Holidays

We're going to a play at the Smithsonian Discovery Theatre tomorrow about all the winter holidays and I discovered a teacher's guide for it online. It had a good explanation of the solstice and several winter holidays such as Divali, a Hindu new year/harvest celebration; Kwaanza, an African American cultural holiday; Ramadan, Hanukkah and Christmas.

We made some Rangoli for Divali, these are decorative drawings to show the journey of the goddess and are symmetrical (Katie's has the hearts):


and Kwaanza mats, which have 7 lines for the 7 ethics the holiday celebrates and they are used to place under the candles lit for each night of the holiday (Zack's is on the left):

I think they'll get more out of the play--IF we get to see it tomorrow. It snowing fairly hard-for Virginia-and it's possible the city will shut down.

If so, we'll just have to study weather and build snow folks!