Every Friday, Panyaden School’s Life Skills teacher, Kru Yuzu leads our students in ‘Tidy Up’ sessions after morning assembly. The objective behind ‘Tidy Up Friday’ is to encourage our children to care for their environment by helping to clean up their classrooms and school grounds; to re-use and recycle in order to reduce all waste including dried leaves and broken twigs.

Each class and office has bins clearly marked for recycling and re-using. The students, teachers and staff separate their general waste into these bins that will be collected every Friday. This good habit is a big part of our school’s green practice.

Kru Yuzu with her students

Kru Yuzu says that all reusable materials go to the newly set-up storage area where they can be re-utilized and made into “new creations at school” (for example, used plastic bottles can be cut, painted and fashioned into vases and flowers; paper used on one side can be re-used) while other accumulated waste will go to the municipal recycling facility.

Since the start of the new school year last week, all our students from the little ones in nursery to Prathom classes, have been diligently picking up leaves and twigs on our campus each Friday. Today, our gardener, Khun Fon, showed our P4 students how this organic waste can be composted and made into fertilizer for planting. Composting is a technique used to accelerate the natural decay process. The technique converts organic wastes to a mulch, which is used to fertilize and condition soil. See footnote below photos for Khun Fon’s special homemade compost recipe.

Welcome to our

Welcome to the second ever year of Panyaden School Chiang Mai!

We are now in our second week and things are going pretty well. There were a few tears in the first week from our little ones but these are beginning to fade away as they integrate into their new surroundings.

We have almost doubled the number of students we had this time last, so we have a livelier school and a number of new teachers, which is great. However our class sizes remain small, which is wonderful for the children. Our student population is really mixed, literally about 50/50 English and Thai first language speakers, so we are very much a bilingual school, both in the classroom and in the playground which is where our students really learn to speak two languages. We spent the hot Chiang Mai summer break training and planning the curriculum so we are raring to go!

We are always trying to improve our school. Specifically, we are looking to tackle some of the common concerns of parents last year.  A number of parents who find it difficult to pick up their children at the regular times have asked if we can provide daily after school care, so we will offer an after school care service this term each day until 4.45pm. Many parents came to us with concerns about lost belongings last year, so we have asked our teachers to pay particular attention to this issue this term and our parents to make sure they label all of their child’s belongings. Paint on clothes has been another common complaint so we changed the school uniform for a darker colour and have asked all out students to bring in a painting shirt and our Art teacher to keep the Art room tidy!  No doubt there will more problems to fix this year and we look forward to working together to solve them.

We  are all looking forward to our second ever school year.

We had a busy first day of school as students new and old came together for the first day of the first term of our second ever school year. There were tears and hugs (from parents as well as students!) as brave new pre-schoolers ventured into unfamiliar classrooms. And smiles and chatter from returning students who met up with their friends after the 2-month break. Assembly was a lot fuller than usual as we have almost doubled our student numbers this year. Our School Director reminded our old students of their responsibilities to make their new friends feel welcome and at home. And by the end of the first day, we were all settling in (well, most of us!) and getting to know each other.

Photo courtesy of Chiang Mai Mail.

Here’s an article on Panyaden School’s official opening with our Buddhist ceremony and enshrinement of relics on 24 April 2012 in Chiang Mai Mail. Includes a paragraph about our bilingual education and unique school concept. Click here for full article and photos by editor, Shana Kongmun.  

 Snapshot above taken from Chiang Mai Mail.

For the last five weeks, our Summer School students have been learning about different aspects of nature through challenging games, storytelling in addition to other creative activities and fun field trips. Our aim is to open our minds to love and enjoy nature by becoming familiar with its different elements and how they affect our lives and our environment.

Apart from plants, water, light, air, micro-organisms, minerals and others, our children have also learning about soil, one of nature’s most essential living elements. As humble as it may seem, soil is used in many daily activities such as planting and growing as well as in construction (our school is a fine example of this!), mining and so on.

What do we know about soil? Where does soil come from? What types of soil are best for growing plants? Questions like these are posed to the children who learn the answers by experimenting with art, storytelling and planting activities. On Monday, our children visited the Queen Sirikit Botanic Garden where they picked up pebbles, leaves and grass and mixed them with soil before pounding them and putting the different combinations into bottles. Water is added to see which combination can hold the water longest and which is best for growing little plants.

This week, the children will make ceramic animals by combining soil and water. They will also use soil to make moulds for candle and musical instruments as well as houses for small animals (like ants and worms) that make the soil their home.

Photos of our field trips to Queen Sirikit Botanic Garden

More here:

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blog/may-2012/queen-sirikit-botanic-garden-museum/

Panyaden School's founder receiving award from the Mayor of Chiang Mai. Photo courtesy of Chiang Mai Mail.

