Lesson 3
Journey to the Home of Snow
a slide show

 

Objective : to allow children to build on their mental images from the
previous visualization, to extend each child’s awareness of what the Indian Sub-continent and the Himalayas look like, to elicit questions and comments, to encourage curiosity.

Points to make

(slides 1-4)
Asia, largest continent, India close to equator, so warm

(5-14)
Some large, and crowded cities
Rice grown in countryside
Old religions with many gods, old beautiful buildings
Different languages, different customs (festival)
Animals we don’t often see
Might like to learn more, but not stopping here …

(15-19)
We’re on a journey to the mountains
Entering the foothills – cooler
Peaks far away, sometimes visible, sometimes not
Mist in valleys, terraced land for agriculture

(20-24)
Going deeper into the valleys, higher up the slopes
Little villages, swift streams, peaks closer
Leave behind the last human homes

(25-28)
Yaks carrying loads, snow sometimes blown off,
sometimes a river of ice,
Sometimes deep

(29-34)
On top of the highest mountains we find signs of people,
What do they leave? PRAYERS (ancient homes of the gods)
Prayer flags left in holy places, as a gift, as a good luck charm

(35-43)
Who are the people who leave the flags, not only village dwellers,
There are crowded cities in some valleys, there are farmers,
mothers, fathers, children, students, monks

(44- end)
A very religious people, prayers everywhere in many forms,
to many different gods
in the wind,
turned by wheels,
in the light of lamps,
paintings full of prayers,
buildings, monasteries, where monks live together to learn and pray
alone (meditating), together,
even dancing!

Discussion: what pictures surprised you? Which stay in your mind?
Where would you like to be?

Images for slides come from photographs in these books:

Pluckrose, Henry, Picture a Country - India. Franklin Watts. 1998.
Kalman, Bobbie.  India the Land,   Crabtree.  1990
Lanchester, Ka Tai, Montgomery, Herman, Tibet, Guidebook Company, 1988.
The Silk Road, Chartwell Books,  1988.
Reynolds, Jan, Himalaya, Vanishing Cultures, Harcourt,Brace, Jovanovich, 1991.
Wright, Alison, The Spirit of Tibet – Portrait of a Culture in Exile, Snow Lion Publications 1998.
Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, Nepal - Journey to High Asia 2006,  calendar.

And these websites:

www.allposters.com
www.asianart.com/mandalas
www.ancientindia.co.uk/buddha/story
www.euronet.nl/users/e_wesker/photo.html
www.travel-himalayas.com/himalayas-pictures/
www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/buda/hd_buda.htm
www.college.holycross.edu/orgs/himalayan_cultures