November 12, 2023 marks the beginning of the five-day festival of Diwali. The preschool 1 class wanted to learn more about this widely celebrated festival. One day we read a book about Diwali, and did an exciting activity! Diwali is the festival of lights, celebrating light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance. We decided to make salt dough and turned it into Diva Lamps to celebrate Diwali. We gathered our materials, and then got to work. All the preschoolers helped Amy measure and scoop the ingredients. We needed flour, salt and water. Once we had all the materials in the bowl, we mixed them all together. We first started by mixing with the big spoon, but then decided using our hands would be best. “It looks like yogurt” Henry L said. “We need to mix good” George said. Once all the ingredients were combined, the preschoolers got a chance to touch their ball of dough before it got formed. Some preschoolers loved the feel of it, others did not. We then formed the dough into the shape of the Diva Lamps, and put them on a tray to go dry out in the oven. The preschoolers were very excited to see them once they were dry. Once they were dry we decided to paint them. We practiced colour recognition by identifying the colour we wanted to paint our lamps. Cam decided to start with the colour brown. As he continued to paint he used all the colours and spread it out over the lamp. Some of us chose to just paint the inside of the lamps while some of us painted all over. We built on our sense of belonging by sharing the paints and passing them to each other. We are excited to bring them home and show off our hard work.
