Bala Dainandini

An Inspirational Daily Planner for Hindu Children

Bala Dainandini is coming back in 2021!!!. Hindu calendar, dates, festivals are a huge part of the Hindu tradition. Preserving and practicing the knowledge is one of the core values of the Balagokulam shakhas. Bala Dainandini is a value add-in effort in that direction.

What exactly is Bala Dainandini?

Bala Dainandini is a wall calendar and follows the Hindu new year from Yugadi to Yugadi. So, for this year, it starts with April 2021 and goes until March 2022. 

This calendar is designed specifically for children! Each month, they can explore more about festivals in that particular month, understand various aspects of a Hindu calendar, and learn some shlokas and subhaashitams. It also allows a child to keep track of activities on a daily and weekly basis as well!

• • Hindu calendar for the whole family.
  • Knowledge to children with the theme based content (this year’s theme is ‘Hindu Calendar’).
  • Compliment to what we teach in Shakha. (Stories, Festivals, Subhashitams etc)
  • Encouragement and tool for shishu/bala to do Swadhyay.
  • Shakha is for learning but it is very important to practice those values every day and Dainandini is a way to achieve that to some extent with the daily & weekly samskar tracking.
  • Tool for parents to track Shakha samskars for kids.
  • Friends/relatives/visitors can learn about Shakha from the calendar.

What’s more in the Bala Dainandini?

Dainandini has two pages for each month, top and bottom.

Top page:

• • Brief information about the important festivals in that month. A QR code for each month pointing to the new Balagokulam website for more information.
  • Subhaashitam and Amurutvachan.
  • Content on a specific aspect of the theme. Yes! It explains the evolution of calendars to Nakshatras and everything in between for children (well, adults too).

Bottom page:
At first glance, it looks like an everyday monthly calendar, but it offers MUCH MORE for children to learn, understand and appreciate the Hindu way of the calendar.

• • Each day has tithi mentioned.
  • Each day has a picture waxing and waning moon image.
  • Festivals days have filled with related images as background. Wow!
  • Each day also includes a STAR to color important family/friends’ dates (your family birthdays, holiday trips, friends birthdays, important school days, test days etc)!!. Calendar also has extra lines for notes on the right hand side for writing school notes like homework due dates.
  • Each month has different colors (6 colors repeated).
  • Right hand side top and bottom has a bigger colorful picture related to a festival in that month.
  • Each day has check boxes (numbered a, b,…f). These correspond to the daily samskar activities that one should do. At the bottom of the page, three daily Samskars are listed a,b,c. Children can add three more of favorite samskars for empty lines d,e,f in the list. Many suggested samskars are listed on the last page of the Dainandini. Some examples are morning puja, speaking in mother tongue, etc.
    – Children are encouraged to complete daily samskars from the list.
    – Once complete, check the corresponding box for that day. Easy way to keep track of the whole month at a glance!

• • Weekly tasks table:
    There are certain bigger tasks which you can do at least once a week. Weekly samskars tasks table is there to track these samskars. Column A to F (upper case letters) represents the task and the rows 1 to 5 represents the number of the week. Like daily tasks, the weekly task table has three suggested tasks A,B and C, and space for custom tasks.
    How to track?
    – Children are encouraged to complete weekly tasks and track in weekly tasks table.

Sample draft pages

  Top page:

 Bottom page:

How can I get mine?

Bala Dainandini will be available starting March 2021. Contact your local Shakha/Balagokulam to get yours!

Price:

Between $5 and $10/calendar.