Diwali Celebration

Last Wednesday, November 7, was the Hindu holiday of Diwali. Our family celebrates this Festival of Lights every year by lighting all of the lights in the house (even in the closets!), having dinner, a puja (prayers and aarthi (offering lights to the gods)), we take the aarthi tray into each room and turn off the lights, then exchange gifts, and do sparklers outside.

Quick crash course on Diwali (keep in mind, different parts of India have different stories surrounding the celebration or that coincide with Diwali, this is the most common). The Indian epic poem, the Ramayama, is the story of Prince Rama rescuing his wife Sita from the Demon King Ravana. Diwali celebrates his homecoming after the rescue. The diyas (lights) are all lit to help them find their way home. It is celebrated on the darkest night between mid-October and mid-November. Diyas are lit and small pujas are offered for five days, but the main celebration is on the third day.

We prepared for Diwali this year in a bit of a weird way, so pardon me that my works are not set up precisely. We decided to take an impromptu camping trip before Diwali, as it was the last two days before the campground we like was keeping the water turned on. So we took the materials we needed to use to make the decorations along with us and made the decorations in the RV. Currently, my son Veer is 4.5 years old and my daughter Arya is 11.5 years old.

Door Hanging

My idea was to take some brown packing paper that came in mail orders and they would draw flowers and such on it, mimicking the look of a traditional door hanging:

One of the keys of being a Montessorian, though, is being flexible and not pushing our ideas onto our children. Veer wanted to draw a huge scene that he said was his Diwali story. Three lava monsters that his made-up superheroes WaterMan and FireMan have to defeat. So this idea of mine went a different way than I thought, but he had a lot of fun with it!

Flower Making

I had these precut flowers around and lots of glitter glue. I originally had thought to decorate the flowers and glue them to the door hanging, but because the door hanging went another way, I thought we could use the flowers to make a door hanging. Veer did not want a hole poked into all of the flowers he made, so we left a couple off.

Diya Holders

Arya decided to get in on this one. We just molded clay around tea lights. 

Rangoli Patterns

Sand art designs range from small and simple to large and very complex. For Veer I had pre-printed simple designs. He did not "stay in the lines" for the work, but that is totally fine. I let him put the glue and sprinkle the sand where he wanted. He chose to use every color. For Arya, she chose to use pictures and imitate them.

Finished Works

We snuck over to Dadi and Dada's house (that is the paternal grandparents) in the afternoon on the third day and decorated the doorstep. This invites the gods in.

Celebration!

HAPPY DIWALI!