Hari Om Parents,
Today was the third class of Balavihar!! Here is the summary of what we covered in the class today:
Opening Prayers: All of us assembled in our classroom 'Giridhari', we all sat in a circle crisscrossing our legs, hands together in Namaskar pose, kept our eyes closed, and then we all chanted three OMs and then chanted the Opening Prayers - Sahana Vavatu. And then we explained the meaning of every line in the opening prayer and we repeated it 3 times to help kids memorize.
Slokha time : Learnt new Ganesha Slokha - We explained the meaning word by word and chanted it 3 times together.
Ekadantam Mahakayam
Lambodaragajananam
Vignanasakaram Devam
Herambam Pranamamyaham
Kids happily re-capped everything about Lord Ganesh which we learnt in the first class.
Attendance: Attendance was taken and each kid responded by saying 'Hari Om'. We had full attendance today.
Introduction of the Letter of the day : We dicussed what we learnt from last class about God and why we need a sweet mind And that we can become Sweet people when we develop a Sweet mind and we develop Sweet Mind when we attain special qualities which we can learn by learning the Vedanta alphabet and this will help us to connect with God easily.
We explained that Letter 'A '- is for Aspiration means Strong determination to achieve our goal. We can fulfill our Aspiration through hard work.
Brainstorming : We asked kids the various things which start with A, kids responded by saying Apple, Aligator, Ant etc. and then discussed what Aspiration means, we pronouned it together and explained what it means. Then we asked each kid to tell us what they want to become when they grow big. And what Aim means and what a Goal is and that we can achieve it only by hard work and by working towards our goal.
We got very interesting answers about what kids want to become when they grow big.
Story Time: Through the story of the Best Archer - Arjuna from Mahabharata and Dronacharya's test,we learnt that Arjuna became the best Archer by his hard work and rigourous practice and steadfast determination. And we concluded that Single pointed focus is needed to achieve our goal.
Activity: Game : Yes, I Can Reach My Goal! We played a game of Low Five, Medium Five and Hi Five, with each kid coming over to each teacher and giving us a Low Five, Medium Five and and bigger Hi-Five - each kid tried their best to jump and reach out to give a bigger Hi- Five. Through this game we learnt that we should not keep our goal too low or too high, but aspire for something which is in our means and for which we can work hard consistenly and achieve our aspiration.
Then we assembled in the prayer hall and chanted together BG Ch 3, verse 1 and 2. (We will learn more from next class onwards.) And then we together performed the Sarawathi pooja and then ended the session with the Pledge.
It was another very interactive class with kids, all of the kids participated very well. Kids looked colorful and cute in their festive best for Pooja today.
We will be sharing the audio recording of the Opening prayers and Ganesh slokha in the whatsapp group, please make kids practice at home. The coloring sheet for Letter A - will be provided in the next class.
Note: Next class is on Oct 16th, 2022, you can bring kids directly to room Giridhari(near the water fountain) by 9:15 a.m. and then pick them up from the Prayer Hall after Aarti & Pledge. Please ensure kids have a folder to keep all of the coloring sheets provided. We will check the completed coloring sheets from earlier classes in the next class.
Have a wonderful week ahead!
Pranams
Mahalakshmi & Chandarani.
