Diwali Lamp

Diwali Lamp


We do lots of crafts in our house including Valentine's Day, Halloween, Christmas and so on. Although we don't celebrate Christmas, he loves Christmas because we put up a tree, decorate the house, do crafts and have gifts. I want him to be enthusiastic about Indian festivals as well, so I try to add some Indian crafts. Last year we made Diwali greeting cards and mailed it to grandparents. The grandparents loved it. This year we tried diya/lamp using clay. We had some left over clay from when we made clay Ganesha for Ganesh Chathurthi.


Things needed for this activity:
- Natural clay
- Knife
- Paint
- Glitter pen/Sharpie
- Rolling pin
- Sharp round lid or cookie cutter (about the size of your palm)
- Small cup

Get a lemon sized clay and roll it into a ball. Use the rolling pin to roll our the clay ball.

 Use the cookie cutter or the lid to cut out the circle.In our case, we used a measuring cup.

Put a small cup upside down and place the clay on the cup (we used a sippy cup). Shape it into a bowl and into a lamp with your finger tips. As you shape the cup try to pinch on one side, so it will look like a lamp.

Take it off of the cup. Use some water and smoothen out any cracks using your finger tips. Let it dry over night.

 Paint the lamp using your favorite color. We used Acrylic paint and it worked well.

Once the paint dries, use a Sharpie or a glitter pen to decorate.

We use our homemade playdoh and made rangoli (decorations) around the lamp. We also made patterns with the color playdoh balls.

My son also made lamps with salt dough lamps at his playgroup. Even my 15 month old made the salt dough.