Welcome Back to Balavihar 2013-2014

September 15, 2013

Hari Om!

 

A very warm welcome to all old and new families. We have a very enthusiastic bunch of kids in the 7th grade class this year. The syllabus for this year is P.O.Box Mr.God, Keys to success. Since this was our first class, we introduced ourselves to each other and played some ice-breaker games. The children said some fun facts about themselves and their likes and dislikes. We discussed as to what they like about Balavihar. We explored a few questions on God: 1) who is god, 2) where is god and 3) writing a letter to god. The children had different answers for these questions from

"God is a spiritual being who brings good to the world", "God is faith" ", "God is Paramatma" and "God is a force of Energy". For  the second question on where is God, the children came up with "God is within us", "God is in heaven", "God is Everywhere". On what they would write in a letter to god, they wanted to ask, "why school started early", "to bring peace to the world", " to become the president of the united states", "how the universe started", "happiness and peace". We will be expanding further on these questions during the course of our lessons and will re-visit them at the end of our last lesson and compare the answers with the one from today. We concluded the class with a Closing Payer.

September 22, 2013

Hari Om!

 

For our second class, we started with an opening prayer " Om Sahanaa vavatu" and went over the meaning of the prayer. We spoke about the authors of Ramayana and the different languages in which they composed Ramayana. We discussed the motivation for these authors to compose Ramayana in various languages. We went over the story of Valmiki which all of them knew and discussed how people are uplifted by good company. As the syllabus P O Box Mr.God has been developed from Ram Charit Manas, we spoke about Tulsidas's version of the Ramayana, the kandas, the dohas and the chaupais. In the Ayodhya Kanda of the Ram Charit Manas, Tulsidas tells the story of how Rama comes to the Valmiki Ashram during his exile and asks the great sage,

"Muniraja, I am looking for a nice place to stay, and can you tell me where I should build my kutia". Valmiki smiles at this question and replies, can you first tell me where you are not; then I shall tell you where you can stay." We will be exploring Valmiki's answers to Rama's question in the following lessons and try to understand the address of God.

 

As part of the curriculum this year, the children will be learning the Mantra Pushpam, Geeta Dhyana Shlokam and Na Karmana. We started with Mantra Pushpam today going over what "Mantra pushpam" means,  the different vedas, the concept of shruti and why and when it is chanted.

 

We will also be covering the values from the Bhagavad Gita this year. We briefly discussed the shloka 8 from chapter 13 and the meaning of the word "Amanitvam" (humility). The children have been assigned homework on this topic.

 

We did a recap of the lesson today by quizzing the children on the concepts and ideas that were learnt in the class. We came up with the idea of dividing the class into four groups to encourage participation in the class from everyone as well as to collaborate on class projects. The children came up with the idea of naming the groups based on the following qualities (Shrewd/Resourcefulness, Intelligence, Bravery and Loyalty). We concluded the class with the closing prayer.

 

Homework for this week:

1) come up with Sanskrit words for the qualities (shrewd/resourcefulness, Intelligence, Bravery and Loyalty)

2) Read pages 7 thru  9 in the book "Values in the Bhagavad Gita" and come up with answers for the following questions. What humility means and give examples from your life where you have been humble/not humble?