Rangoli and a Field Trip

Rangoli and a Field Trip 

Project 4:  Rangoli designs with chalk

Rangoli are colorful designs that are drawn on the floor near the entrance to the home.  They are used to welcome guests and during the Divali holiday they are used to welcome the Goddess Lakshmi into their homes.  They can be symmetrical designs or pictures of nature such as animals, birds or flowers.  We made ours on the driveway with chalk since we almost never use the front door and it was such a nice big area :)  For the project you will need:

• colored chalk
• flat, relatively clean surface
• your imagination!

She came up with her own design  :)

Hard to see but he is adding circles to the ends of the peacock feathers,

We all had a lot of fun doing this.  At first you think what will I possibly draw, but just start small and keep adding little bits here and there and before you know it your driveway is a beautiful piece of art!!  It kept the kids busy for about 45 mins too :)

Week 3 Field Trip!

For our field trip this week we went to an Indian market and dress shop in a neighboring town.  I used to live near this shop and had walked by and smelled the exotic spices and heard the music but never stopped in and checked it out.  The first thing we noticed (my daughter especially) was the smell.  Not a bad smell at all, but very spicy and incensey (?).  My daughter was being rather rude at first and holding her nose but after a minute it wasn't so strong and by the time we were done I didn't even notice it anymore.  We were a little overwhelmed by the aisles of unusual pastries and bags of things with unusual names so we enlisted some help.  The young man who worked there helped us pick out a few different snacks to try. They all looked pretty good, I could have easily spent A LOT of money, but I refrained and only bought a few things.

We bought:

•  Moong Dal (left) which are little fried split green gram (chickpeas) and are really addictive
•  Motichoor Laddoo (top), which are little cake balls made from Chana flour (garbanzo beans/chickpeas again!) sugar and butter that my son especially loved!
• Kurmura Ladoo (right) which are sweetened puffed rice balls that were ok - nothing great.
• Not pictured, but we also bought some paneer to see if it was any different from what we made -  ours was better!!! 

The kids really enjoyed looking at all the exotic foods and drinks and cooking utensils.  My son would have filled the cart with interesting things - he is definitely more adventurous than my daughter!!  Next door (actually the next room) was a dress and sari shop.  I was excited to have my daughter try on a sari and get a lesson on how to wrap it, but unfortunately, the only person working was the young man and he didn't know how :)  So we explored on our own and looked at all the statues of the different gods and goddesses of the Hindu religion.  They especially loved Ganesh, who has the head of an elephant!