The Buddhist Flag

The children have been very interested in the colors coming from Buddha's aura upon his enlightenment.  They quickly connected these colors to those on the Buddhist flag.  I decided that this would be a good time to teach them a little more about the Buddhist flag.

Each of the colors represent a quality of the Buddha or the Buddha's teaching.

Blue: Compassion - having loving kindness for all living beings and wishing that no being should suffer
Yellow: The Middle Path - avoiding extremes
Red: Blessings - following the teachings of the Buddha bring good things to our lives
White: Purity - the teachings of the Buddha are clean, without any flaws
Orange: Wisdom - the teachings of the Buddha are wise 
Blend of all five colors: UNITY - the teachings of the Buddha are good for everyone, everywhere and unite us together


Keep it simple.
After we introduced the flag, its colors and their symbols, the children used crayons to color a picture of the Buddhist Flag.  They used small cards to make theirs, but you could also use a print out like the one here.
  
Use what you have.
I made a simple matching game for the kids with index cards and coiled pipe cleaners.  You could use painted rocks, legos, bean bags, anything really in the flag's colors.

For very young children (five or younger) I would recommend matching the colored coil to an index card with the word the color symbolizes written in the same color ink like this:

For our class, the children took turns matching a colored coil to an index card with the word the color symbolizes written in black or brown ink like this:

Then we made a game out of it.  We laid the index cards out in a row on the floor.  The children lined up for a relay race against the clock.  One at a time, the kids were handed a coil to take to the floor and match with the proper card.  We timed ourselves.  Then we tried to match them faster, and faster.  By the end of the game, all the kids had memorized each of the colors of the flag and the word it symbolized.

Reflection
The children were encouraged to think about what the flag represents whenever they see it.
Simple lessons seems to stick.

May all be free from suffering by the power of the Triple Gem.