On Wednesday 10th May, the whole school took part in lots of numeracy, literacy and other fun activities linked to the Buddhist festival of Wesak. This important festival marks the Buddha’s birthday and celebrates the birth, enlightenment and death of the very first Buddha. The children were allowed to come to school dressed in white to follow a popular Wesak tradition.
The day began with a whole school assembly about Buddhism. The children took turns to ‘bathe the Buddha’ by pouring water over his head, to celebrate his birth.
To explore what ‘enlightenment’ meant, 2 pupils (Jenna and Mia in P6), were blindfolded and asked to stuff as many marshmallows as the could in their mouths in 30 seconds. They thought 2 other pupils (Ava Lily and Liam) were doing this too but when they took their blindfolds off, they realised they were the only two doing it and looked particularly ridiculous with their mouths stuffed with marshmallows unable to speak! When we explained that Ava Lily and Liam were in on the trick and did not actually eat any marshmallows, Mia went ‘Awwww, I see now!’. This was Mia being ‘enlightened’ to what was really going on – like lifting a blindfold off and seeing the ‘bigger picture’,just like the Buddha.
The children then learned about the eightfold path and the ‘Dharma Wheel’. Lots of numeracy and maths activities were explored with the wheel including, fractions, symmetry and angle work using a compass and protractor.
In literacy, the themes of ‘greed, hate and ignorance’ were explored as Buddhists believe you cannot try to achieve enlightenment until you stop being greedy, hateful and ignorant. The children took part in antonym and synonym work for these terms as well as role plays to explore these. The P1’s looked at familiar stories such as Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast which show some of these themes in their books and films. This led on to some writing on how we could all be more generous, loving and tolerant.
In the afternoon, learners took part in real celebrations of Wesak, including making gifts for the Buddha. 2D nets were turned in to fantastic 3D gift boxes, paper lanterns were made and Happy Birthday Buddha cards were written. Some learners also painted the very colourful Buddhist flag too.
To end an exciting and wonderful day, the school got back together to share everything they had learned. The children took turns to talk about their learning and then they presented the gifts they had made to the Buddha statue, as this is what Buddhists do during Wesak.
