Happy New Year: 2012

In order to capture 2011, I wanted to share it in some of my photos. May the light and joy of this year, carry all of us into the new year with a greater source of determination, courage and joy.

I was able to spend Christmas with two of my dearest friends from our early years at the Living Wisdom School.  The picture on the left is in 2006. The boys were in their first year of Kindergarten and the picture on the right is now in fifth grade. The boys live in different states.  Until August of 2011, they were in different countries. This was a lovely reunion for us all.

This is an arrangements of highlights: I was able to take two healing vacations to Washington's lavender festival and to our special retreat home in Palm Springs,California. I started my blog this past summer and the other photo was taken in my class from early 2011.

My husband and I moved upstairs from our home after 17 years in the Ananda Community.

High tea with my students at the end of the school year!

                                                       Remembering our dear friends

Our fourth and six graders at the Honda dealer showing them their electric car they built.

Fall Basil Harvest. The best basil I have ever cooked with.

Our first Labyrinth walk at Yoga Camp

Swimming at Yoga Camp with new friends

May we all be connected in love as we enter into 2012 together.

Happy New Year .

Come Gather Round.... It's Fall Storytime.

Come gather round, with a friend on the left
and a friend on the right,
Come gather round. ...

Its that time ..
Gather round for a fall story.

Many of us grew up with the little field mice in "Frederick" by Leo Lionni.

But in case you haven't, here is the story. I recommend the book and I will be showing you a game that I have created to go along with this story. Since the blogs this week are about fall, harvest, families and 

Stone Soup this is the one that I like to start out with in early November and read continuously through the dark winter months. 

In my classroom at the Living Wisdom School, we also spend time in November on community building while working together. This story will guide your children as you create community though your classroom. Begin reading the story to the children several times. The children can also act out the story. I like to create props and simple mouse ear costumes.

At the end of the story during morning circle time, I have each child reach into this bag and select a rock. Without peeking they feel their rock, warm it in their hand and then place it in the center of our circle. With eyes still closed, they pick up their rock. One by one, I read their qualities that have been written on each rock. Some examples are: make a new friend today, be flexible and share with a friend, be joyful today, or hug a friend today. I slowly write down each quality. During the day, I walk around the room and point out the positive signs of their behavior. At the end of the day, at our shared inspiration time in circle we all review our day once again.

How were we like Frederick in the story? Did we use our words today mindfully? Did we work together as well as the mouse family in the story?  I also acknowledge again each child and talk about how their energy matched the words on their rock that they pulled from the bag. 

The colors of the rocks are all painted the colors of fall leaves. The rocks match the colors that Frederick is talking about in the story. This creates glow in our hearts during the cloudy days of winter in Seattle. 

Happy reading until our next story time.

Blessings and gratitude,
Chandi

Mother Earths' showering leaves

 Autumn leaves come falling all around

Blowing colors found in mother earths' bounty,

Take a deep breath and feel her color magic

At a blink of an eye the colors will crinkle

Showering you with her glowing cosmic blanket sprinkle ...

This was the "lone" leaf craft  that was left in the classroom this week and I love how it shows up against my classroom window. Light and beauty play such an important role in my early childhood classroom. Children flourish with vivid natural light, fresh air and colors. 

This is a quick entry to let you know my husband and I drew the winner of our "giveaway" drawing this evening for the Calm and Compassionate book by: Susan Usha Dermond.  

Thank you all who visited and shared your love and blessings through email, Facebook, Twitter and direct comments. This was fun. I will have to do this again.

I am so pleased  and excited to announce that Sally Haughey is the winner from Fairy Dust Teaching. Sally is a National Board Certified Teacher and has been Waldorf Kindergarten trained. Sally lives in Oklahoma. Its far away from Washington but Sally is a kindred soul. I met Sally by reading her inspirational blog and now I have taken two of her online courses for parents and educators.

Congratulations Sally! You bless so many teachers with your inspiration of joy. It is fitting that Divine Mother is showering you today. 

Have a nice fall weekend, as we all prepare for our bountiful Thanksgiving of gratitude.

Our Planetary Home and our place in the Universe Part 2.

Our Planetary Home

Our place in the Universe

This is part two from our class today on families, home and community building. We are celebrating "Stone Soup" with our school community next week. Each class is contributing to the meal. This week we have been reading and telling the story by:

Award-winning artist Jon J Muth. He retells the favorite tale of a selfish community who is tricked into creating a delicious soup from stones. Set in China, in Muth's beautiful landscaped watercolors. This is a newer vision taken from an older German folktale. I am in love with how this book takes compassion and weaves the community together.  The Living Wisdom School celebrates this event with our families each year as our Thanksgiving tradition.

Setting the scene for re-telling the story together. All the children have a part to play.

Our new reading and acting corner. The children have many books and materials for telling their stories together

To continue our playful events around "families" today we had a fishing pole where the children fished for family member puzzle pieces. The pieces were then placed together into puzzles.  These are activities that I like to provide for the Foundation years, at the Living Wisdom School.

