Garden room

During their Diwali celebrations, Garden room had a special visitor called Purvi! She came to tell us all about the festival and how she celebrates it. 
She explained that they get their houses ready to celebrate by cleaning and putting up decorations and have lots of fireworks and sparklers.

Purvi told us all the story of Rama and Sita. There was a Demon king and he wasn’t very kind, he had 10 heads! One day Prince Rama and Princess Sita walked to the Forest where there were tigers and elephants. The demon king took Sita! There was a monkey army and their leader Hanuman told Prince Rama he would help him rescue Sita so off they went to find her. They had a big battle and killed all the demons and the Demon king and rescued Sita!

People put lights outside their houses to welcome Princess Sita back home and that’s why Diwali is called the "Festival of Lights" 

The children had the opportunity to wear some traditional celebration outfits and Purvi showed us some special dance moves to music. 

Afterwards, they talked about how during Diwali houses can be decorated using special Rangoli patterns- which are beautiful geometric prints using bright colours. In their family groups they looked at some pictures of Rangoli patterns on the internet before using Rangoli stencils and a painting technique to create their very own Rangoli! They used sponges to carefully dab the paint over the stencil before revealing the beautiful pattern underneath.