Special Diwali Fort

One of our trainee teacher’s entered the class with a worried expression. She announced that we had to do something unique in our preschool for this Diwali (Festival of lights celebrated in India). Everyone was scratching their heads. One said, “Let’s hang lanterns” and the other suggested, “let’s draw a huge rangoli.” But these ideas were pretty basic and common. Just then, one of our trainee’s suddenly shrieked in joy. She came up with something out of the blue. “We have a lot of blocks that children play with every day,” she said. “We have cubes, cuboids, spheres, semi circles and what not. Why not make a fort out of it?” (There is a tradition of building a fort out of mud and clay before the festival starts.) During Diwali vacation, making a fort brings the children together. Making a fort is a big task and involves a lot of exertion. This is a good physical activity. A fort is mostly made in Maharashtra as it is connected with the history of the great Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. He has fought for his people and had captured a lot of forts and a lot of hearts during his life. A fort (killa) is a representation of his Era with the little clay figures placed on the fort.

Everyone loved the idea of a blocks fort and jumped with joy. We were relieved from a lot of pressure. We started arranging the blocks in the hallway. Suddenly everyone was behaving like architects. We had always made forts with sand and clay, but never with blocks. We worked for 2 hours straight and finally our fort was ready.

One trainee felt that something was still missing. She came up with a beautiful idea. She asked, “why don’t we decorate our fort with flowers, rangoli and diyas?” So that’s what we did next. The fort looked splendid. Of course we also had a Diwali party for the kids and distributed sweets.

We were very happy and proud of the work that we had done. We had successfully made that Diwali creative and unique. That Diwali was the best Diwali for all of us.

A happy and safe Diwali to everyone!!!

Stay tuned for the next blog.

-Creativekidandmore