Baby Le Xin

Tuesday 13 November 2012

Making Rangoli for Deepavali

I was inspired by my fellow colleagues from school who were actively engaging the children in different crafting activities before Deepavli so I decided to make a Rangoli together with Le Xin at home.  I wasn't too sure if it's going to turn out fine, afterall she is only two years old, but I thought maybe I should give it a go and hooray....she really enjoyed the learning experience.
 
Le Xin started off by feeling the texture of the rice...
 
She placed a few grains of rice on my palm and said rice
 
Le Xin placed one drop of red food colouring into the rice then she did the same for blue and yellow...
 
Look how focused she was when she was stirring :)
 
All done with the preparation of the coloured rice....
 
 
After 10 days, it was finally Deepavali, I went to look for the simplest template that I could find from the net...Firstly, I was thinking...it should also be something that she likes so that she could relate to it and I decided to choose this simple star design... I used a pencil to trace over and turn it the other side and trace again. Then I placed it on a piece of drawing board and traced it the third time to "print" the design onto the drawing board. Then I use a pencil to do the outline again so that it appeared darker.
 
An excited Le Xin spreading her gluestick all over...
 
Then she started sprinkling the rice on top...
 
She tried to press on the rice that she sprinkled...
 
Love this look of Le Xin selecting which coloured rice to use
 
After a lot of laughing and engagement, our masterpiece was finally completed. I taught her how to push the rice within the line and she tried to do so. Seriously I was really reflecting now that maybe I should just leave her to sprinkle where ever she likes... This is it----->My logical thinking always somehow hinder/affect my creative mind  hmph!!! hahaha
 
The moment I was waiting for.......to see her laugh like a happy baby :)
 
So why was she laughing happily? That was because....I actually allowed her to pour the remaining rice onto her table for exploration.....
 
Last but not least......she waved her little container and asked for more rice to play with....Wow! I can tell she was really enjoying....
 
Exposing Le Xin to different culture and inculcate the importance of diversity is something I wish to achieve through this learing experience. To be honest, it is really hard to explain the big concept about Deepavali. I can't tell her that Indians celebrate Deepavali which means Festival of Light because that is far too abstract for her to understand. I just hope to conduct at least one simple activity which is related to what Indians/Hindus will do when they celebrate Deepavli......Going forward, in future when she is older and reads her portfolio as she revisits this learning experience again perhaps everything will make more sense by then because she should be able to relate to why I chose to make a Rangoli with her during Deepavali.....This day will come and I can't wait to do more activities about festivals and celebrations....Next up is Christmas and yes I am all excited already hahaha :) Ending off with a video of my happy darling again enjoy~ 
 
 

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