Holi in San Francisco Bay Area

Holi is on Feb. 28th 2010-brrrr! And a cute Holi craft!

Holi is coming up  but for those of us here  in sunny California, it’s a tad too soon! I am not in the mood to get wet- or do the color thing in a couple of weeks’ time. May be we’ll stick to ‘sookhi Holi’ this year- you know- Hindi for Holi sans water. How about playing Holi with dry colors bought from the Indian store? That might actually be very pretty aaaaaaand comfortable!

Now, how do I convince the kids about this? After Halloween, Christmas and Diwali (in that order, yes) the next festival which they enjoy very much is Holi! The very colorful, the very wet, the very messy kind is what they want! In fact, now I recall- they made me promise to get them the huge Bazooka like water guns for this year’s Holi. So who am I kidding!

This year, Bindiya and I have decided to have the kids play Holi a bit more traditionally than previous years. Our idea is to have them wear white, smear each other with color, impress upon them the significance of the festival, do a Holi story and craft session, and then ‘play’ Holi with rang, gulal and pickaaris , mithai and music! Sounds fun- doesn’t it? Join us online next week- watch, read and enjoy our Holi celebrations!

Here’s a cute, colorful  Holi craft to kick start the festival:

You will need construction paper of as many colors as possible; a paper plate and some glue or staples.

1. Trace your child’s hand on the construction papers :pink, yellow, red, green- all the traditional Holi colors, if you can get them. You should have at least 10 tracings.

2. Cut out the hand tracings.

3. Glue the hand tracings on the outside of the paper plate, with the fingers pointing outwards.

4. Glue another set  of the hand tracings on the paper on the inside of the first circle, with the fingers pointing out.

5. You should be able to glue another third layer in the center of the plate- overlapping the other circles.

6. You will get a bright, multi colored Holi flower. Have the kids make a few of these and paste them on the the window.