Festival Art & Craft Activities for Kids
Kids enjoy celebrating festivals and I think we, parents should educate them the legend and significance of each festival occasionally. Even if schools also give a glimpse into festival celebrations, kids get an overall idea from their home only. Making art & crafts are also a part of most festivals and if we can get our kids also involved in doing these activities, the real festive spirits would flourish in their little hearts.
Let’s discuss some art & crafts handcrafted during these festivals Diwali, Christmas and Ganpathy.
1. Diwali
Diwali is an Indian festival of lights. Homes get ready to celebrate this festival with illuminated lanterns, colorful lamps, decorated wall hangings and so on. ‘Diya’ or lamps are the essential items that come in a variety of designs and stuffs. We buy lamps made of mud and decorate them to light on Diwali eve. ‘Diya’ decoration can be done by painting or by gluing colorful stones, pearls or by some other decorative materials.
Diya decoration
Kids can be made to participate in this kind of activity. Teaching the legend behind Diwali festival, they can be made to decorate ‘diyas’ with their own ideas or yours. Here, one set of lamps are decorated with paint and pearls. The second set has leaves and flowers designed to it that are decorated with green and red stones.
Paper lantern
Making of a lantern
Kids can make paper lanterns from Origami. However, these lanterns can’t be lit, but can serve the purpose of a wall hanging decoration. Let’s see how a lantern is built using paper.
- Take a square sheet of paper.
- Fold it twice vertically and horizontally on the middle as in the picture.
- Now, unfold the paper. You can see lines formed on the folds made earlier making four square pieces.
- Fold the four squares to get a triangular shape and flip it.
- Again fold from the corners up to the center and turn over again. Now, the folded sheet may have four squares equally partitioned.
- Folding the corners and opening its mouth (middle fold) of a pair of opposite triangular folds would give you the finished lantern.
Decorating this lantern is the next step. Here I’ve glued some sequences and shells to give it a traditional outlook.
2. Christmas
Even if there are so many crafts spun during this festival, making a Christmas tree is the common craft associated with kids. Reindeer, Santa Cloze, gifts, crib, hanging stars and greeting cards are some of the characteristic crafts homemade during Christmas.
Christmas tree
Making a Christmas tree
A Christmas tree is built using many methods. This tree is built by the use of green paper and a stand. Let’s look at its step by step construction.
- Take a small ball of clay and fix a pencil on it. This acts as the stand for the Christmas tree.
- Take some circular pieces of green paper each with 1cm difference in diameter. Here, I’ve taken 5 pieces with diameters 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2cm respectively. Folding these papers serve the purpose of branches of the tree.
- Take the big paper and fold it diametrically. Now you get a semi-circled piece.
- Fold gently on its middle and shorten the piece. You can fold this small piece as much as possible so that several frills are formed when you unfold it.
- Now, pierce this folded paper piece over its center through the stand until it reaches the bottom.
- Fold the other pieces also like this and insert on the top of the previous one.
- When the entire stand gets covered, place a star on its top.
Decorate the tree and Christmas tree is almost done!!
Snowman
Making of Snowman
Snowman is another theme of Christmas that each kid likes to craft. The snowy white color of his body is what attracts them.
This snowman has his body made of cotton, black dots (bindi in Indian language) as the eyes and a small paper cone as the nose. A small ribbon is wrapped over its neck to make it complete “Snowman”.
3. Ganapathy
Ganesha Chaturthi is the Hindu festival celebrated on the birthday (rebirth) of Lord Ganesha, the son of Lord Shiva and Parvati. Vibrant idols of Lord Ganapathy fill the streets for devotees to buy. Kids can be taught to make Ganpathy using paper as well as clay.
Ganapathy
Making Lord Ganesha from Origami
This Lord Ganesha is a join of two paper shapes.
- Take a square sheet of paper.Double fold it horizontally.
- Again fold it till the mid-line of the paper.
- Fold both corners through its midpoint from the top.
- Fold upwards the two hanging arms as shown in the picture.
- Pull outwards the fold of these arms as they form the ears of Lord Ganesha. Leave it aside.
- Take another square sheet of paper.Fold it diagonal-wise in order to form a triangle.
- Step fold through two lines near its midline as shown in the picture. This looks like the trunk of Lord Ganapathy.
- Fold the two edges inwards to form his hands.
- Finally, insert the first piece into the top of second piece.
- Then draw the eyes and see how your Ganesha looks!!
Isn’t it looking like the real Lord Ganesha?
Making Lord Ganesha with clay
These art & crafts are not only a pleasuring activity for the kids, but also for the parents to learn something new. Celebration of festivals may not be complete without the participation of kids who are the naturally lit lamps of God.
Which festival crafts you like the most from this hub?
Diwali diya decoration
How to make Christmas tree
© 2013 Radhika Sreekanth