Hum, I think this is how it goes?

Showing pictures and telling stories at lunch time. This gives the child a greater sense of confidence  while speaking in front of a group. 

Family Wall

Can you show me your dog? Where is he?

These experiential activities begin to keep children's hearts open toward as an expansive view of their classmates lives. It is a joy to experience their sense of wonder, as their values of compassion are beginning to expand and grow towards each other.

I will end with a quote from the Education for Life book written by J. Donald Walters: 

For education to prepare children for meeting life realistically, it should encourage them to learn from life itself, and to view with skepticism a body of fixed knowledge that has been passed on unquestioned from one generation to the next.
Education must above all be experiential, and not merely theoretical. The student should be taught, among other things, to observe the outcome of any course of action, and not to depend blindly on the claims of others as to what that outcome is supposed to be, and therefore will be.

Living in harmony with the animals on the earth

The past two weeks our class has easily transitioned to our next unit: "The Animal Kingdom." My Preschool and Kindergarten classes just loves animals. In fact, many young children love animals. This is one of the easiest steps for teaching young children compassion while opening their own hearts to the world all around them. 
The next few blogs will contain the projects that we completed.

To begin the unit I wanted to combine three stories and tell them over and over throughout the next few weeks. I wanted to try some of the techniques from a one of my favorite blogs by: Sally Haughey from: Fairy Dust Teaching. She has written many excellent entries on storytelling.  Specifically here today, the entry on: The power of table top puppets and retelling a story.

I choose the story: The Great Kapock Tree, by Lynne Cherry.  Here is the story read aloud.

The children heard me tell the story with puppets and then we all practiced again and again. For many, this was the first time that they ever had the opportunity to act out or retell a story.  I also want to work with the principals on building strong hands on literacy.

The children acting out different animal parts in the story. These children are listening to sounds on one of our rainforest Cd's and making the sounds of the animals in the story.

 Individually acting out the story

Well, we arent quite yet ready to make a video of our stories, but we have had alot of fun retelling the story in many creative ways.

The Sequel: All the World is my Friend"

Three dimensional shaving cream world painting.

All the world is my friend when I learn how to share my love,

When I stretch out my hands and smile,

Then I live from above.

 These words are from a song;  All the World is my Friend, by: J. Donald Walters, which I shared with you in my blog on September 14th.

 Friendship is such a powerful way to bring a classroom or a school together. We want our children to love and nurture their friendships in the classroom. How often though, do the activities, songs, games and dances infuse this consciousness into their awareness? Practicing friendship is what makes our school so unique and inspiring. We just don't talk about friendship; the children actually live it daily. 

The other day, one of our school’s first grade students came into our preschool classroom, excited about the classroom project that his class was creating. He wanted to share it with the whole school. He wasn't embarrassed, or afraid of being made fun of.   He just wanted to offer the children in our Preschool classroom tours of their "recyclable" clubhouse his classroom was making in our back acreage at the Living Wisdom School. He wasn’t bullied or laughed at for coming into our classroom. He was encouraged by all the students to share his class’s new creation.

The song’s words are stated: then I live from above. “Living from above” is expressed by sharing friendship in accord with the higher truths of our spiritual nature.

At the Living Wisdom school the children are given examples daily about what it is to be a friend. We offer mentorship programs and the teachers offer opportunities that bring out the best in each child. 

 

My preschool classroom activities also embraced the theme "friendship".  We were making “All the World is my Friend” necklaces.  The children made the clay beads, painted them as worlds, and strung them onto necklaces. Each child was given pictures of their classmates and their teacher to bring home. This project allowed the children and their parents to learn the names of each student. This creates a deep bonding experience for each family.  

Volcano painted by a four year old

Forest made and painted by a three year old.

The children also designed mountains, deserts, and forests made out of natural earth clay. They were dried and then painted.

"Hey, look that's me!"

This little girl is showing her friend how to art cast her earth. These were later painted and used for healing prayers for the earth.

"Please don't worry this will not fall on you. Watch your head! .

The children at Living Wisdom love to go to school, where their inner joy is awakened from their divine  friendships. They soon find that awakening inner joy is where true happiness lies.

" All The World Is My Friend"

At the beginning of each school year I have taken the words to one of the songs we sing and created our first unit " All the world is my friend". The next few posts will be on these activities in the first unit at the Living Wisdom School of Seattle.

To start the school year the children are focusing on new friendships. In the Education for Life classroom the teachers are creating these new fresh ideas while infusing them with an experience of friendship into their beings. Here is one of the activities from this past week.  Let's start with the song: All The World Is My Friend". Here is the link of that song to purchase. The children sing the song throughout the day during their experiential play and directed art activities.

These are clay beads that are being painted as earths. These beads will be used  to make all the world is my friend necklaces next week

He used the larger format to paint his beads and create his own picture

 I often have the children work on murals together. This process opens up harmony and first hand exploration with team work. They love to come up with little songs and expressions of what it is to work as a team.

