Ocean class (Years 3 & 4) have been learning about The Home Front during World War II, with class teacher Ross Young. They recently built their own Anderson air raid shelter in the school grounds, which led to an unexpected ‘search & rescue’ operation!

Class teacher, Ross Young:“When teaching history, I’ve been able to relate some events to the teachings of the Buddha - the Home Front promoted opportunities to express right action, intention, livelihood, effort, concentration, speech and understanding. Many people took up this opportunity, whether this was through the interconnectedness of caring for an evacuated child, building community vegetable patches, rehousing people who lost their homes, thinking about food consumption or providing medical care on the frontline. Many celebrated V.E day not because ‘we won’, but because suffering on both sides could potentially end. A great many people had to let go of selfishness attachment and instead grasp the concept of being one part of a wider community; it was a time in history for reflection and right mindfulness.”

Here’s what the children had to say about the project:

“We have been learning about World War II; things like how it started, how people tried to stay safe from the bombs in shelters, and that people were called up to fight, but some people were ‘conscientious objectors’. To help understand different views we divided into two groups in our classroom - one group had to pretend they had agreed to fight in the war and the other group were conscientious objectors and had to say why they wouldn’t fight. My friend said that he would definitely fight if there was a threat to the world - like Hitler killing people - but that he wouldn’t bother to fight a war over just an argument about something small. It helped us to understand how people can see things differently.”

“To build the Anderson shelter, we had to dig into the ground and I saw lots of worms in the soil. I didn’t want us to harm the worms just because we were building the shelter so me and my friend moved them to a safer place. I went and got some gloves so I could pick them up them carefully and we put them on to the soil under some bushes. Then I felt a lot better because they were safe.”

image courtesy of jillwinski.com

Bea Harley (Our Deputy Administrative Head) recently attended a ‘pilot’ paws .b training course, developed and run by the Mindfulness in Schools Project, to help integrate the learning and practice of mindfulness for children in Years 3 – 6. Bea has been teaching the paws .b curriculum to children in Lotus class (Years 5 and 6) during a one-hour session once a week – including discussing the functions of the brain and how through practising mindfulness breathing we can train our minds to improve awareness, concentration and decision-making. One of the exercises involved the children doing a meditation and noting where their minds had wondered off to during the session, then drawing a ‘mind map’ together. Bea will also be teaching the paws .b curriculum to children in Years 3 and 4.

Mountain class (Years 3 & 4) have been doing some artwork inspired by meditation and mindfulness exercises - a magic carpet journey to a happy and peaceful place and drawing around their hands then painting the image.