Celebrating Diwali – Preschool

Namaste,

The last two days in Preschool have certainly been colourful, we have celebrated Diwali, the Hindu festival of light.

Within our personal, social and emotional development, we listened to the story of 'Rama and Sita' and discussed the meaning of Diwali, 'good conquering evil'. We then thought about the different characters within the story and thought about how they were feeling.

To develop our communication and language skills, we have learned some new words, Diwali, Diva lamp, Goddess, Hindu, rangoli, poppadum, mango, naan bread, coconut, India, tuk tuk and namaste.

To support our physical development, we created Rangoli patterns outside using chalks, we also had a go at Bollywood dancing and we have used a cricket bat to hit a ball. We made coconut barfi, Indian sweet treats and used our hands to roll the mixture into balls.

We listened to the stories 'Lighting a Lamp' by Jonny Zucker and sang along to the song 'The Wheels on the Tuk, Tuk' as part of our literacy development. We then answered questions about the stories.

Rangoli patterns supported our mathematics development. We learned that children and women put special rangoli patterns on their doorstep, so that the goddess Lakshmi will bring good luck. We looked at lots of different rangoli patterns and learned that these patterns are symmetrical. We then created our own rangoli patterns using shapes, numicon and spots.

To further develop our understanding of the world, at snack time we tasted Indian food, including, poppadoms, mango chutney and naan bread. We have used our class whiteboard to watch Indian dancing, listen to music and we followed Jessica's Diwali journey on CBeebies. We enjoyed looking at a map and a globe to explore where India is, then used the internet to find the Indian flag.

Within our expressive arts and design development, we have created salt dough diva lamps, paper lanterns and used water colours to paint the Indian flag. We have also enjoyed dancing to Hindu music.

Also this week as part of our mindfulness sessions, we balanced a duplo block on our tummy. We breathed slowly in and out. We observed the block go up when we breathe in deeply, and down as we breathe out. We then had a go at making the toy go even higher and even lower with our next breaths.

Our Heart smart session this week enabled us to discuss our similarities and differences. Working in pairs we looked at our faces in a mirror then described what we could see e.g. what colour hair we have. We then looked for similarities and differences between each others face. "I have blonde hair", "My eyes are blue and she has brown eyes". "I have curly hair". Finally, we painted our own self -portrait. Boris the robot says, 'We all have similarities and differences. I love being me.'

I have really enjoyed this week Preschool, thank you. Next we will take part in 'World Nursery Rhyme Week'.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone
Tara