Hari Om Parents,
We started our Balavihar class with Sahanavavatu.
We recapped all our Sholkas which we learnt
1) Vakaratunda
2) Saraswathi
3) Karagre
4) Bramharpana
5) Shantakaram
We recapped how many alphabets we covered, little did our little ones realize we had completed our Alphabet safari. We are moving to the next topic i.e. learn about our pledge of Chinmaya.
As soon as we said pledge our smarties instantly started The Pledge of Allegiance.
Then we went over the first line of our Chinmaya Pledge
We stand as one Family
Bound to each other with love and respect.
Then we asked what is a vow and why they do The Pledge of Allegiance. In the same way we pledge to god and put our hand on the heart as we know that god resides in our heart.
We asked kids what they remember about what we learnt about the alphabet 'B'. every Everyone remembered that B was for Brotherhood and we went over the Vasuda eka Kutumbam and what is Kutumbam, what is family who are considered family.
Can we all be one family- they all said No but then we said Chinmaya Ashram connects us all so we are all one Chinmaya Family and we all live together on the mother earth hence we all are one big family.
Every one of us got an index card and we all drew our families and all these families were out on poster board and the poster board is like earth.
We went to understand what standing as one family means? It means nothing but unity.
We went to back to our Alphabet 'U' and recalled the story of the farmer and his sons who always quarreled and how the farmer taught them unity with by giving them one stick each and asking them to break, everyone broke it easily, when they were given all the sticks tied together they could not break the bundle.
We played a game where our munchkins became pigeons and started flying around in the class, then we spread a carpet and put some pebbles and they pretended to come down to pick the pebbles which were grains .. The carpet was a trap of net and aunty the Bird catcher had put this down for catching them. Then Aunty put another net on top and tried to capture them.
We asked how can they escape? they said by flying away can they fly alone? One in each direction? The answer was No, they need to do it together.
This way all our pigeons flew away with the net and got rid of the bird catcher.
We played another game to understand unity better.
When students were standing alone aunty could easily push them, but when they all came together like a wall then it was a little tough to push them.
The moral is United we Stand and Unity is strength.
We watched this story of Bird Catcher and Pigeons.
We moved to the topic of Love and Respect.
Everyone was asked what love was and what does respect mean?
We love mom since she does everything for us. We love our friends and siblings.
Listening to parents and teachers is being respectful.
Not throwing things on the floor or throwing plastic around was respectful to mother earth.
Also aunty not looking at phone is respectful to class lol.
We watched a story about Ugly Duckling.
There were groups of ducks and one mother duck gave birth to little ones, all of them were yellow except one duck it was grey and it could not even flap its wings.
Everyone teased this grey duck and called it ugly duckling. The duck was not happy and always was sad. Then one day it went away from everyone and hid behind bushes. After a few months this little duck noticed that there were beautiful white swans with long neck. This duck admired these swans and felt sad that it could not do anything and was not accepted.
Then it looked into the water and was surprised to see that it was no longer grey and was all white and had a beautiful long neck. The swans asked this baby ugly duckling who now blossomed into a beautiful swan to join them. This little ones joy knew no bounds.
The moral of the Story is everyone must be respected and loved. We should not judge anyone by their color or by the way they look.
By this time our little children became hyperactive and we had to do Pebble Mediation and count Pebbles in our mind to calm our enthusiastic children.
We then did Bhagavad gita chapter 12 verses 1- 4 .
It was time for our Aarthi and pledge and we went to our prayer hall.
Please make children practice as Chapter 15 as this is for our global chanting on May 9th 2026. And for our annual Gita Yagna which is going to be held on April 18th
For this one we will be chanting Bhagavad Gita Chapter 12 (1-8 shlokas) which is also available in the 2025-26 year handbook.
Few important notes and points.
1. We request everyone to make sure children are present in the class a few mins before 7pm.
2. Please send a folder to class to keep the handed out Letters and crafts as we plan to do a book with them.
3. Please send crayons, pencils, Glue and erasers in a box.
4. Make sure children use the bathroom before coming to class so that we don't take bathroom breaks unless there is an emergency.
5. Kindly check our messages and emails which are being shared so that important information is not missed out.
With Pranams
Kavitha & Anuradha
