Culture Club -Myanmar

After a whole year without our educational cultural exchanges, we are delighted to be able to run Culture Club again this term.  We are currently learning all about Myanmar. We have five families from Myanmar at our school and each family was represented at our planning session and during our two Culture Club sessions in May. 

During the first session, we learned about Myanmar’s geography and different cultural influences due to the borders they share with a number of countries. These differences are seen in their traditional clothing, food, and languages. 

The official language is Burmese. We were shown the Burmese alphabet. Each child had their name printed in Burmese for them to decorate, which was so special that we laminated them. Some students had a lot of fun trying on traditional Burmese clothes

In our second session, we were shown places of interest such as stunning temples, beaches, and old buildings. We got to make the famous Thanaka paste, by grinding bark from a thanaka tree and putting them on our hands. This thanaka paste is used throughout Myanmar as a skincare product and also used as a healing agent for mosquito bites and abrasions.

Pyit-Tine Htaung is a traditional toy that is weighted at the bottom so matter how it is thrown it will always stand back up. Making their motto – Never Give Up. We thought this was a good way to reinforce our school value of resilience, so we all made a paper version of this.

We would like to thank all the Myanmar mums and one grandma that have made these sessions possible. Our next session will be on Friday, June 25

Our Myanmar Mums at our planning and preparation session – Culture Club Myanmar