Holi-09 with Home Schoolers

Holi celebration with Home schoolers (on 12th march, 09, Thursday) got converted into an interesting project. We all were supposed to bring one story related to Holi or Colours and get together at our home and play holi.  

While preparing for the Story Asawari was concerned that how many of the kids (first timer / not from India) will understand the reason why we play holi - Who Prahald and Holika are? How and why do we play with colors in India? and so on - I asked her How would she like to know about Halloween festival which is foreign to her - she sad IF I see some pictures or video of people celebrating I will get the idea - and she got her own answer.

She sat on making PPT for the Holi story with Pictures related to Holi. We also donloaded few Holi  movies songs from you tube.

    After sharing what kids had - they made natural colours - We gave them paste of Spinach, Beetroot and Turmeric. They did their own combination and made water colours to play holi.

    Before they went out to play holi they all got involve in an experiment. Holika dahan is part of HOLI - where Holika burns and Prahalad does not burns. So we went for a small walk and collected twigs, leafs, stones, aluminum foil, etc. Our 2-1/2 yr old Mathew also collected things which he played by himself later. We also gave bending wire, and thread. 

The idea was to make puppet of Holika out of things that burn and puppet of Prahalad out of things that do not get burned. Kids made puppet of Holika with what BURNS and Prahald with what does not burn.

There was an excitement and arguments and exploration - what burns and what does not. They themselves divided into two teams - Making Holika and Prahalad - this happened automatically as per the interest for the material. Finally we burnt and saw ourselves what burns what does not

Playing holi with OUR OWN colur was fun.

Food too had colurs -- puris were made in three colusr - red (beetroot), green (spinach) and Turmeric (haldi). Potato veg was made in two colours green (with methi (fenugreek) and red (with tomatoes paste). View the slide show of FOOD TIME.

After the food some of them decide to make "holi painting". While other played with toys. Lucia and Asawari made Holi Butterfly while Dhrupad made Half butterfly.

Laura brought a big canvas and poster colurs to make "hand print" on canvas to give as a gift to Chandra and family who are leaving India.View the slide show of making of GIFT.

Had a great HOLI

Thank you all the kids for making this holi special for us with your enthusiasm. Thank you Aniket, Lucia, Hennah, Grace, Owen, Brandon, Adi, Atmmah, Little sister of adi, Mathew, Maaikia, Little Henrry, Big Henrry, , Thank you Moms for joining us - Chetana, Kiera, Lauralee, Noa, Lisa, Diane and Chandra. (any mistake in spellings of the name or we missed any name - pl let us know) -

Happy Holi
Aditi,, Ratnesh, Acchi Asawari and Dhrupad Darling