Hari Om Parents,
Warm welcome to the Balavihar 2021-2022 calendar year (Grade 5) !!
We have an enthusiastic group of children in this year's Grade 5 Sunday AM class. We as teachers are excited and looking forward to a delightful session every weekend.
Each weekend we will try and provide you an update of the activities that we covered during the Balavihar session. Please do go through the same and provide us feedback on anything else that we could add to make this a fun activity for your child.
This blog covers the first three Balavihar sessions – 19th Sep, 26th Sep, and 03rd Oct for 2021-2022 calendar year.
1. Opening Prayers
We started our class with three OMs followed by the following prayers:
- Om Sahana Vavatu
- Vakratunda Mahakaaya
- Saraswathi Namastubhyam
- Guru Brahma Gurur Vishnu
2. Icebreaker/ Introductions
In our first Balavihar class we did brief introductions and the children talked about themselves, their favorite activity / sports, what they did during the summer.
3. Curriculum this year:
- Mahabharat – Part I, we cover stories till Viraat Parva
- India Sacred Land: Sage
- Slokas – Ajam Nirvikalpam
- Slokas – Ganesh Pancharatna
- Bhajans – Jai Jagadeesh hare Aarthi
- Bhajans - Sri Chinmaya Aarthi
4. Gita Chanting:
We watched a video of how to pronounce Sanskrit svara and vyanjanas and 15 keywords selected from Bhagavad Gita Chapter 2 - Part 2
Children repeated these to practice saying them the right way
In our Balavihar sessions so far, we covered Gita - Chapter 2, verses 39- 42
5. Ganesha Pancharatnam - We learnt till the third verse of this stotra
6. Discussion on Guru Parampara, as the first step to learning about the Saints of India:
- Who is a Guru?
- What is the importance of a Guru in one's life?
- The Guru Shishya tradition in India
- We shared the link to the Google sign-up sheet with the parents via the WhatsApp group for the kids to pick a Saint that they would like to research and talk about in our class
- We will chart the values that these Saints stood for, and then each kid will select the value(s) that they learned, which they want to adopt, practice, and we will discuss the progress with respect to those value(s), share experiences in the class
7. The Mahabharata:
Overview of the story -
Vyasa narrated to Lord Ganesha, taught his disciples – Sumanta, Jaimini, Paila, Vaishamapayana, and his son Suka. This has been part of oral tradition. This is a story within a story format. Vaishamapayana narrates this to Janamejaya, the great-grandson of Arjuna during 'sarpasatra' in Naimisharanya.
Story so far-
We start at the point of King Shantanu ruling Hastinapura. Eager to marry Ganga, he promises to never question her acts, however bizarre. Once married, they have seven children, each of whom Ganga drowns soon after birth. Unable to stop himself, he questions her when she is about to drown the eighth child as to why she was being so cruel? As he broke his promise, she leaves him after explaining that these are the eight vasus who plotted to steal the holy cow Nandini and were cursed by Sage Vasishta to be born as humans. The eighth child, Devavrata, was the vasu who initiated the theft and was hence cursed to live longer on Earth.
Ganga takes him with her, trains him in all arts necessary to be King and at the appropriate age, has Devavrata meet Shantanu again. Shantanu is very happy to have such an accomplished son who would rule the kingdom after him.
One day, Shantanu ventures out and finds Satyavati, a fisherwoman and the local chief's daughter. He asked her father for her hand in marriage, but he (the father) stipulates that it can happen only if Satyavati's son is made king after Shantanu. Unwilling to take away Devavrata's right to the throne, Shantanu sadly walks away. Learning of this, Devavrata makes the marriage between Satyavati and Shantanu happen - He vows to never marry and to always protect the kingdom and king of Hastinapura. This fearsome vow earns him the name Bheeshma and the blessing of "death at desired moment" from his father.
Shantanu and Satyavati have two sons – Chitrangada and Vichitravirya. Chitrangada dies after combat with a Gandharva of his same name. When Vichitravirya attains appropriate age, Bheeshma gets the daughters of King of Kashi - Amba, Ambika, and Ambalika to marry Vichitravirya forcefully from their swayamvara. Amba not accepted by King Shalya, and Bheeshma refuses to marry her, distressed Amba leaves to seek revenge. Penance gets boon from Shiva to be born as Shikhandi and would slay Bheeshma.
Vichitravirya marries Ambika & Ambalika. Vichitravirya's dies without any children/ heir to Kuru dynasty. Satyavati calls her son Sage Vyasa (Dwaipayana) to help her beget children to Vichitravirya's wives. He was a very unkempt sage, ugly face, with matted hair and long fingernails. His appearance scared Ambika and she closed her eyes. Because of this - she gave birth to a blind child, Dhritarashtra. Ambalika turned pale at the sight of the sage, and she gave birth to a pale child, Pandu. Satyavati asked Ambika to approach the sage again, but she sent her maid instead. The maid was respectful and was blessed with an intelligent, wise child, Vidura.
The Kuru family tree was discussed and revisited, starting with Shantanu.
8. Resources:
Your child can read:
§ Kamala Subramaniam's "Mahabharata", available on Amazon and Kindle
§ Amar Chitra Katha
§ YouTube channel, "Epified- The Mahabharata", has bite-sized videos of the stories.
We concluded our class with Aarti, Shanti Mantra, and Chinmaya Mission pledge.
Looking forward to meeting the children on Sunday, 17th Oct 2021.
Pranaams,
Subha Srinivas
Rekha Pai