Celebrating Diwali in Nursery!

This week in Nursery, our children have been exploring Diwali, the Festival of Lights, through a range of exciting, hands-on activities designed to spark curiosity, creativity and exploration.

Our youngest children enjoyed exploring Mehndi patterns, watching as adults modelled beautiful designs using circles, dots and lines. They had opportunities to make their own marks and experiment with different movements, developing their early mark-making skills.

The children also explored Diya lamps, using colourful paints to decorate pots inspired by the traditional lamps associated with Diwali. They were encouraged to choose their own colours and painting tools, expressing their creativity while developing their fine motor skills.

Our older Nursery children explored a variety of Diwali pictures, learning about objects such as diyas, lamps, and Rangoli. They were encouraged to look closely at the objects, talk about their colours, shapes and textures and share ideas about what they might be used for.

We also enjoyed creating Mehndi-inspired designs and experimenting with large-scale mark-making outdoors using brooms, brushes and buckets. The children explored making different marks and patterns, including circles, dots, horizontal and vertical lines.

Music and movement brought another exciting dimension to our learning this week! The children listened and responded to Indian music, using their whole bodies, scarves and ribbons to move in different ways. We practised moving quickly and slowly, reaching high and low and stopping and starting in response to musical cues.

Throughout the week, we have shared stories, introduced new vocabulary and encouraged the children to express their ideas, make choices and explore new experiences at their own pace.

It has been wonderful to see the children’s curiosity, creativity and enthusiasm as they learn about different traditions and celebrations.