What our vegetable patch teaches
Watering cans, bean seeds and a lot of mud: what three- and four-year-olds learn from growing food in the garden.
Sankranti week at Little Banyan
Muggulu, gobbemmalu, paper kites and a harvest lunch: how our children celebrate Sankranti, and what to send from home.
Sankranti in mid-January is the biggest festival of our school year. Vizag streets fill with muggulu, the rice-flour patterns at every doorway, and our children spend the week before the holidays celebrating the harvest in ways they can touch, taste and make.
On Monday, the children draw muggulu in the courtyard. The older ones use chalk dots and lines, and the youngest fill the patterns with coloured rangoli powder and marigold petals. On Tuesday, we make gobbemmalu, the small cones traditionally shaped from cow dung and topped with flowers. Ours are made of clay, and we talk about why families place them on the muggulu. Wednesday is kite day. Each child decorates a small paper kite, and we fly them in the garden on short strings. We do not use glass-coated manja thread at school, and we ask parents to avoid it at home too, because it injures birds and children.
On Thursday, the children help our cook make pongali and a sweet with jaggery and sesame, measuring and stirring, and we eat it together on banana leaves. Friday is dress-up day in festival clothes, with a short programme of songs for parents at 11.30 am.
From home, please send a handful of sesame seeds and a little jaggery on Thursday, and festival clothes that are easy to play in on Friday. If your family celebrates differently, we would love to hear how. Children enjoy learning that their friends celebrate the same festival in different ways.
