Our bubble of 10 children and 3 teachers celebrated Diwali while focusing on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and maths).

We explored science when creating oil (floating on coloured water with a floating wick) burning lamps; and when experimenting with the need for oxygen when burning; and when burning some different substances like sugar and baking soda mixtures as we learnt more about diyas.

We used technology, a Theremini, to create our own Diwali music.

The Theremini is a cross between a Theremin and a Moog synthesizer. It works through electromagnetism and you play it without physically touching the instrument. You can watch a video of it here.

Children became chemical engineers when they developed a production process to transform PVA glue and food colouring into a self-clinging biodegradable plastic product which they call “lollipops”, to decorate the maker studio window which forms the backdrop to our Char Bagh flower garden.

We created traditional Indian art using coloured sand Rangoli techniques and Gond painting from Madhya Pradesh as well as colouring more mandalas.

Children played with maths patterns and groupings as they arranged flowers and meena gems; and they wrote numerals using Indian ink. Some of the children also used the meenas to model addition and subtraction operations and one child explored multiplying groups of 3.