Hari om JCHYKs and parents,
Welcome to the new academic year at Bala Vihar! We are super excited to have your children in our class this year. Now that they are in High School, we combine 10th, 11th and 12th together and they are called JCHYKs (Junior Chinmaya Yuva Kendra).
Our curriculum for this year will be Bhagavadgeeta chapters 7 thru 12. We do a rotation 6 chapters each year so that all the JCHYKs will have learnt the full 18 chapters by the time they graduate! Our classes run on a discussion format and we will be learning the meanings and essence of select verses from these chapters.
Being our first class today, we had some ice-breakers. We introduced ourselves and how long we have been coming to Bala Vihar. We had more veterans and some newcomers. We played the game 'Who am I' based on characters from Mahaabhaarata. Well, we learnt that the children call the game 'Heads up' though :). The class was split into two teams and both teams were excellent! They tied the game from the very beginning.
We will be learning to chant Bhagavadgeeta dhyaanam and Chapter 1 this year. We started with one verse from the dhyaanam and two verses from Ch. 1. We will have a chanting competition for Ch. 1 by the end of March. We will be preparing for it regularly. We will be sending short recordings of 5 verses to aid the children with their practice. Please encourage them to practice regularly.
Towards the end of the class, we had another round of thoughts sharing. The questions each one of them was asked to answer were 'Why do you come to Bala Vihar?' and 'Are you a believer or non-believer?' We heard candid answers, some funny, some interesting too :).
With this head start, we are sure to have a wonderful year ahead of learning and growing together! We will be sending you weekly updates via email. To visit our archives as well as for future reference, please bookmark our Parent Portal at
We will look forward to seeing you next week.
Regards,
Rashmi and Sirisha.
Rashmi and Sirisha.
