We celebrated the Hindu festival of Diwali last week at Novel English, with an exciting new course entitled ‘Wild Beasts and Exotic Lands’. Diwali is the festival of lights, where Hindus celebrate the rescue of the wife of Rama, Sita, by the monkey god, Hanuman. The course began with the arrival of the children, all dressed beautifully in traditionally colourful costumes, and the handing out of traditional Indian coloured glass bangles. There was a welcoming of tea and biscuits as the guests congregated in the cottage. The activities on the first day included a discussion of William Blake’s iconic poem, ‘Tiger, tiger’ and writing out the poem with illustrations; cutting out teak leaf-shaped patterns to paint a tiger’s head on; a huge lunch with traditional Indian dishes, and drinks of guava and mango juice mixed with coconut water. The weather was perfect which meant that the reading of the story of Rama and Sita was conducted out in the garden on the picnic bench, and the children took part in acting and improvising bits from the story. This was followed by drinks of hot chocolate with Indian sweet meals (hugely popular at Hindu festival seasons!)

There was a successful artwork session accomplished with coloured rice patterns, candles and exotic fruit, and a discussion on poetic ways to describe them (colours, shapes, textures etc!) Of course, this was followed by the famous Novel English campfire, with more hot chocolate and a warming meal of coriander and carrot soup with homemade bread rolls.

If you would like to see some photos of the course activities, please have a look on our Facebook page!

As usual, we at Novel English would like to thank everyone who took part in the course! Happy Diwali!