In the month of March, our Infant Room celebrated Holi, the joyful Festival of Colours that comes from the beautiful country India. Holi is a festival that celebrates happiness, togetherness, and the arrival of spring. Long ago, Holi began as a celebration of good winning over evil and is now enjoyed by people around the world with colours, music, dancing, and fun activities.
Traditionally, people celebrate Holi by throwing colourful powder on each other, dancing with friends and family, and making beautiful floor art called Rangoli. Rangoli designs are created using bright colours and patterns on the ground to welcome joy and positivity.
In the Infant Room, we celebrated Holi in our own special way. We set up many colourful invitations for the children to explore and decorated the room with bright, colourful fabric to create a festive atmosphere. For one activity, we placed colourful clothes and toys in a tuff tray so the children could explore different colours through touch and play.
We also created our own Rangoli-inspired activity. We drew Rangoli art on a black tray and added pom-poms and colourful popsicle sticks. The infants loved exploring this setup. Some children played with the sticks like hockey sticks, while others carefully traced the patterns with their fingers. It was wonderful to see their curiosity and creativity.
Another exciting activity we did was called “Let’s Smash”. For this activity, we mixed food colouring in water and dipped cotton balls into the colourful liquid. We placed the cotton balls on white paper and gave the children small toy hammers to smash them. The infants were super excited and had so much fun smashing the cotton. As they smashed, the colours spread onto the paper and created beautiful and unique designs. Through these activities, infants explored different colours, textures, and movements. Celebrating Holi in our classroom helped build a sense of community and introduced the children to a cultural festival from another part of the world. It also supported their sensory development, creativity, and early social interactions as they explored and played together.
