Hari Om Parents,
We had the 9th class of Balavihar. Here is the summary of what we covered in the class today:
Opening Prayers & Sloka: We started with three OMs and then proceeded with Opening Prayers - Sahana Vavatu, Vakratunda Mahakaya, Saraswati Namastubhyam, Krishnaya Vasudevaya, Ramaya Ramabadraya and Samudravasene Devi.
Yoga: Children did Thoppukaranam, Vrikshasana, Bhujangasana and learnt the butterfly pose (Baddha Konasan)
Attendance : Attendance was taken and each kid responded by saying Hari Om.
Recap : We sang the Alphabet song until F and reviewed what each of the words meant; Children responded beautifully.
Exploration time : We introduced G for God and also G for Guru. We discussed who God is, how many Gods are there, how we see God etc... Some children recollected Day 1 story where we had said that God is one who can make a brown cow , eat green grass and make her produce white milk and also that only with a Sweet mind one can see God! Children were asked who Guru is and we got some interesting answers. We explained that Guru is one who has read the Shastras, Scriptures and helps to remove ignorance and bring us closer to lord. Guru like a gardener and the flowers. The gardener does not create the flowers, he only facilitates the blossoming through watering, etc
Through the class, we got some interesting questions and we did cover the below points :
- There is only one God and He has the power to take any form (just like transformer toys), Lord Vishnu has taken different forms such as fish, turtle, boar, dwarf, and human.
- When God comes down on earth as a human, he pretends to be human so even though he has lots of powers to do many things – he does not show those powers.( Like in the Spiderman movie – Spiderman does not use his powers when he is in ordinary clothes, only when he wears Spiderman clothes)
- God does so many things, and for every different thing - we have given God a different name and shape and form and costume, hence we have so many forms of Gods.
We learnt the song, Krishna here, Krishna there, Krishna Krishna everywhere, God is one, God is one, God is one for everyone with some actions. Change Krishna to Rama (Bow and Arrow), Saraswati (Veena), Ganesha (Ear and trunk) etc...
Activity 1 : Kids drew pictures of various things which they believe are God's blessings. We discussed that we can express our gratitude and show our gratefulness to God by 'praying'. Then we discussed the various ways to pray to God : by chanting slokas, singing bhajans, reciting God's name, doing abhishekam, meditation etc. We also discussed prasadam and we take it like God himself is giving something which is good for us, we should not complain about it and you have to eat it.
Activity 2 : We played an Obstacle course game, We created an obstacles using bags, and jackets, and a couple of kids were blindfolded and had to walk from one end to the other end, and the rest of the kids acted as 'Guru 's guiding them to walk through the obstacles and reach the other end
We did the closing prayers and disbursed for Radha Kalyanam.
Next class is on 22nd Dec.
Pranams,
Shreya and Veda
