Bal 1 - It Worked!

This week in Bal 1 there were a few prasangs about Gunatitanand Swami. One was when he drank milk before his mom, Sakarba, offered it to Thakorji and then Thakorji had milk on his lips.

What really worked was getting very animated and saying: he was hungry he said Mama Mama I am soooo hungry I want some .....

Rub your tummy while you say this and you will not even have to ask the kids to fill in the blank. When we did this we had a ton of hands fly in the air as each kid said what their favorite food was.

It worked!

Bal 1 - It Worked!

Last month we had session on building Mandirs. It emphasized the reasons to build, how to build, prasangs of kids sacrificing (can collection in London). We had a regional shibir so we knew attendance was going to be light. My wife the Balika 1 Sanchalika suggested we use the Mandir coffee table book as source. This worked to an extent. The pictures were amazing, but the kids complained of not being able to see. If we had a full house this would not have worked.

Since our head count was low (about 30%) we decided on an activity. Again my wife the balika 1 Sanchalika suggested using plastic cups to build the Mandir or play a stacking game. This sounded like a great idea, but she took all the plastic cups in the pantry for her sabha. So we went with plan B, having the kids use index cards to build a Mandir. It Worked! Maybe a bit too well. The kids got so involved that we were running out of time for snacks. So we fed them while they kept building. Nobody went out for play time. We built Mandirs and cleaned up right until Aarti. Evidence below.

Retention Remixed: Wheel of Fortune

For last month's sabha, a fellow sabhaologist shared with us a unique way to present the monthly retention game by adapting Wheel of Fortune.

Rules

• Create 2-3 teams depending on number of present. 
• Each spins the wheel:  http://www.unpracticalmath.com/applets/virtual_spinner.html
• The wheel has six sections labeled with numbers 1-6.
• #1-5 represented satsang-related questions with #6 being trivia.
• Points were awarded based on the level of difficulty.
• If a question is missed, the next team gets a chance to answer.
• Missing the question results in the next team getting the turn to spin - not the one who got a chance to steal.
• If all teams pass the steal, answer is announced and turn passes. 
• Answers must be started within 15 seconds of the question ending. 

The game worked well until the issue of stealing questions came up when teams found it unfair that they forfeit their turn to spin if they miss the question which was not theirs initially, so we decided that next time, teams should not be penalized for trying to answer a question that was not theirs initially.

A little ingenuity can go a long way to make this monthly game memorable, so feel free to share with us your remixes.