Create your own Tibetan Prayer Flags
Posted on22 Jul 2025
In this creative and contemplative arts activity, students will design their own Tibetan prayer flags. Each flag represents a positive intention such as love, compassion, joy, wisdom (intelligence), or a personal wish, and will be strung together to create a colorful set of prayer flags. This activity introduces students to the concept of spreading good intentions into the world, while encouraging artistic expression and inner reflection.
Generating Tara
Posted on02 Oct 2024
Students generate their own innate love and compassion and imagine it manifesting as an energy ball that they can visualize shaping it into a Green Tara figure. Through this they are introduced to the possibility that Tara is always close by because she is none other than their own loving-kindness energy.
My Bodhisattva Art Project
Posted on02 Oct 2024
An art project with worksheets for students to design their own bodhisattvas
Some Thoughts on Teaching About Mind
Posted on08 Aug 2024
A medium-length article by Jackie Rushforth Mitchell about the delicate subject of the mind and how to introduce it to young people.
Sit with Me Song
Posted on26 Feb 2024
Gillian Eames, the preschool teacher at the Middle Way School in New York, put music to Carolyn Kanjuro's book Sit With Me. The song teaches the seven points of meditation posture.
The Lunar New Year Song: Wood Dragon Year
Posted on09 Feb 2024
Downloadable audio and lyrics. Middle Way Education commissioned composer Harry Einhorn to develop this Lunar New Year celebration song, adding a new verse every year, one for each animal of asian astrology.
Shugen Roshi on Equanimity, Emotions, and Walking Meditation
Posted on25 Jan 2024
This video recording (1hr) is of Shugen Roshi's talk at the Middle Way School in January 2024. Shugen sat with students and parents to talk about impermanence, one of Middle Way Education’s core units of inquiry. He focussed on the importance of cultivating equanimity in the context of recognizing the impermanent, always-changing quality of all things. He also fielded questions from parents and students, who wanted to know things like “how did the Buddha have fun?”
Lunch Rituals
Posted on09 Jan 2024
This lunch ritual is loosely based on ōryōki, a Zen monastic eating meditation that places an emphasis on service, generosity, and appreciation. It was developed by Noa Jones and Catherine Fordham for the Middle Way School of the Hudson Valley.
Shared mealtime is an opportunity to foster a healthy relationship to food, enjoy each other’s company, and create a harmonious environment at the table. Creating a consistent mealtime practice can help children feel more focussed and be more present with their food.
Book Review: Monster Parade
Posted on09 May 2023
We want to set children up for success when introducing them to meditation practices so playfulness is on order. The Monster Parade: A Book about Feeling All Your Feelings and Then Watching Them Go by Wendy O'Leary with illustrations by Noémie Gionet Landry (Bala Kids 2022) is a wonderful and playful way to approach the idea that feelings and thoughts are fleeting.