"All the World is my Friend" Starting the school year right.

We begin the year in our classroom with a song:

"All the World is my Friend

When I learn how to share my love

When I stretch up my hands and smile

Then I live from above...".

Below is the link for the song:

http://soundcloud.com/nayaswamirambhakta/all-the-world-is-my-friend

Each year I begin the month of September with this song. The children are beginning to recognize each other after a long summer break and this is a familiar children's song that we sing often at the Living Wisdom School. The lyrics reminds them about kindness, friendship, and acceptance. During the month I also plan activities around being reacquainted with their former friends and meeting new classmates as we begin our new school year.

We began the year with our own self-portraits. These were hung in the hallway above our cubicles to introduce our class to
the Living Wisdom school community. I was so pleased to see how well they did and how they remembered the key points of drawing their own Mother's portraits from May.  These are so sweet!

http://chandi-holliman.blogspot.com/2012/05/divine-mothers-everywhere.html

The next project is based around all the families being acquitted with each other. The activity begins with clay that is self drying. The children mold the beads into round shapes. The clay dries for several days and the children then string their necklaces. Each necklace has world beads and their pictures of each friend that is attached.  They are so excited about their necklaces and sharing stories with their families about their new friends.

The third project we made in the classroom this year are prayer earths.
We start with styrofoam balls and layer masking tape all around the ball. 

This is such a good project for small little fingers and building small muscle development.

 The next day after the ball is completed, I cut art plaster in small pieces.

It is then placed strip by strip into a container of fairly warm hot water.

The strips are then wrapped by the children around each one of the balls.

The balls are completely covered and left to dry for about three to four days.
We also attached a small paperclip down into the ball for a ribbon hanger.

After they are thoroughly dry the children paint their worlds.

The worlds are taken home to hang in their room.

When working with the preschool child these simple projects build on the direct experience of remembering, " All the world is our friend" and we can all joyfully live together in peace and harmony on this planet.

Flowers so soft and fragile

 This is a very busy week at the Living Wisdom School. We are all finishing up our yearly projects and assignments.

School ends on Wednesday, June 13th. 

This artist told me the smiles in her flowers were their spirits smiling back at her.

My  Preschool class wanted to spend the last couple of days painting. Today the weather was so glorious.  I couldn't resist and set up our art gallery in the Living Wisdom organic garden. We began with a "fairy tale story" then created lovely garden pictures. 

These are our budding Monet apprentices. 

Don't you agree?

 

We have practiced all year by using contrasting colors in our paintings.

Monet's waterlilies

 

These were her garden"Iris's"

Spirit and Nature dancing together

Many of you may or may not know that one of my creative hobbies is birdwatching. I have been exploring the habitats of birds and migration patterns for over 30 years. I find it exhilarating to witness beautiful and incidental sightings of ordinary birds in their own habitat.

 About 12 years ago, I was taking a workshop with naturalist Joseph Cornell, we were learning how to use our voices to call birds in a dynamic way.  I can be honest with you, I have not mastered that skill but I found the joy welling up inside me that I might have the opportunity to be still enough to actually hold a wild bird some day.

Well yesterday was that day.

I always tell my students when we are going outside in nature, it is the animals kingdom " world" that we are entering. We have to be mindful and still to listen while we become aware of everything around us.

The children and I had just finished a beautiful morning circle singing, one of Yogananda's chants,

"I am the Bubble, make me the Sea."

 We all went around the circle, and shared while holding a musical heart.  Each child was invited to acknowledge their own unique expression answering the question, "What makes your heart sing?"

 The children were very still and receptive. But working with young children the energy can change almost at any moment. We had sat long enough listening to a creative storytelling session about nature and the children were clearly ready to explore free play in our playground.

The children had only been out for about a minute, when one of the little girls noticed a baby bird that had fallen on the ground. They ran to get me. They were very scared for him. We had an attack from a large crow about two weeks before, so they were very protective of this little young Chickadee.

I tried to pick up the bird, but he just kept trying to fly very low to the ground. He wasn't hurt but was a little stunned and shaken up. I slowly picked him up and placed him back on a tree limb but he quickly flew to a neighboring fence. There he became trapped.

