I’ve always been fond of India. It is such a beautiful and rich in culture country.
So I am always looking forward to Diwali blog hosted by Multicultural Kid Blogs and take part in it every year!
This year Navrati and Diwali are quite close to each other, I decided to review two books by Bollygrove about these two festivals, and make a Lamp craft with my children.
The books I want to talk to you about today are:
– Let’s Celebrate Navrati – about a beautiful festival that precedes Diwali;
– Let’s Celebrate 5 Days of Diwali – about the most popular festival in India which is considered the beginning of a new year.
Learning about these festivals made me think about how similar they are and that this year if you are celebrating both, you can just continue from one to another!
Both books tells us about the nature of the festivals, traditions, and share some history of their origine. They also teach the vocabulary associated with the festivals.
We learned that Navrati is celebrated for whole 9 days (which is longer than 5 days of Diwali!). We also learned the basics of Dandiya dance, and every tried to dance along the music. We loved all the beautiful colours that are used to decorate houses for Navrati and it reminded us of how colorful Diwali is as well. Clothes, jewelry, decorations – all so festive!
Flipping the pages of the book, we travelled to other parts of India to see how Navrati and Diwali celebrated there.
When we read both books, we noticed the emphasis made during both festivals on lights. Garbo (or Garba) is a clay pot lamp that is used during Navrati. And Diya is a small clay lamp used during Diwali. Both lamps are used during religious ceremonies, with Garbo being a representation of goddess Durga (the warrior and the protector), and Diya being used to celebrate victory, cleanliness of the soul, and knowledge.
To celebrate these two festivals and fill our home with light, we decided to make our own lamps which we decorated inspired by Garbo and lighted in the spirit of Diya.
Materials needed:
Small glass jars
Washi tape
Stickers
Tea candles
Process:
Start by wrapping your jars with washi tape.
Once done, stick on some colorful stickers.
Drop in tea candles, turn off the light and enjoy the beautiful lamps!
For now we put off the lamps and will wait to light them up for Diwali!
How do you Celebrate Navrati and Diwali in your home?
This post is part of the annual Diwali for Kids blog hop from Multicultural Kid Blogs! See the posts below for great ideas on celebrating Diwali with children. You can find even more ideas from last year’s series and on our Diwali Pinterest board: