Diwali Lights by Rina Singh
Amma tell me about Diwali by Bhakti Mathur
Lights, Camera, Diwali by Amita Roy Shah
Diwali is the Hindu festival of lights. Essentially it is the celebration of good over evil. Some of the most important things about Diwali are the beautiful lights everywhere, rangolis, food, and fireworks!
We ended up just reading the first two books because we were very excited about doing two different crafts!
First we made rangolis, which are beautiful sand paintings that are made at the doorway in India during Diwali, sometimes they are made with other materials such as flowers. Here are some from the public domain:
Of course I don’t force the kids to be symmetical or follow rules, so most of ours did not turn out like that, but here is one that one of our Indian guests made:
Since colored sand was a little bit outside my budget we used colored salt. To color the salt I simply added about 1/4 cup of tempera paint, and one canister of salt to a gallon bag and smooshed it around until it turned a beautiful color. The next morning it had hardened somewhat but I broke it up with a fork and then my hands and it was just fine to use.
Our second craft was diyas, the lamps that are traditionally used to lighten the dark during Diwali. Here a some from public domain:
I also found a type of diya that floats and those are the kind that we made. They are made with lots of sparklies which I knew the kids would love. Here are two that I made to demonstrate:
These are simply made by cutting out a foam circle and gluing on a tea candle and lots of sparklies!
We had a wonderful time!