Our Beautiful Rangoli Patterns
Are you all reading that title and humming some Kool and the Gang? We sang quite a bit of that song this morning, as “celebrate” is one of our spelling words this week! No, I am not teaching disco lessons (yet), we are doing some celebrating of a different sort.
One of our writing projects this year is the creation of a Holiday Book. Each of the students writes and illustrates a set of paragraphs (2nd) or essays (3rd) about holidays around the world.
We have learned about the Vietnamese observation of Trung Thu and the Hindu holiday, Diwali. Our research on Trung Thu included tasting mooncakes (thanks, Angela!) and drawing festival masks. The mooncakes drew many thumbs up from our culinary experts. Our favorite Diwali experience was making lovely rangoli patterns out on the blacktop. Surina’s mom and dad came to visit, and the three of them taught us about this creative and fun tradition. It is now two days later and some of the kids still have a bindi sparkling on their foreheads 
I am especially excited to teach about our next holiday, Dia de los Muertos, as it is a special time of celebration in my own family. If any of you have a holiday you would like to share with our class, please email me so we can work it in to the holiday study. It is always a wonderful opportunity for learning on so many levels when we know the observers.
Thank you for your inquisitive and fun little people!
The kids asked some great questions and Surina loved sharing the Bindis with both the girls and the boys. What an enthusiastic group!
Great project! I can’t wait for Dia de los Muertos!