Celebrating a festival away from homeland can be the most nostalgic experience. And as a parent it really takes efforts to let our child experience similar kinds of joys. Joys that made our childhood.
The activity post is little late, but, better late than never.
With Halloween ghosts hanging around every where, I came up with only one idea for this Dussehra. Why not make our own Rawana! It would be least polluting and quite safe for a 4 year old to enjoy in the comfort of her own house. To share the wow s we also had a friend with us.
Raw materials : Sketch pens, Glue, Plain sheet of paper, Few match sticks, water and a plate
Age: Fun for 4+ as long as he is away from fire.
Important: Parent monitoring recquired. The drawing can be done by the child but the match work and fire has to be handled by the parent.
We first made our Rawana with ten heads. Then we glued the match stick on Rawana s head. We can follow with matchstick heads on each head. That would mean 10 matchstick heads, and lease one for burning. Or we can use three matchstick heads on Ravan’s heads and leave one for burning.
We made Sita Mata in a Yellow Saree. Lord Rama and brother Lakshmana with bows behind their shoulders and Arrows in their hands.
The pictures were for a quick kid activity so the drawing is not very good. But we had fun.
We did try the activity in the middle of a water filled plate. Rawana stood on a clay in the center. Sita ji sat close to the rim of the plate and Lord Rama stood on a floating plate. We stuck his pic on a toy plate with a clay . I used water to avoid any mis hap. As Rawana’s pic burned, the char fell into the water.
I later recreated everything for this post so you don’t see water here.
Stage was set. At this point I had to keep my kid to seated for the show; away from the water and fire. In case if u cannot help it don’t do this. The kid will lift the plate and if u have a burning matchstick at hand then, it would be too many things to handle. If you can anticipate such an event DONT TRY THIS.
The show:
We made Lord Rama take a few circles around Rawana and then he held his bow and arrow. I lit a matchstick and held it close to Lord Rama’s hand. I made my own dialogues, you can use shlokas if you know.
Then he put the fire on the bad Rawana. The fire grew big with every new matchstick and let me tell you it was fun to see my little daughter do waaaa.
Happy Dussehra. Happy festivities…..
P.S. The presentation was for a joyful kid activity. No religious ties involved.
The wild Pen 