This week our topic was Diwali. The children learnt that Diwali is a festival of lights that the Hindu community celebrate each year. During this festival people light up their houses and shops with candles or lights. They also make detailed Rangoli patterns and place them on the floor near the entrance to a house to welcome guests.
During the week we explored different techniques and ways of making our own Rangoli patterns.
In our Maths Focus Time we re-visited our understanding of basic shapes before talking about symmetry. The children then had the opportunity to use colourful shapes to make their own symmetrical Rangoli patterns and designs.
The children extended their work with patterns and design in Art where they used glue and colourful sand to create Rangoli patterns on paper. They practised the refinement of their fine motor skills by carefully spreading the glue over the paper, before using a pincer grip to sprinkle sand over their patterns. During this activity we also worked on our colour recognition, by describing the different colours we were using. In another activity the children used colourful stickers, to carefully create a pattern by placing the stickers on the outlines of Rangoli's.
On our Outdoor Learning Day this week, we went to the common. The children began by exploring the ground to find and collect a range of leaves, grass and sticks. We returned as a group with our findings to then collaboratively combine our objects to make a natural Rangoli pattern on the ground. The children demonstrated excellent teamwork to make the pattern, taking turns to place their objects onto the paper and discussing the different ways we could make our pattern. We also talked about the different sizes of the objects we had found and counted the sticks.
On our nature walk we also observe the falling leaves from the trees and sung our Autumn song:
All the leaves are falling down,
Orange, yellow, red and brown.
Falling softly as they do
Over me and over you.
On our return to the classroom we extended our learning of Diwali by creating salt dough Diva lamps. The children practised spooning and measuring the dough before using their hands to explore the texture of the salt dough. They enjoyed squeezing, patting, pinching and rolling the dough which also helped support the development of the children’s fine motor skills. We pressed a tea light candle into the dough to make a small indentation to create a candle holder. Once they were baked the children then painted and decorated them with beautiful bright colours!