Happy Deepavali!

With a fairly diverse group of children, and living in the Bay Area, we make efforts to celebrate major holidays of all the cultures the children belong to. Tomorrow is Deepavali or Diwali, the Indian festival of lights.

We started the day by pulling out our classroom globe and identifying where India is on it. We talked about how Deepavali is celebrated there, and that we were going to celebrate it too.

We then decorated the front of our school with "rangoli" art in groups of two or three. Rangoli, a popular artform in India, is a sandpainting decoration that uses ground up powder and colors. It is a sign of welcome. We used giant sidewalk chalk, wetting it first with water.

The children also made red sparkly lanterns. We carried these on a Diwali parade around the school. Naturally, the younger ones didn't form a line, but they did follow along in a little clump at the end of the line. :-) While parading around with our lanterns, we sang (to the tune of London bridge is falling down):


Little Lamps are burning bright,
burning bright, burning bright.
Little lamps are burning bright, It's Diwali!

See them lighting up the night,
up the night, up the night,
see them lighting up the night, It's Diwali!

We ended our Diwali party with some sweets-- delicious cookies from Miss Aida.

Happy Diwali!

-SS