Children's conference

[Guest guest]

Nmaskaara to all,

 

Children's conference went very well on Oct 16th, Saturday by Panduranga

vittala's grace and under the guidance of his holiness H.H. puthige Swamiji.

The conference was a great success. Here are some details of the

conference. Started at 9 a.m. with registration. A registration table set

up for children to sign in. All children and volunteers were given name

tags. A welcome speech by Mr. Balaaji Hebbar following a Ganesha Prayer by

Sri. VadhishaChaar was a very good beginning. His holiness H.H. Puthige

Swamiji inaugurated the conference by lighting deepa. Accompanied Swamiji

was an other religious leader from Srilanka. Swamiji addressed both parents

and kids. He pointed out how important for parents to mould kids and

nourish them at an young age. He compared kids' mind to a raw mud wall.

When it is still wet, mud observes everything, on the other hand when it

becomes dry, it bounces everything back. So, give them all good thoughts and

make them as observant as they can. He also compared the Srilankan

religious leader's presence to a monkey army representative (in Ramayana,

Srilanka was a base for monkey army) Then the Srilankan Swamiji also

addressed children. The program started with a " guruparampara stotra " by

JayKrishna which was followed by Vadishachar's dwadasha stotra's 12th stotra

class, a wonderful learning experience for all the children. After the

stotra class, we had a " Dashavataara " matching game (names with the correct

picture " for kids). Most of them surprisingly did well. The last class of

the morning session was about the Hindu calendar by our respected Sri Bindu

Madavan, from Allentown. He had a handout for kids with those terms, Yuga,

Kalpa, Maasa, Paksha, ... Little older children really liked concept of our

calendar (that is the feedback from few kids). Around 11.30 A. M. the

morning session was concluded. During the break (11.30 a.m.-3.30 p.m.),

kids were kept engaged by playing beautiful puppet show cassette, courtesy

of Shobha and G.V. Srinivasan and coloring materials (Gods pictures, for

coloring), courtesy of Mr. Batni. Wonderful Pooja by Swamiji and lunch were

also arranged by the host of the conference during the break time.

Afternoon session started around 3.30 P.M. with the repetition of the

guruparampara stotra. A quiz was arranged with two teams, with a balanced

age group and two team leaders. Categories, Ramaayana and Mahabharatha with

questions and answers on index cards were handed out to the team leaders.

Both teams were scored accordingly. This was the best part of the

conference. All of them learnt something from the quiz. Next item was a

talent show, children were given a chance to show their talents, there were

variety of talents, simple bajan, vaayu stuthi, Gita accompanying violin,

hanumaan chalisa, vishnu sahasranaama, ... and stories. Swamiji also

taught children, a shloka by " srimadanada thirtha " . He taught them few

times and made couple kids to try it out on their own by reading the

handouts. Swamiji also told a story about Hanumantha's " Samudrayaana " to

lanka pattana, how he escaped all the demons. The conference was concluded

by certificate distribution (Aashirvachana) by Swamiji. A certificate and a

gift bag containing, a dashaavataara coloring book, madhvachaarya book and a

fruit " was given to each child including certificate distribution to all the

volunteers by Swamiji. Finally vanadanaarpane was done by Mr. VasuMurthy

followed by a photo session with Swamiji. Swmiji blessed VMS to grow strong

and conduct many more conferences in the future. One of the important

message of Swamiji was to give Importance to kids.

 

All together there were 29 kids. Parents who attended and who are planning

to attend in the future years please spare your resources (little time and

effort) to guide VMS to make children's conference a great learning tool for

kids. Parents can give feed back to VMS so that VMS can implement them.

Also for parents who attended conference are requested to discuss with kids,

evaluate the conference, including programs, and write VMS back with what

they thought about it. Responses are valuable for next year's conference.

VMS thanks the host (Krishna and Chandra for their hospitality, especially

for the wonderful certificates and banner) and all the volunteers who worked

hard on this. Finally, VMS thanks all the parents who brought children to

the conference without whom conference would not been a sucess.

All other VMS chapters please consider conducting one in your area and make

it a ground stone for bigger conferences in the future.

Ponduranga Vittala devaru bless VMS

 

VMS, Washington Chapter

Rama Srinivas