Sixty children attended a fabulous 5 days of fun, friendship and learning at the Children’s Holiday Program (CHP). This year the theme was Maha Bharata and Brni Nivedita stated way back with King Shantanu and Ganga Devi each day crossed the generations to the mighty Pandavas and the wicked Kauravas. Such an entrancing story! The children learnt about half of Mantra Pushpam and sounded really great! Then off to yoga and this year uncle Rick got the older group stretching and relaxing, while Sabu and Nivedita handled the wiggly younger ones.

The children enjoyed a fun rotating program of cooking with the mums Prija, Devika and Shanti, art and craft making, flying sorcerers, drama with Angie (always a hit!), dance with Nandini and the JC girl and an amazing session with Paaree and Shyamini creating a human percussion orchestra! The afternoon was swimming in the Ashram pool and for the non-swimmers we had an amazing seahorse wading pool which was extremely popular! This alternated with stories of famous Bhaktas from the Bhagavatam taken by the JC’s. This included fun activities such as friendship bands, rangolis a star mobile jewellery making with Anuja and potato men.

Each day we would finish with Akbar and Birbal stories and Aarti. We had about 18 Junior CHYK helpers, most of who stayed over for the week. They were just fabulous and worked really hard yet had great fun. The program could not run without them! Big thanks to everyone who helped and to the parents who prepared the evening meals for the very hungry sevaks.

Mahabharata CHP (2008) - 2

Mahabharata CHP (2008) - 1