Diwali is the perfect time of year to celebrate with family craft activities. The five-day festival, celebrated by several Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Newar Buddhists, takes place around the world every October or November – the date changes each year, as the Hindu calendar is based on the moon. This year it's taking place from 2 – 6 November, with the third day being the main day of celebrations.
The festival is associated with Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, and symbolises the power of light over darkness and good over evil. Lights are lit and doors left open to guide Lakshmi into people's homes. It's also a festival that coincides with harvest and is a time of celebrating new beginnings.
The word Diwali means "rows of lighted lamps" and is rooted in the Sanskrit word "deepavali". The event sees homes, streets and public areas decked out with oil lamps (called diyas), while family members visit each other and come together for celebratory feasts. Fireworks are lit and sweets are handed out, which are popular with children. With so many vibrant and bright traditions, Diwali is the perfect time of year to celebrate with kids crafts.
For more children's craft ideas all year round, you might also like our guide to the best crafts for kids.
Easy Diwali decorations and activities to make
In this article, we share a few of our favourite Diwali activities and crafts for kids.
Colour in Rangoli Diwali patterns
We're big fans of Twinkl for kids craft resources, and they have a great set of Rangoli printables that you can download and decorate at home.
Get the Diwali Rangoli Pattern Templates
Simple-make Marigold flower garland
We absolutely love this method for making tissue paper flowers and stringing them into a glorious garland to add wow-factor to your Diwali decorations. Find out how to make it over on Grateful Art's Youtube channel.
Make your own Happy Diwali cards
Diwali is such a visual festival, filled with rich and colourful symbolism, and DIY Diwali cards are a great kids Diwali activity which you can get really creative with to reflect this. We love this simple firecracker card tutorial from Shruti Acharya over at Artsy Craftsy Mom.
How to make a paper Diya Diwali Garland
The chance to decorate your home with bright colours and light-inspired decorations is one of our favourite things about Diwali festivities. This cute paper Diya Diwali Garland is easy to make from coloured paper, and will keep older children entertained too as they get to try quilling! The paper diyas could also be made individually to make Diwali cards. Find out how to make this beautiful Diwali garland from paper over at Red Ted Art.
Play dough Diwali rangoli
Get kids of all ages involved with making play dough Rangoli – it's a wonderful sensory play activity and you can decorate your mandalas and shapes with everyday household objects from your kitchen like seeds, or add glitter and sparkle with sequins and beads from your craft stash. Get a free Diwali activity sheet for your playdough Rangoli over at Maths on Toast. If you don't have play dough to hand, why not make your own with our play dough recipe?
Decorate your own Diwali candles – punched tealight holder
The Champa Tree has some brilliant articles about celebrating Diwali – they have one of our favourite round-ups of simple decoration ideas, including this punched tealight holder – read their 20 DIY Diwali ideas including this one.
DIY clay table decorations
A lovely Diwali table decoration idea that kids will love helping you make, are these sweet DIY Diya tealight holders, made from clay and decorated with patterns, jewels, gems or stickers of your choice. Find the tutorial for how to make them over at Little Passports and swot up on the basics with our guide to How to use air Dry Clay.
Stitch fireworks for your walls and table
Embroidery and stitching is a great craft activity that older children especially will enjoy. Make your own embroidered fireworks with our free fireworks embroidery design.
Make Diwali candles from paper and thread
We love these DIY Diwali cards over at Handmade with Love – younger children will find making the paper pleats fun to make while grown ups will enjoy getting creative embroidering the details.
Make colourful paper Diwali lanterns
One of our personal favourite family Diwali craft activities in our house is making paper lanterns using apertures covered in tissue paper around the edges that double up as sun catchers when we hang them in our windows. Here's a lovely tutorial for how to make your own by Angela Jose on www.thekeybunch.com. She uses coloured vellum in the windows but you can also do this with coloured acetate, tissue paper or even some sweet wrappers (we've personally tried and tested this with Quality Streets and the wrappers of the purple and yellow ones work especially well).
We wish everyone reading this a happy Diwali and hope you enjoy making the projects in this post. Do you have a favourite Diwali family activity or tradition? Leave a comment below - we'd love to hear about it.
We hope you enjoyed these Diwali crafts for kids. For more fun kids crafts head over to our how to make balloon animals for beginners guide here on Gathered.
Main image © Yevhenii Khil
