Hari Om! Parents,
Week 3 of Balavihar class began with the class doing a deep breathing exercise and Om chanting. After "Sahana vavatu" the children learnt the second and third verses of "Sri Ganesha stavah" (pg 28, My Prayers). This prayer was recited by Rishi Garga in praise of Lord Ganesha. We will continue to learn the complete song over the next few weeks. Please remind your child to practice and memorise the prayer.
Mahabharata
We had a quick recap of the story covered so far with a short multiple choice quiz. We heard the stories of Kripacharya, the primary archery guru for the Pandavas and Kauravas. Then we introduced Dhrona who teaches them the advanced level of archery. Also learned about Ekalavya.
Saints of India
Today we learned about Guru Parmapara and two of our great Saints, our Pujya Gurudev , Swami Chinmayananda and his guru Swami Sivananda. Swami Sivananda was born as Kuppuswamy in Tamilnadu, studied medicine in Thanjavur medical College and worked in Malaysia as a doctor. Later after turning to spirituality also he continued to serve people curing them through his medicine as well as spirituality. The key values followed by Swami Sivananda were Serve all , Be devoted , Work tirelessly and Be compassionate.
Pujya Gurudev was born as Balakrishna Menon in Kerala. He studied Science and law, worked as a journalist, and actively participated in Freedom Struggle. He always reasoned and in an effort to expose the Saints went to the Himalayas but on the contrary he was convinced of Vedanta. He got transformed as Swami Chinmayananda and he transformed millions of people world wide through the messages of the Bhagavad Gita. The key values followed by Pujya Gurudev were Be relentless, Be loving, Be disciplined, Be punctual. We also briefly spoke about Mahatma Gandhiji as our class coincided with Gandhi Jayanthi.
Also, one of the students, Riya, made an excellent presentation about Saint Tyagaraja. She had dressed up as the Saint and had also a few lines from his compositions.
Activity
We have requested the students to pick one value from the 16 values followed by our Saints (from the ones covered so far in our lessons) and apply that in daily life. They may note down one example of how they followed the value (the one same value picked) each day, in their notebook over the week.
Geeta Chanting
2 shlokas of Chapter 2 covered today through Swamiji's Gita chanting video.
Class material needed: notebook, pencil, Balavihar Handbook, My Prayers book. Your child can also read from C Rajagopalachari's "Mahabharata" or Kamala Subramaniam's "Mahabharata". Both these books are available on Amazon.
Pranam
