As I have mentioned in my previous posts, Govardhana puja is one of the favorite Vaishnava festivals in our home. My children have always enjoyed making a huge Govardhana hill out of sand and earth. On one occasion, I made a needle-felted Govardhana hill that...
When we celebrate Janmashtami with little kids, we can go into playing with puppets, dressing like Krishna, Balarama, and cowherd boys, making a play scene with puppets, or a kid's altar, and reading a story. There are unlimited ways for little kids to engage them...
This June, we completed the 5th year of our homeschooling. It's the year the children got the capacity to do more academic learning, and we did less playing with puppets and the whole-body movement games. It's a transition year from early to middle childhood, and...
Worship of Lord Jagannath is one of the most mysterious and delightful features of the Indian religious culture, without a doubt. It's an important part of the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition for us, the followers of Lord Caitanya, containing the essence of His teachings about prema-bhakti...
One of the fundamental parent's roles is to protect a child from unnecessary, unhealthy, and harmful experiences. That would include too much sensory stimulation like screen exposure, inappropriate content in literature and on screens, eating fast food, degrading association of aggressive and sinful individuals, and...
When children are young, I do not prefer to analyze spiritual stories and philosophy with them. Young children learn the best through hands-on activities, storytelling, and play. Their intellect is not yet developed to analyze complex subjects. As my children transition from lower grades to...
It's the beginning of the month of Kartik, a sweet time to spend with children doing special services for the Lord, like making and offering ghee lamps and singing the Damodarashtaka song. Children like this time of the year when we all sit together with...
Our vision of education When people hear that we homeschool our children, at first they are stuck with wonder. How is it possible that children can learn anything without school? Well, there is a significant percentage of families in the world who have homeschooled their children...
For our family, summertime means spending time in the garden and on the bank of the river Tisa. We have a piece of land (1200 square feet) where we grow our vegetables, with quite a few fruit trees here and there. Before starting to grow...
In our endeavors to give our children Krishna consciousness, we should pay attention to the child's needs according to its temperament, interests, and developmental stage. It's important to know that young children have sensitive senses, an undeveloped ability to think abstractly, and a great need...