On Wednesday 10th May we enjoyed a whole school event learning about the Buddhist celebration of Wesak. Boys and girls came to school wearing white (at least it was white at the start of the school day!) as this is something which Buddhists do to celebrate the Buddha’s birth at Wesak. Our whole school assembly taught us a little about the story behind the Buddha and Noah and Gregor came up to help ‘bathe the Buddha’ just as Buddhists would do on this special day. Luke, Iona and Logan also played the Blindfold Feeding Game – Iona and Luke had been told NOT to eat the marshmallows, Logan happily munched a few! This was to show that unless you are helped to see the truth, you cannot be expected to know it. Buddha searched for his truth. It is known as Enlightenment.
The whole day was filled with fun activities linked to Wesak; from symmetry and angles work to recreate the symbol of the Noble Eightfold Path, roleplay to explore greed, hatred and ignorance, meditation and yoga exercises to help calm the mind, research tasks to produce factfiles to lantern-making. The pupils took a little time to think about what they had learnt over the course of the day and write this as a Buddha bubble, with some pupils saying they would try to use some of the calming exercises next time they felt a bit on the grumpy side!
It was a busy, but fun-filled day!
