I know many of us are always looking for fun Diwali activities for the kids. I would like to share some “creative” Diwali activities that we did this year for my older son’s birthday which were a huge success with the kids. These were “created”by my older son and of course, ‘executed’ by his dad and mum.
He wanted a Diwali celebration for his birthday but not quite focused on diya decoration or too artsy/rangoli making event, the point being that 8 year old boys (or girls) are not likely to think that as super fun!
So when the children arrived, we greeted them with a traditional tikka, and then gathered around to quickly go over the story of Ramayana. In fact, rather than the adults narrating it, we had the kids talk about it and they brought to life the parts that they were fascinated with most: Hanuman, setting Lanka ablaze, Ravana and his ten heads, the great battle, Kumbhkarana- basically , the fighting, the bows and arrows and the monkeys vs the demons bit!
Then onto the action part:
1. The great battle: Every child was asked to choose if they wanted to be a monkey or a demon. To my great fascination, they all chose to be monkeys because they wanted to to be the “good” one. All the monkeys were given paper tails to be scotch taped onto their behinds which of course caused plenty of mirth! Yours truly and her able assistant (the other AmaraKid, my friend’s daughter) were therefore the fierce, mean demons with blood drops painted around our mouths. The battle ensued between the monkey army (doing their monkey battle cries) and the demon army, with our demon snarls. This was a very “creative” battle played via the medium of tug of rope/war! But what great fun it was! The fierce demons lost every round; in fact so badly, that we had to ask Ravana (the dad) to jump in and help out but to no avail, the demons lost the war, while the monkeys completely got the point of “good will always win”!!
2. Pin the fire on Hanuman’s tail: This one brought out the artist in my husband. He made a giant Hanuman out of orange poster paper, along with orange fire flames for every child. We quickly went over the bit of Hanuman setting Lanka ablaze with his tail, and the fun began. Every child was blindfolded and had to pin the fire flame close to Hanuman’s tail. They now pretended to be demons who were trying to set his tail on fire and most of them came pretty close to the tail!
3. Kumbharana eating competition: That Kumbhakarana could be such an interesting character for the kids, was the surprise of this party. The kids loved this giant demon who slept for six months, and had to be woken up with elephants marching on him as well as huge drums playing close to his ears. He ate mountains of food and drank oceans of water!! My husband kick started this with a very fun enactment of Kumbhkaran snoring, and had to be woken up by the kids. We divided the kids into three teams of four kids each. Each team was given a couple of chocolate laddoos, some savories and a little fruit. The team which ate up everything the fastest was the best Kumbhkarana. This one rocked the house or Lanka, if I may! The little Kumbhkarans demolished every morsel at the speed of lightning and clamored for more rounds of this competition!!
4. Diya decoration: how can you have a kiddie Diwali celebration and not have them decorate diyas! Once the boisterous activities were done, they all settled happily to decorate the diyas- super easy and mess free with glitter glue pens!
5. The grand finale of the celebration were the firecrackers: sparklers of every hue, fountains, chakris, bombs- the works!! I have never seen a dozen kids so quiet as they were while waiting for the grown up to light the fountains or chakris or whatever else crazy firecracker that was there. They loved the firecrackers bursting, the sparklers sizzling and the fountains spraying the glitter. I loved it too!
Here’s wishing everybody a very happy Diwali!
