Welcome back to the second half of the Autumn term!  We hope everyone enjoyed a restful half term break.  As the dark nights draw in and the leaves start to change colour, we have been encouraging the children to notice the different coloured leaves in the garden.  If you find any red, yellow or oranges leaves when out and about this weekend, please do bring them into Nursery for our Nature Table.  Thank you!

There was great excitement this week as many of the children were looking forward to spending time with their families, celebrating a certain festival that involves special costumes, decorating homes, eating sweets and lighting candles! 🎃

In Nursery, we take every opportunity to find out about different cultures and religions so, this week, we decided to find out about a celebration that also involves costumes, decorations, sweets and candles: the light festival of Diwali.

Unlike Halloween, Diwali is a religious festival.  It is celebrated every year by Hindus all around the world.  First, we read the story of the Ramayana which tells the tale of Rama and Sita, who defeat the ten-headed demon king, Ravana, with the help of the monkey king, Hanuman.  The children all agreed that Ravana was “not very kind and friendly”!

You can re-visit the story in this CBeebies clip:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/stories/lets-celebrate-diwaliperformance

During Diwali, Hindus light diya lamps to symbolise the victory of light over darkness, just like in the story of Rama and Sita.  They also wear special clothes, decorate their homes and eat lots of special sweets!

Meet Jessica here to find out more about how Diwali is celebrated.

We had a go at dressing up ourselves!

Retelling the story of the Ramayana:

And we practised our mark-making within this beautiful Rangoli pattern!

We hope you’ll understand that we decided to leave all the sweet-eating to you at home!  Have a lovely weekend everyone 😊