Celebrating Diwali 2023 with Purple Mash: 12th November

Diwali, also known as the Festival of Lights, is the biggest festival in the Hindu calendar and is celebrated in October or November each year. This year, celebrations fall on Sunday 12th November.

Diwali symbolizes the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance. The celebration involves several million lights illuminating rooftops, doorways and windows in temples and buildings across the countries where the festival is observed. It unifies religions, regions and cultures bringing together Jainism, Sikhism and Buddhism along with Hinduism.

At 2Simple we’re celebrating light and colour and invite your class to be creative and get involved. Subscribers can find a collection of classroom resources inside the Diwali area of Purple Mash.

If you don’t currently have a licence, there’s never been a better time to try. Register for a free trial and you’ll get access to everything Purple Mash has to offer, from planning and schemes of work to fully editable writing templates, quizzes, games and a lot more. Register for your free trial here.

Writing Projects:

Use our writing templates to celebrate Diwali. Our Special Clothes template allows pupils to drag and drop clothes onto children getting ready for their Diwali celebrations, write about how they are feeling and why Diwali is so important to them. There's also a mouth-watering exercise giving children the chance to write step-by-step recipe instructions for Khajur Burfi (Diwali sweets) and children get the chance to explain how one boy celebrates the festival by creating a leaflet.

Fireworks are commonly used to celebrate Diwali, so why not build the excitement in class by creating a poster to advertise a firework display, or code a fantastic fireworks display of their own?

There are also two postcard templates, allowing children to show off their Diwali knowledge and exercise their imagination at the same time. They could write home from India, describing what their homestay with an Indian family is like, or how they celebrated Diwali in a temple. Either way, it’s sure to be an inventive exercise.

Paint Projects:

Since Diwali is a celebration of colour and light we’ve created a wide variety of paint projects that children can use to give their artistic flair a runout, without the mess!

Rangoli is an art form, originating in the Indian subcontinent, in which patterns are created on the floor or the ground using materials such as coloured rice, coloured sand, quartz powder or flower petals. We have several pre-populated Rangoli templates for you to use to make the most colourful design. You can also design your own Mehndi to celebrate.

However you are celebrating Diwali this year, please share your work with us on Facebook or Twitter.

Happy Diwali!