Hari Om!
Dear parents,
We extend a warm welcome to all the new and returning students and parents! It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to work with your children this year. We had a very engaging first class, Happy to have a great set of kids, well behaved and eager to participate!. Please find the summary of our first class.
Opening prayers:
Om Sahana Vavatu
Om Sri Ganeshaya NamaH
Om Sri Saraswatyai NamaH
Om Sri Sadgurubhyo NamaH
Vasudevasutam Devam (Krishna Shloka)
Bhagavat Gita: Swamiji's brief overview of 2nd chapter and Sanskrit Pronunciation practice video
Aarati and Pledge : Zoom meeting
Next Balavihar class: 9/24/2021
We started with a round of introduction and got to know what their favorite sport and interests are. It was interesting to see wide variety of sport fans in the class. As an icebreaker and warm up activity , we played a scavenger hunt game where the kids were asked to look for specific things in the house and gather all of them in a 5 minute window. It was refreshing to see the creative juices flowing in how the objects were chosen and explained. We hope it was fun activity for the kids.
We then spent few minutes explaining the curriculum to the kids. Our Curriculum is "Yato Dharma Tato Jayah!" (where there is Dharma, there is Victory) The goal of this is to teach the concepts of Karma and Dharma. We will covers the sins to be given up by body, mind and speech. Through discussions, we will analyze key characters from the Mahabharata story. When we move to the concepts of Dharma, will cover Sanathana Dharma values given by Manu Bhagvan focused on living a life of Dhrama. We will also bring in the values described in Chapter 1 of Bhagavad-Gita as we discuss the concepts of Dharma.
Through all the above, we explain to the children the roadmap to a life of success.
We also explained the format of the class, usual agenda and expectations. We will be flexible with the agenda but try to follow a pre-set plan.
We later moved on to a game/quiz based on the family tree of Kuru Dynasty from Mahabharata. We had good participation and engagement from all. This hopefully helped refresh their memory of important characters and sequences from the great epic of Mahabharata.
We will focus on learning the second half of the 2nd chapter of Bhagavadgita 'Sankha Yoga' this year. As a primer to the Gita shlokas that we will start learning next week, we played a short Sanskrit pronunciation video. We then closed the class with everyone joining the main Aarthi zoom call.
We look forward to seeing the kids again next week with interesting topics. Until then, stay safe and healthy!
Pranam,
Mythili and Anandi( Friday grade 8 Sevikas)