Hari om parents,
The weather was wonderful and we formally started our syllabus - in the beautiful weather outside!
We started with quiet time and our prayers. Later, we had a short discussion about why we do the quiet time and prayers. This helps us to bring the focus to what we are going to do in the class and remove any distractions that we carry with us. We discussed how professionals in other areas like sports take steps to bring focus before a major game. We also discussed if it is possible to do multiple things at the same time? Is it or is it not? We discussed the relationship between breath and emotional state. Before we start our class, we need to make sure that our focus is there and our emotional state is optimum.
We went outside. We did some fun activities outside. Video snippets to be shared in whatsapp. Most of the students got sorted into their houses. We will send the House Sorting quiz to parent's whatsapp. Please do the quiz without influence from your friends and remember which houses you are in. This will be needed when we have house activities soon.
We started the Karma topic on the deck. Karma means action. This action can be by body, thought or by feeling. We talked about different forms of action. There has to be a Do-er for action. We discussed different types of actions and the different types of Do-er for those actions. Just like Newton's Third law an action has a reaction, there is the Law of Karma. 'Karma' in colloquial western culture is borrowed but conflated with the 'Law of Karma' in our culture. Every one of our actions has a result. We discussed this law and examples of where this law works. The other topics we discussed:
Can Do-er be non-sentient?
Can feelings be called an action?
What will be the result of actions? And what will be the results of acting on the results of those actions?
It was getting hot outside for students. We went back to the class with just enough time to do one more activity. We broke the students into 4 groups. We then asked them to construct a set of sentences with as many references to colors as there are members in the group ending with an 'action' (Karma) sentence. Each of the 4 groups came with creative sentences. We are going to continue this activity into the next class.
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Regards,
Selvi
Partha
