Hari Om! Parents,
Balavihar class began with the class doing a deep breathing exercise and Shree Ram Jayaram chanting. After opening prayers, children revised Ganesha Pancharatnam. And two lines from the Pancharatnam were each assigned to the children. Those would be the lines that each kid will be singing at the monthly program. Please remind your child to practice and memorise their lines.
Mahabharata
We had a quick recap of the story covered so far . We covered these chapters of Mahabharata:
1. The Pandavas move to Kampilya- The King, Drupatha Draupati's father decided to do a Swayamvara to find Arjuna and give draupati's hand in marriage to him. The KIng placed a mighty bow in the Swayamvara hall. There was also placed a fish that was rotating on the ceiling. The suitor had to fell the target with five arrows by looking only at it's reflection on water below.
2. Draupati Swayamvara - Arjuna, disguised as the young brahmin, takes the bow, strings it with ease and aims 5 arrows in quick succession and fells the target in a moment. The other prince who failed opposed the marriage of Draupati with Arjuna since he is not a kshattriya. But eventually he fights and Krishna convinces all that he has rightfully won and the marriage to him is only fair. When the Pandavas come home with Draupati, Kunti assumes they have brought bhiksha and asks the Pandavas to share what they got. Since Kunti's words cannot fail and since Kuntil was destined to marry 5 husbands, she marries all of them. Dhristadhyuma, Draupati's brother learns the true identity of the Pandavas.Pandavas come to Panchala and ive there.
3. Panic among Kauravas - Kauravas come to know that Pndavas are alive and try to go and defeat Pandavas . But Pandavas having become stronger and being mighty defeated Kauravas instead. Realizing Pandavas cannot be defeated they invite Pandavas, the new bride and Kunti Devi to come and live in their Kingdom. However Dhritarashtra gives them half of the KIngdom, Khandavaprasta, only that was the dry, barren, infertile half of the Kingdom. Krishna calls upon Indra, the rain God and makes Khandavaprashtha fertile again. Vishwakarma, the celestial architect builds a beautiful city and the place is renamed to Indraprasta.
Saints of India
Today, one of the students, Neikita made an excellent presentation about Shri Guru Nanak. We really appreciate the effort taken by the students and the parents in helping them with the research, preparing the slides and presentation.
Activity
The Annual Program by Grade 5 kids Friday batch will be presented on Feb 26th. We discussed the plan with the kids and have decided to present the Ganesha Pancharatnam and one or two episodes from the Mahabharatha story we have learned so far. We shortlisted 'The Wax Palace' , Story of Bakasura, and 'Draupati Swayamvara' . Majority of the kids voted for 'The Wax Palace'. We also assigned two lines each to the kids to sing from the Ganesha Pancharatnam for the program.
Geeta Chanting
Shlokas 15 and 16 shlokas of Chapter 2 covered today through Swamiji's Gita chanting video.
Next Class: Next class is 1/22/2020. No class on 1/15 due to Pongal Holiday. Please encourage the children to join the Chinmaya Pongal celebrations on Jan 16, Saturday 3:30 PM to 6:30 PM.
There would be childrens' storytelling contests and various other interesting programs. The zoom link for the same is shared on Whatsapp with the parents.
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
Rashmi and Shanthi