Today, Panyaden School had the honour of receiving a design award for excellence in architecture and interior design from the committee of Chiang Mai Creative City (CMCC). CMCC promotes Chiang Mai as an internationally known city of creativity and innovation such as its interesting and sustainable architectural designs like our school. Thank you to all involved in our campus design and construction (Chiangmai Life Construction and 24h).

Above photos courtesy of Chiang Mai Mail.

Over the past 3 weeks, Panyaden’s teachers have been undergoing our summer training programme. We are committed to being lifelong learners and acknowledge that there is always room for improvement. During this summer break we have been focusing on a number of areas, identified together with our teachers, where we need to increase knowledge, understanding and skills to benefit our children most. These include

• Discipline and classroom management
• Integrating the Thai and IPC curricula  
• The teachings of Buddha and meditation
• Working cross-culturally
• How children learn
• Communicating with parents
• School policies and procedures

An Auspicious Day

Accompanied by the gentle rhythmic peals of bells and the resonance of a gong being struck along with offerings of food and flowers, Panyaden School’s official opening ceremony began on a movingly dignified note today with a procession to our main Buddha image, Phra Panyanuphap Chaiyamongkol. Our Spiritual Advisor, Taan Ajahn Jayasaro led the bearers of the shrine containing the relics, our guests and staff along the tree-lined path through our campus gate to the Buddha sala.

Students, teachers, parents and guests dressed in Lanna costume tossed flowers onto shrine, then the procession was met by a graceful Thai dance from our students who threw pink and red rose petals in the air. We then kneeled while Taan Ajahn Jayasaro enshrined the relics in the hollow lotus crown of Phra Panyanuphap Chaiyamongkol (‘auspicious victory through the power of wisdom’).

More blessings followed as Buddhist clergy from Chiang Mai chanted in the Assembly Hall in celebration of our school’s opening. Victuals and other gifts were also offered to the monks and to some of our senior guests to commemorate this special day in the history of Panyaden.

During his Dhamma talk that followed, Taan Ajahn Jayasaro kindly commended the efforts of our school founders and staff who “are willing to make the commitment to the Buddhist approach, to go through the difficulties of pioneering something new.” He added that Buddhism is not a system of dogma but “a practical, effective and superior system as it is an education of the whole child based on an accurate and authentic understanding of the human condition.”

Taan Ajahn Jayasaro is a great fan of the school’s architecture to which he refers as the “art of the possible, based on an understanding of the nature of bamboo and earth, the environment and the climate.” Our architecture is “compatible to the practical Buddhist approach to education that is “based on an understanding of the nature of human beings, the relationships between our environment, our bodies and mind.”

After the Dhamma talk, we rounded off our celebrations with our ‘Ton Lam Yai’ market selling popsicles, snacks and handicraft made by our students and teachers. All proceeds went to a children’s charity supported by Somdech Ya. Thank you all for commemorating this special day with us and for your support throughout the year.

 More photos by Ally Taylor here.

It’s all hands on deck as Panyaden rehearses and prepares for our big day tomorrow.

We look forward to celebrating our official opening ceremony with you and your family!

Agenda for 24 Apr 2012

7.30 – 8.30am: Procession and enshrinement ceremony led by our Spiritual Advisor, Taan Ajahn Jayasaro
9.00 – 9.30am: Refreshments at Parents’ Sala
10.00 – 10.45am: Chiang Mai Buddhist clergy chanting to celebrate the school opening
12.00 – 1.00pm: Dhamma talk at Assembly Hall by Phra Ajahn Jayasaro
1.30 – 3.30pm: Panyaden Market, selling food and art and crafts made by teachers and students

Rocks and minerals can be fun to learn about through exploratory games and activities like scavenger hunts and grinding them down to create art and craft projects. Our focus for week 3 is on the importance of these natural elements that make up the earth’s crust and mantle.

Children are naturally curious and love going on field trips, making things with their hands and learning through creative activities. They get excited when they can see, touch and smell different textures, colours and shapes. This week, they get to play geologists and rock hunters going around the school campus and at the Opkhan National Park to collect rocks and stones that capture their imagination.

These specimens are then identified, sorted and categorized by the children according to colours or mineral content, shapes or textures before they present them to their friends and teachers. They talk about where they found the rocks; the mineral content, for example, the red in a rock is a clue that it contains iron; that a smooth one found near a stream may mean that water movement over a period of time has rounded it. All these activities integrate science, geology and art. They aim to encourage children to think logically, to work both individually and in teams, using their skills and creativity to develop a personal awareness, care and love of all of nature’s gifts.

More photos -

• Minerals & Rocks
• Grinding and Painting Stomes