Diwali or Deepavali is a joyful celebration and many of its symbols - candles and lights, rangoli, flowers and fireworks - make ideal subjects for exploration with your children through crafts. I remember my Dida (maternal grandmother) making little clay diyas at home in the pre-angel light age. We used to have so much excitement in painting them and decorating the whole house with them. Thus as we decided to celebrate Diwali with Li'l K this year by getting him involved in some super fun crafting activities all I could think was my childhood memories with my Dida! So we finally decided to make little diyas from very simple ingredients available at home. My 19 months old had super fun time with us making them. Its easiest last minute activity for various age group of kids and there are several steps from clay modelling, coloring to decorating which they can participate and at the end have fun seeing the diya light up on Diwali. Before we get into the details lets wish you all a very wonderful Diwali and Kali Puja, if interested please visit our special Diwali Outfit blog here.
So lets go into the steps now:
Ingredients
- 1 cup All Purpose Flour or Atta
- 1/2 cup table salt
- Water as needed
- 1 tablespoon oil
Or you can use kids play-dough and simply skip all these ingredients for making the diya. For decorations you would need:
- Acrylic paint and brush
- Decorating items like bindi , stone stickers etc
Steps
- In case you are using the all purpose flour to make your diya, knead the flour and salt together with the water. As you make a soft dough, top it with some oil so that it remains smooth.
- Now make 2 inch diameter balls or bigger if you want larger diya.
- Shape each ball into dew shaped diya by pressing and shaping the center of the ball and tapering the end. Involve your kid for shaping them if they are older. K is pretty young to shape them but we gave him a ball to play with and so that he feels included in the whole process.
- Put the diya in 100 F pre-heated oven for at least 2 hrs. It would vary with the size of diya and how moist your dough is. Just check them and take them out when they dries up completely
Decoration
If your kid is not interested in decor or you don't have much time, you can use the diya as it is. But decorating the diya is a lot of fun.
- We used arcylic paint to color them. K was so interested in using different colors. Specially as he's starting to learn the names of them. f course at his age he won't be able to do a perfect job with them but then we did the finishing job for him.
- We used some stone bindis and stickers to decorate the diyas, they were so easy to pick and stick for my baby and he was super duper excited for this part. For older kids you can help them to draw different motifs on the diya or stick several sequin with glue. Depending on kids age and interest you can tweak this part.
Finally our diyas are ready for Diwali.
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