mahabharat to lord Ganesh. That led us to learn the letter V and we made some real fun Vyaasdev and Ganesh masks.
 | |
| Making Vyaasdev Masks |
 |
| The black stuff is his beard :) |
 |
| Little Ganeshas |
 | |
| Reenacting the pastime - Vyaasdev has too many Ganeshas to dictate too! |
This was followed by the story of Arjuna learning archery. He was the only one who could focus completely on the eye of the wooden bird and so was allowed to release his arrow on the bird. This story, of course led to learning the letter A and making some fun arrows.
 |
| Shiny arrows |
 | |
| Little Arjunas |
 |
| Making Bakasura Puppets |
 | |
| Roar - here comes Bakasura! |
We explored each story through role play which really helped the children relate intimately to the Mahabharat. They took turns being Arjuna, Duryodhan and Krishna and thoroughly enjoyed shooting arrows at each other.
The Mahabharat theme ended with the Kurukshetra war and the letter W. Now all the children not only know the names of the characters but also most of the stories. One parent told me - their child heard one of the stories in a Temple class his parents were attending, immediately identified it and then went home and role played it.
But I guess, most importantly they know now that when in difficulty they should simply call out to the Lord and He will definitely help them as He helped the Pandavas.
Saturday, February 2, 2013
The joy of making something together
When I decided to teach Owls on O day to my preschoolers- I found a wonderful folk story online - called the Wise Owl. It is a parable that encourages turn taking and patience - key values that I wanted to introduce to my class. After the story, we decided to make a big newspaper owl together - and immediately put into practice the values discussed.
When we began making the craft, my initial ideas was a plain brown owl as given here.
However our end product turned out to be so much more creative!
After that it was time to draw the wings. But none of the children wanted marker drawn wings. What could we use to make wings? I just didnt have any paper for that! Or did I? One of the children suggested we use some pink card paper that was left-over from a previous day's craft.
Pink wings? Sure, why not! I cut out the wing shapes and the children happily glued them on.
Can we draw the feathers now? But no one wanted marker drawn feathers as well! Another child spotted a packet of colourful craft feathers I had picked up (one of my - just might be handy- craft supplies). Could we stick those on?
Sigh! I gave in. Time was ticking, and we were very near pack up, but all the children were too busy smearing on the glue and putting on the feathers to really care. They covered the wings.
"Ok, pack up time!", I said. "But what about the body?" Without stopping to ask they proceeded to cover the owl's middle with the feathers as well.
"We need ears too!" Little pointed ears were stuck on and finally we were ready to pose with our owl
Mommys had to wait that day as we did a rush pack up - but it was a lesson well learnt!
When we began making the craft, my initial ideas was a plain brown owl as given here.
 | |
| Original owl idea - image taken from the dltk website |
 | ||||
| Kanhas Owl |
Initially, we followed the original instructions and made the basic owl. We took turns using the stapler to staple the newspaper sheets together. Then we enthusiastically crumpled and stuffed the owls body. Each of us cut out the eye circles and glued those on with black poms poms. The beak too was cut on and attached by eager little hands.
Pink wings? Sure, why not! I cut out the wing shapes and the children happily glued them on.
Can we draw the feathers now? But no one wanted marker drawn feathers as well! Another child spotted a packet of colourful craft feathers I had picked up (one of my - just might be handy- craft supplies). Could we stick those on?
Sigh! I gave in. Time was ticking, and we were very near pack up, but all the children were too busy smearing on the glue and putting on the feathers to really care. They covered the wings.
"Ok, pack up time!", I said. "But what about the body?" Without stopping to ask they proceeded to cover the owl's middle with the feathers as well.
"We need ears too!" Little pointed ears were stuck on and finally we were ready to pose with our owl
Replies