What is Shlokathon?
Shlokathon is a voluntary, self-paced chanting program.
What chanting is done in the Shlokathon program?
The chanting learned consists of prayers, both shlokas and stotrams, from the Stotrams and Prayers book and from the Slokathon books.
The shlokas and stotrams have been grouped into twelve groups. Students are to learn how to chant these with good pronunciation and diction, and memorize them too.
What are the Shlokathon awards?
For recognizing student’s achievement with each individual shloka and stotram in the Stotrams and Prayers book, they receive
a sticker that can be affixed on the stickers page of that book.
When students complete all the prayers in one Shlokathon group, they receive a plaque to mark this achievement at the Annual Day celebrations in May.
How is student achievement tested?
There are four testing dates in every Bala Vihar year, usually on the third Sunday of January, February, March and April.
Testing for the different groups is self-paced and cumulative. All prayers in a single group need not be tested for at one time,
or even in one school year. The chanting is done individually to a single sevika (Bala Vihar teacher).
Where is the chanting learned?
All Bala Vihar classes teach chanting. Please see curriculum for details for each class.
There is a Shlokathon class offered, where the pace is faster than in the Bala Vihar classes. This class is held every
Sunday in room 6 between 0935 and 0955. All students are welcome to attend. At home with parent’s guidance.
All students may buy the CD that has all the prayers in the Stotrams and Prayers book for $5 and use it as an invaluable learning aid.
Why chant?
Chanting
- Develops pure samskaras in the form of purification of mind – chitta shuddhi
- Produces vibrations that produce a positive impact on the individual and the family
- Provides us exposure to the sounds in our scriptures
- Develops in us the ability to produce these sounds
- Could inspire in us the desire to explore the meaning of the teachings in our scriptures
- Could give us a sense of cultural identity, both as individuals and as part of a larger group
- Enables us to develop our memorization skills and develop and use our memory bank
- Equips us with tools that may be used in meditation, like the ability to sit erect with minimal extraneous physical movements, the ability to collect our thoughts and keep them in tune with our verbal and auditory actions, the ability to focus our minds on one sequence of thought or one thought
- Provides us exposure to the Samskrit language
- Gives us an opportunity to make lateral linguistic connections with our mother tongue language and other Indo-European languages
- Develops in us subtle listening skills, the ability to hear light and heavy guttural, palatal, lingual, dental and labial sounds
Please click here for Shlokathon-Groups
