Hari Om Parents,
As always, we started the class with Opening prayers and chanting "Om" followed by the recitation of the Guru Sthotram.
After a quick recap of the earlier lesson, we proceeded to the lessons for today.
First we talked about the cycle of day and night and the seasons. The kids watched short time lapse videos representing this. We then talked about how the world also exists in the creation phase and the rest phase, called pralaya, and this is a cycle as well. Today's story starts in the pralaya time, just before new creation starts. Lord Brahma is born from the navel of Lord Vishnu and is responsible for creation on the earth. Lord Brahma creates Manu and Satarupa and gives them the task of helping with creation on the earth, But the earth is hidden under the oceans of the Pralaya. Lord Vishnu emerges as a Boar, or Varaha avatara, finds the earth and retrieves her to the orbit safely. As he is doing this, the demon Hiranyaksha tries to take possession of the earth. He is defeated and killed by the Lord in the Varaha avatar. The kids also watched a video depicting this story. In this connection, we discussed about how God can assume different forms as per the necessity. Each one of us, including plants, animals and insects have come with a purpose, and each one of us has to do what we have come here to do.
The next story was about Sage Kasyapa and his wife Diti. This story was explained as appropriate for the third graders. Sage Kasyapa was a great rishi and his wife was Diti. One day Diti was bored and wanted to talk and spend time with the Sage. The sage tells her that it is time for his meditation and they can talk later. However, Diti disobeys this and behaves selfishly, disturbing the sage. She soon realizes her mistake, but it's too late. As a result of her disobedience and selfishness, two rakshasas will be born to her, called Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakasipu.
We talked about the famous saying, "As you sow, so shall you reap". We explained this with simple examples about how if you sow an apple seed, you will always get an apple tree and never an avocado tree. If you do good things, you get good results and vice versa. The kids then watched another short video, the story of an ant and pigeon...how one helps another and gets help back in return when needed.
After the lesson, the kids drew a picture of Rishi Veda Vyasa. They completed the drawing in the class, and we asked them to color it after the class. Please do whatsapp the pictures to us after they are done. We would love to see them!
We practised Gita Chanting shlokas 5 and 6. The link to the video is below.
Also, in case your kids do not have a physical copy of the balavihar handbook, the link to the online handbook is below.
The handbook has all the Gita shlokas the kids will be learning in the class. Please encourage the kids to practice the shlokas in their free time.
The class concluded with Arthi, pledge and closing prayers.
We wish you all a Very Happy Diwali !
We look forward to seeing the kids on November 22nd.
Pranaam,
Vasudha & Neelima
