Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism 

We provide costumes for early years arranging the lessons to suit their attention span and abilities. The workshops contain the following items:

• Story telling (Short stories)
• Dressing up (gods, goddesses, prince, princess)
• Ganesh Dance
• Music (small Indian drums, flutes, ankle bells)
• Competitions
• Holding and touching Hindu artifacts
• Smelling the scented incense sticks (sandalwood, agarwood, jasmine...)
• Playing games 
• Having a lot of fun

A primary workshop is very extensive. A complete array of costumes for children of all shapes and sizes is provided; including masks, turbans, crowns, wigs, beards, moustaches, tails and imitation weapons.  As you can imagine, the children and staff thoroughly enjoy getting dressed up.  

A typical workshop goes something like this...

• We offer a brief intorduction and request the teaching staff to choose children for dressing up.  
• The rest of the group play learning games and perform short skits that teach a particular lesson from the religion and culture.
• The children also get to use some of the artefacts like conchshell, horns, singin bowls, gongs and drums.
• When the children are finished dressing up, we often enact the story of the life of Buddha or a Hindu festival like Diwali and end the workshop with a traditional dance.  
• The girls then get a small prize of bindis on their foreheads and boys get an elephant or peacock stamp on their arm or hand using hypo-allergenic non-toxic ink.  The girls also get stamps if they want them, which they usually do of course.  

This happy parent got dressed up and joined in the fun learning with her children at a Gloucester school. We are more than happy to encourage parents to get involved with the workshops and the children absolutely love it!  

Our workshops are not only for the pupils but are also great fun for mums and dads too.  Teaching staff usually like to get dressed up and have their face painted as well, this makes our workshops a big hit with everyone!

Secondary school children are often amazed at our work-shops. They are old enough to grasp basic Eastern concepts such as reincarnation (samsara), nonviolence (ahimsa), the three qualities of material nature (tri-guna), the three different types of action (tri-karma) along with their repercussions along with cultural and ethical topics like vegetariansim, chastity and cow protection.  

The workshop stucture is more or less the same as primary schools but with a more informative element and extra time for taking notes and questions and answers.

The Hindu mock wedding is very popular in all establishments. Pupils and students experience all the excitment, drama, colour and fun of a Hindu wedding!  The bride and groom are chosen by the teachers whilst the rest of the class role play as best man, bridemaids, parents, other family members and friends.  We even have Mr Bighead arrive to protest against the wedding taking place.  Someone is also chosen to play an astrologer who helps the couple prepare for any negative aspects of the relationship that may pop up as time goes by.  It is a colourful and exciting experience for both staff and students.  Click on the photo above to access video footage from a typical primary school mock wedding.

We are always enlivened to visit SEN schools because the students are so excited and love to take part in all the activies. Here is some feedback from a teacher at an SEN school in Perthshire.  

An Exciting Journey To India!

"The pupils of Ochil Tower School enjoyed an interesting day of experiencing and celebrating Hinduism. They learned all about the Diwali Festival of Light.  The pupils enjoyed dressing up, enacting the story of Sita and Ram - dancing - meditation competition - musical experiences and while doing all this they also learned about the Indian gods and goddesses.  It was a great workshop! 

Both pupils and staff were inspired to further explore stories and customs of India.  The workshops were highly interactive and rich in content and resources.  Our speakers were intuitive and sensitive to the needs of the children, making learning fun and alive."  

Gerusa De Costa, Staff Teacher, Ochil Tower Rudolph Steiner School, Auchterarder