You might have heard of the name Dhruva – a common name for boys in India. Dhruva is a famous child saint in Indian legend who performed severe austerities to please Lord Narayana at the tender age of 5. Such was his devotion that within six months Lord Narayana personally visited him. The prayers that Dhruva offered to the Lord are immortalized in the Srimad Bhagvatam and studied by scholars and devotees till today. The Lord created a new star for Dhruva which is the brightest star in the sky – the pole star.
We studied about this little boy at Kanhas last week. We read his story from the Vaikuntha enterprises book Dhruva – the star devotee
Dhruva – the star devotee
We did the story over 2 days. Here are a few activities we did along with the story.
Yoga poses like Dhruva – lotus pose and tree pose
Palace craft – Dhruva maharaj was a prince and lived in a palace before going to the forest. We made paper palace cutouts and decorated them with gold and silver “bricks”. It was a great cut and paste activity and children got to learn about palace, architecture, construction etc while practicing their fine motor skills. Some children made patterns so it was a lesson in maths & geometry as well!
Palace designing
Forest collage – We made a really fun forest collage. We added trees, leaves and lots of wild animals. This activity included scissor and crayon skills and also added to the children’s animal vocabulary. It was a great lesson in co-operation and team work as the kids made one large collage and everyone contributed to it. The icing on the cake was adding a picture of Dhruva and Lord Vishnu to the collage and centring the whole activity on the Lord!
Working together to make our forest
Forest small world play – The kids loved making the collage so much that we extended the activity into the third dimension. The kids created 3d forests using rocks, yellow stones etc and added little plastic animals and people figurines. The kids recreated the pastime and meditated on Dhruva while honing their creative skills!
Forest in a box
We really enjoyed learning about Dhruva at Kanhas!
Comments