Dear Parents and Children,
Hari om! Today was our first class that commences Balavihar classes for Grade 1, Sunday 12:45 PM batch. Aruna and Priya will be your child's Balavihar teachers for this year. It was wonderful to meet you and your child.
In today's class, we did a quick review of goals and curriculum with you and your child. Children will learn Bala Ramayana this year including Geeta chanting, daily prayers, Guru Stotram & bhajans. We will be also doing lots of fun-filled activities while learning like coloring, games, quizzes, yoga, meditation & activity related to festivals. Details on goals, shlokas and bhajans planned to be covered were discussed, and are shared below. This also includes Geeta chanting verses planned to be covered this year. We also talked about some class etiquettes on logging in 5 minutes before class, taking restroom breaks before class, and no snacking during class. The lesson agenda for each week was reviewed - Below are the details. Today's agenda was unique as it was the first day of class.
Agenda for each class:
- Chanting OM three times with Opening prayers
- Attendance
- Bhajans/Slokas
- Yoga
- Geeta Chanting
- Quiet Time
- Refresh from Last Class
- Story Time
- Activity of the day (Coloring/Games/Crafts)
- Closing Prayers
Next, we went around the zoom class where each child would talk about their favorite God, what they enjoyed during summer break, what they like about BV and anything specific they would like to share with their Balavihar buddies. This was to get to know your child and for them to know their teacher and classmates.
Next, we started with Opening Prayer and requested the children to repeat after the teacher. We talked about the meaning of the shloka. We talked about having an erect posture with legs in criss cross applesauce. We did a quiet time game activity where they would listen for the falling bangle with their eyes closed.
We talked about Prince Rama, his journey to Lanka and back. And we wondered why he had to make this trip to Lanka and back. The story narration started with a story on Ayodhya and the meaning of the word Ayodhya, and why it was called that way. We discussed about the ruler of Ayodhya, King Dasaratha and his wives. The children learnt about how Dasaratha was sad as he had no children. We talked about how when we have problems, we go to someone to help solve the problem. In their case, they may go to their parents. In school, we go to our teacher. Here. Dasaratha goes to his Guru, Vashishta for help. Vashishta takes Dasaratha to another sage who proposes that they do a Yaga. We stopped there and plan to continue the story next week.
Request to parents:
As a follow-up, the kids can think of a problem they encountered and how they solved it. Children did an activity of printing and coloring the cover page for their book. Please help your child glue a cover page to their notebook and share pictures on WhatsApp groups.
Next, was geeta chanting activity. Today's focus was to give children context of the Gita chanting Chapter 2 and verses. Here, Lord Krishna is responding to Arjuna's questions and his grief. We did the closing prayers.
Children were directed to join the main parent zoom session for the Aarti and conclusion.