Meanwhile the mother over head was very loud and had realized the baby was no where in the nest or in sight. I could not see the nest, but she was gathering food, and looking desperately for her.

In the meantime, the small bird lay motionless behind the fence. After about five minutes I came around the corner to retrieve her. She could see that I was not going to hurt her this time. I was able to carefully pick her up in the palm of my hand and speaking gently to her.

We all weren't sure exactly what to do? We have small bird boxes on the fence that were made for the Living Wisdom School, so we opened the top and placed the baby bird gently inside. We left the top partly open so the larger birds could not get inside.

Shortly about 20 minutes later, the little Chickadee jumped out on the top of the birdhouse. Then she jumped to the fence. Her mother then was able to see her and quickly jumped to the next post. The little bird in joy flew to his mother. They both then flew back up where the Mother continued to feed her. It was a rare site to see.

Now the children in our classroom witnessed the whole experience. What joy and relief  it brought for all of us to see that the tiny bird made it back safely to its nest.

 This was a rare drama to witness which could have turned out differently in many ways. We all were thrilled and our spirits were dancing together with nature so harmoniously right outside our classroom window today.

Here is our classroom story we finished writing together. This will be made into a book for the classroom.

Keep you heart still, enter the silence of nature and let me know what you find out there.

Joy to you 

Chandi

Divine Mother's Everywhere

 At the Living Wisdom School, the Month of May is a tribute to our Mothers.
About 8 years ago I began the tradition in our school of honoring our mothers, as a way of providing a platform for the children to express their love on Mother’s Day. 

  

Each year the children meticulously draw their moms’ portraits for our

 “Hall of Mothers". 

They also participated in a classroom interview, answering questions such as, “How did God make mothers?”; “If you could change anything about your mom, what would it be?”; and, “What are moms made of?” The questions always draw delightful smiles and insights into the child’s inner life.

Quiet moment reading the interview questions.

 The children in my classroom spend the week preparing the menu for the Mother’s Day Tea, practicing the songs that we will sing during our all-school performance, making delightful gifts, and practicing the art of manners and serving their mothers first at the tea table.

Serving our Mother's

Preparing our salad for the Mother's Day Tea

All the children singing at the Mother's Day Tea

 For the first time this year, we set up a photo booth so that moms could have their photos taken with their children. 

I am hoping that the joy and vibration from our simple event touched all of our divine mothers everywhere. 

Aum, Namaste.

March comes in like a Lion and out like a Lamb.

March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb?

The month has been full of activities but I have been going in slow motion it seems in March. 

This photo I took early in the month of March. The sun in Seattle is just beginning to break through the clouds but we are still having inconsistent weather patterns. Maybe I'm having inconsistent weather patterns too? 

  But there is always time for a quiet story on stormy spring days. 

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

Come gather round for a wonderful story." 

My last entry I wanted to share with you one of my favorite spiritual books for young children. This delightful book is all about energy and color. 

The book is entitled: The Great Blueness and other predicaments by Arnold Lobel. This is a sweet story about a color, energy and how light effects us in our environment. It may be out of print but I recommend that you order it from the Library. 

I don't want to give away the story too much. This is the joyful wizard after he has created all the magical colors of paint. 

This story lives on my bookshelf of " Chandi's favorites.

May your heart be filled with gladness this spring.

  I hope you all enjoy the last few days of March as April gently rolls in.

What color is your natural love's heart energy today?

 I am soon to be celebrating my tenth year of teaching at The Living Wisdom

School which began on April 17th, 2002. I founded the
school as the Living Wisdom Preschool in Lynnwood, Washington,
with three students. The school incorporated into a non-profit in the fall of 2006.
We have grown successfully each year and are now well over 40 students in
our school in Shoreline, Washington.

I have written curriculum for teaching spirituality and yoga for young children now for about 15 years through our Living Wisdom Summer Yoga Camps, group outings, and our Sunday School curriculum.

The activity I am writing about today was created by my very first students

in the early years of the preschool. It has deep-seated roots in yogic
philosophy; the inspiration for this activity came from a small book
called  "Do it Now" by J. Donald Walters. This little book has 366 practical
ways to improve your life and is a perennial guide for body, mind and spirit.

