Celebrating Diwali Book Review

Books are a great way to learn about cultures and celebrations that we might not participate in ourselves, and there are a lot of great kids books that can help people of all ages understand different cultures and holidays they might not already know about.

Celebrating Diwali by Anjali Joshi is a brief book that covers the basics of the five-day festival of light that is celebrated by about 1 in 7 people in the world across 90 countries.

Diwali is celebrated by several different religions, and the traditions and stories about the holiday can vary among groups and families. The main commonality is that it is seen as a triumph of light over darkness or good over evil.

In some cultures the holiday is said to celebrate Prince Rama’s defeat of the demon Ravan, who had kidnapped his wife, Suta. Other Diwali tales highlight the victory of Krishna over the demon Narakasura, while other religious groups have other stories to celebrate.

The book outlines the celebrations and what the different days of the holiday are said to stand for, and how it is celebrated in different religious traditions. It also includes crafts, recipes and games for your Diwali celebration.

It provides a nice, quick overview of Diwali for people who don’t have much knowledge of the celebration and does a good job of covering different ways it might be celebrated by people of different religious backgrounds.

About the book: 50 pages, paperback, published September 2022 by Rockridge Press. Suggested retail price $7.99.

I don’t know why Pinterest just suddenly decided I needed to see all the content about task cards and task boxes for kids, but these ideas are great for the classroom to keep in centers or have on hand for early finishers. You can also use them at home as quiet bags or boxes for kids to use when younger siblings might be sleeping, or in the car for a non-screen activity.

Let’s take a look at some fine motor skill task cards and how you can use them to teach kids skills while they play.

Pre-K Pages has a nice set of playdough task cards you can use in boxes or bags with a little tray (or they can just work on the table if they are sitting at a table). Working with clay or play dough is a great fine motor skill exercise, or you can add these to your playdough center if you have one to give them a little bit of direction while they work.

Teaching Mama has a bunch of great ideas for fine motor task boxes, from practicing working a glue bottle to threading beads, using clothespins or scissors, dropping water, finger painting and more. There’s a free printable that shows all the task options she talks through in the post if you want to make your own little boxes, or just keep these ideas on hand when you’re ready to add some fine motor fun to your days.

One of the ideas she mentions in that post is working with a hole punch, and Early Learning Ideas has a whole bunch (the urge to write “hole bunch” is strong) of ideas for printables that help kids practice hole punching, whether it’s a strip with circles on it for them to punch or pictures that include circles for punching, these ideas make it a little more fun to practice this important skill.

My Happy Place Teaching has a whole post about using fine motor task boxes in kindergarten, and her paid resource includes more than 100 task ideas with printables. But if you don’t need 100 boxes you can still get some good ideas from this post about different tasks to include and why and when you can use them. She also mentions using them in the morning while you’re busy with kids coming in at different times, which is a great idea.

Have you read?

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