Today's Balvihar class began with opening prayers followed by the learning of the 6th shloka of Gurustortram.
We then continued with Mahabharata narration.
We began with Sanjaya returning to Hastinapura after speaking to the Pandavas. He lets Dhritarashtra know that the Pandavas as willing to forgo war in exchange for 5 villages. Duryodhana is angry and puts his foot down that he will never give them anything despite the pleas of Bheeshma, Drona and Vidura. Dhritarashtra consults Sanjaya about his own lack of peace of mind and inability to sleep. Sanjaya tells him about the differences between the minds of someone following and someone not following Dharma. Krishna comes to Hastinapura with the hope of making Duryodhana see reason. He stays in Vidura's house. When he meets with everyone in the Hastinapura court and reasons with them, all the elders including Dhritarashtra beg Duryodhana to heed advise and give the Pandavas the five villages. Duryodhana refuses saying that he will not give them land the size of a point of a needle and is so angry that he decides to imprison Krishna himself. At that point Krishna reveals his Vishwaroopa.
At this point we had a discussion with the kids about the influence of friends and family on Duryodhana's character. The kids offered several different perspectives on this.
We had an activity - quiz, fill in the blanks, true or falsse etc based on the previous 2 classes.
This was followed by learning Bhagwad Gita chapter 2 shlokas 5-6.
We ended with the pledge.
