It began with “design your own festival”. Last time we celebrated Baishaki at Aarohi – it was designed by faculty, we arranged all the resources, food items, music etc. During the session all the adults were busy arranging for material, putting up music, making Lassi and so on…………kids danced to the music we had selected………..they waited for Lassi, one child was continuously asking “when is Lassi coming?”
Well, we knew what was our mistake, children did not have “ME” in me. We learnt from this mistake and this year we began with “what would you like to do during festival celebration session”. First session was chaotic, kids were confused “how can we? what can we????? They read, they were moving here and there in utter confusion………..second session they came with their own thoughts
Within 10 minutes planning was done – how to celebrate, what to celebrate and who will do what and within one hour all preparations were done. Different groups for different festivals were made as per individual’s choice.
- One group celebrated Diwali – they did Lakshmi Puja with Aarti, flowers were made with newspaper, they added newspaper modak also :). Crackers were made with newspaper. To their surprise there was a long line for Aarti. We had live musicians to add rhythm during Aarti.
- One group celebrated Ganesha – they made clay Ganesh Idols with many details, and finally had procession and immersing in water with dance and chanting. As soon Ganesha Idol was submerged into water one exclaimed “It is not dissolving !!!”.
- One group celebrated “Halloween” – they shared one ghost story made by themselves and created props and mask with newspaper and cardboard boxes.
hmmmmmmm this time no one was asking “Aunty what do I do? how long…..when……..they all were super busy and I was busy only clicking photographs. After discussing about the material and resources need for the preparation, Shyamala too was free to enjoy and just observe.
Pictures tell you the whole story