Time and time again, this is one of the students' most favorite activities of the year. It permeates all that we do in our yoga sessions, art explorations and for a intuitive way to view our general well being in the classroom at any given moment. 

 This activity is given to older preschool children or Kindergarten age. The children are paired up with students that they aren't naturally drawn to play with ever day. They are given six bottles, a large water container, two small containers to mix colors in, and two drops of food coloring. They have to work with their partners to create six different colors using only the two drops of food coloring.

During the process many delightful things begin to happen. The children are given the opportunity to work closely together to solve problems. If,  after mixing, two bottles are exactly alike, that they have mixed, they have to slowly pour out one of the bottles to create a new transformed color.

As a teacher, it always amazes me to watch this process on many levels. At the end of the process, we line all the colors along our window sill in the classroom.  The colors of the rainbow are components of what may be called your “energy body.”  These colors have different rates of vibrations, and harmonize with our energy field in the body. At several different moments during the day, we actually go over to our bottles and chat about where are energy is today.

Is our energy from our heart "green"for healing, or growth? Is our energy red for cheerfulness, love, or laughter. Is it "pink" for the expanded heart of our love? Is it "blue" for calmness? Is it "yellow" for wisdom? Is it "orange" for creativity and a fiery enthusiasm? Is it "violet" for high thoughts and kind thoughts to others today?  Is it "indigo" for pure feelings, devotion, love of beauty? Or is it the "white" for  the blend of all the seven colors of the rainbow: all-forgiving innocence, mental clarity,  and a heart that is kept open to the needs of others?

What color is your energy today? 

But most importantly for the young child it is their ability to feel their heart's natural love and how they can uplift their consciousness and thoughts to expand their love to others. Sometimes I love to watch them talk about how the colors make them feel -- or I will just catch them setting by the colors and talking about all kinds of things. 

 

Here the children are creating color charts for their healing food booklets. 

We are all so affected with colors and our natural settings. What color is your natural love's heart energy today? Share this with your children. Explore the opportunities and let me know what happens for your classroom or family setting.

In the next couple of days I will share with your some of the selected books that go along with this theme.

Please stay tuned later this week. 

Joy to you!

Our love from the heart.

A day in photos. 

The Queen of hearts made some tarts on Valentines Day.

The knight of hearts stole the tarts and took them all away.

Where did the hearts go?

We had a great day in the Nora's Preschool class with all our friends. 

Hey, where are you going with those tarts?

All the tarts were shared with all our friends at Living Wisdom School. 

Happy Valentines Day

Dancing in thy light

Our new rainbow maker. Uses stored solar energy to turn the crystal that send rainbows though the whole classroom.

We have been exploring in our classroom new ways of using light. We just received a new rainbow maker in our class for Christmas. This has been so much fun. The solar energy is stored through the light shield,  thus in turn propels the motor, that turns the crystal at the bottom, which creates our rainbows. Wow. We have rainbows all though our classroom. It has been so warm and sunny this week in Seattle. We are blessed to have dancing rainbows on the ceilings and floor. It feels so good!  Sometimes I just look up and breath in the beauty with all the sparkling colors. I can imagine the memories that this is creating for my students.

The rainbows are hard to catch from ceiling to floor. 

Another area that we have been exploring is the light reflected in rocks and crystals. We are gathering rocks to build a rock garden soon in our playground area.

These are the rocks that we collected this week. We were washing them, sorting them by colors, size and what type of rocks. 

 I also love to teach children all about crystals, light, healing and energy. We have a crystal basket where all the crystals are arranged in a display like a color wheel. I use the color wheels in many different situations. I like our room to be arranged with rainbows of colors and light. 

This is a beautiful book written by Peggy Christian about how to find a rock. We read this for our morning circle time and then went outside to explore all the many different rocks we could find. 

To conclude today was our full moon party and we created pastel moonlight paintings.The children had a wonderful time making them and they turned out beautiful.

It never fails me how children spark my imagination as a teacher. They also just seem to know my favorite subjects to teach. I love beauty, calmness and light in the early childhood classroom.  

 You might try some of these projects and let me know how it is going in your home or classroom.

Joy to you