All of you who are dreamers too,
help me to make
our world anew.
I reach out my dreams to you.

Inspired by the poetry of Langston Hughes and the tradition of Nepalese Buddhist prayer flags, the Dream Flag Project is an annual poetry/art/community-connection project. Started in 2003 by sixth-grade students at the Agnes Irwin School in Philadelphia, the Dream Flag Project has extended to students around the world who have created more than 40,000 dream flags in the years since then. Now in its second year at Redwood Day, our Dream Flag project includes all kindergarten and third-grade students who began to learn about Langston Hughes in February and shared their own dreams with the school community last week as we also celebrate April, National Poetry month. Our dream flags, each with a poem written and illustrated by a student, were unfurled on the Lower School Yard on April 20 and will remain on display until the end of April.

Students' dreams ranged from simple (or not so simple) hopes for our world in kindergarten ("more homes for more people," "help nature," "shelter," "no guns," and even "no lice"!) to students' original poetry based on the works of Langston Hughes in third grade.

"When I heard about the way these dream flags invite kids into both the poetry of Langston Hughes and the tradition of putting hopes and dreams out into the world on prayer flags, I knew it would be a great fit for our school," says third-grade teacher Leah Aguilera, who spearheads the project at RDS. "As we prepared to unfurl our dream flags for the second year in a row, the kids and I knew that we were participating in something both deeply personal and much, much bigger than ourselves."

"The flags we used to write our dream poems on were made in Nepal. As they do when they are used as traditional Nepalese Buddhist prayer flags, the five colors of our dream flags represent different natural elements: blue (sky/space), white (air/wind) , red (fire), green (water), and yellow (earth)." Come and see them for yourselves!