Earlier in the week the children made their own individual bodies for this mural. We put it all together at the entrance of the school today. The banner reads:

All the world is my friend, when I learn how share my love"

Are you a teacher or parent? How do you infuse harmony, friendship and beauty into your children's environment? Please comment below.

The gift of your presence

 Its our weekly story time!  

"Come gather round,

With a friend on the left and friend on the right, 

          Come gather round"

About two years ago I was walking in our local library looking for a new book about love and kindness, that I could select for the children in my Kindergarten class. I usually have an inner guidance and prayer before I go into the library to guide and help me select the perfect book for  teaching a certain "quality" to the children. 

On this particular day, a book literally fell onto my foot. I picked it up without giving it much attention and placed it back on the shelf. It was not the type of book that I would usually select. The cover wasn't that appealing ,expansive with color or intriguing.  Its cover actually had more of  a "cartoon" feel to the it. At the Living Wisdom School we shy away from any theatrical productions, videos and television.

Well, it fell on my foot again. Now, I am somewhat perturbed at this point. I took a moment to look again at the cover. The drawings by Patrick McDonnell looked somewhat familiar. So it intrigued me enough to slow down and sit with the book.

The title of the book: The Gift of Nothing  

This story is about Mooch a friendly little cat who wants to give his friend Earl a gift. This delightful story is around the love and friendship between friends. How often we spend hours trying to find just the perfect birthday gift for a loved one and we are discouraged about what we have chosen. But what should you do when your friend has everything? This is a tale about Mooch searching for the gift of nothing.  This book is for all ages.  I love to read this for our afternoon story or it is a sweet story for the bedtime ritual. You might be able to get away with reading it twice, since you will fall in love with it.

This is surely one book that you will want to give away, but purchase one for your child's shelf as well. 

Patrick McDonnell has quite a nice series of short children's stories. 
I encourage you to take a peak at the library you never know what enticing stories might fall on your foot. 

Joyful reading friends until next Friday.....

Once upon a time in a land far, far, away.....

 One main focus of this blog is to mention some favorite books I have found over the years.  I’ll write each Friday about the spiritual gems contained in them.

Often  I have been asked by educators and parents how to teach spiritual truths to young children. My background has brought a rich love of books, treasures and memories.  I find that reading is an easy place to begin to awaken the enthusiasm in a young child.  Reading to our children, students and grandchildren is a timeless experience.  Through reading we can explore and create imaginary worlds, and experience within the deepest part of ourselves that which creates an inner world of deep meaning, love and truth.


When working with children's literature there, are many ways to deeply look at the contents of a story.  I love large formatted picture books, but with our culture turning into more visual stimulus for children , I now lean towards not always showing the pictures, but weaning the children into closing their eyes and imagining what the story might look like. This can happen even at the early age of four. I also want to build children’s comprehension and hands on the literacy, an approach used today in alternative education.

The next stage after reading a story would be to act out the story through puppet shows, felt pieces or with a child’s whole being. These timeless stories have the children ask again and again for the opportunity to re-enact them in class.

Today's book review is Pinduli,  by Janell Cannon.


Janell Cannon  is famous for her illustrations. Her very familiar, award-winning book Stellaluna  has sold over 500,000 copies. It was on the bestseller list for more than two years.

Pindulu takes place in Africa savanna and is about a little hyena and his mother. An expression of love is shown throughout the story, as Pindulu’s mother assures her how beautiful she is. However, Pindulu finds out early that the animals in the savanna have a different view of her big ears, fuzzy mane, and wiggly stripes.  Through a chain of events, Pindulu finds that she just wants to hide and return home to the safety of her mother. She decides to cover her fur with pale dust.  On her way home the animals think she's an evil spirit, or a ghost who's come for revenge. This is my favorite part of the story: Pinduli convinces all the animals to make up for their harsh lashings.   The story reveals many spiritual truths about choosing your words carefully, friendship, anger and talking harshly to others.

I love this book, and have used it in many settings from kindergarten to sixth grade. As an educator, I will select this story if I need reinforcement to drive home lessons about circumstances that may have happened on the playground or the classroom.  I like to make up games to enhance the spiritual points in the story. This is also one of my favorite stories about teaching children the law of magnetism and the secrets of friendship. Loyalty, kindness, acceptance, and appreciation of others are all high ideals we want to instill in our children.  This story can help in that endeavor.

I have had the wonderful opportunity for the past 17 years to work with Eastwest Bookshop of Seattle, a spiritual, independent bookshop that is able to order books, make suggestions, and serve as a guiding light in selecting high quality spiritual books for children and families.  We are very fortunate to have such a quality store that is in tune with the principles of our Living Wisdom School. Eastwest Bookshop of Seattle will order any book that you might need in a timely fashion and offer you the opportunity to browse through books in their family section. It has a warm, nurturing environment that will welcome you home to the magnetism of spirit, beauty and truth.

Happy reading, friends…until next Friday.