Tibetan Prayer Flags For Kids
A Fun Art Project Teaching Spirituality and Color Symbolism
Tibetan Buddhists are compulsively kinetic about their prayers. What does that mean? Basically, Tibetans live high up in the Himalaya mountain range, and wind is an essential part of their daily lives. Over thousands of years the Tibetans have created a unique spiritual system based on deities such as the horse god who travels the winds. The Tibetans put up prayer flags on their summits as a way of having the winds (or the horse god) distribute their well intentioned prayers of peace and love to all. (They also have unique prayer wheels that they spin to distribute prayer.)
This fun art project for kids teaches comparative religion, color symbolism, and helps children focus on the specific intentions of their prayers and positive thoughts.
Start with a clean, white bed sheet and decide how large your prayer flags should be. Measure, divide and tear your prayer flags from the sheet. A standard twin bedsheet yields around 40, 8-inch by 9-inch prayer flags. It is better to rip the sheet so the frayed edges more easily disintegrate into the wind. The flags are meant to dissolve into the wind and have new ones put up on top of the old ones.
Tibetans have color meanings associated with their flags. Blue is meant to symbolize the sky, white symbolizes wind, red symbolizes fire, green symbolizes water, and yellow stands for earth. Decide what color the prayer flags should be. There are inexpensive dyes available at most major discount department stores and Kool Aid can be also be used as an effective fabric dye. Dye your flags, rinse by hand, and put them into your dryer to dry. Take them out quickly so they can dry flat.
Talk to the kids first before beginning the project. Ask them what the major things are that they pray for in life. Most kids have a few important things they pray for: their parents, other family members, their pets, and of course, electronics. Discuss important positive things that kids can pray for that can apply to the whole world: peace, love, prosperity, joy. Then ask the kids to draw symbols or pictures of the things or people they pray for. Most kids draw pictures of their pets, family, and sunshine. The children may also use words to get their prayer message across.
Experiment as to what is best for marking on the fabric and colors that have chosen. Sharpie markers worked well as did a couple of metallic ink markers to provide shiny contrast for the darker colors of dyed fabric.
Encourage the children to complete a prayer flag before moving on to another. When the flags are finished, whip stitch them onto a long line of twine in a color pattern. A large needle and embroidery thread work well to hand sew about 20 flags onto a piece of twine using a whipstitch. With enough flags for two long strands, find a common area, preferably outdoors, to hang your flags. The flags can also be hung indoors – this makes a beautiful and attractive decorative hanging in any space.
Don’t want to make Prayer flags? Buy them here. Or, here.
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