Diwali Celebrations @ Sancta Maria

The pre-primary section welcomed Diwali with great splendour. An assembly was held on 20^th October, Monday, in honour of Diwali, wherein the students of PP2 jointly presented a skit demonstrating the reasons for celebrating the Festival of Lights, and how is it observed. The skit included a scene from Ramayana, where the students were dressed up as the main characters like Rama, Sita, Laxman and Hanuman. Students of PP1 and Nursery entertained the audience by singing two rhymes on Diwali, one each in English and Hindi.

Diwali goodies distributed in the classrooms brought much joy to the students. The students who were decked in traditional attire were delighted to learn about the festival. The excitement peaked when they were painting ‘diyas’ and decorating ‘torans’ rendering the day more colourful. Towards the end of the day, the students were excitedly sharing their ideas on celebrating Diwali once back in their homes. Needless to say, lighting the diyas they painted came on the top of their lists.

Animation and Learning

Whenever I see children spending excessive time with a smart phone or a laptop or an iPad, I cannot help think whether they are being exposed to technology in the right way. The effects of constant video gaming on children’s development and socialization can be long-lasting and they have been proved as adverse too.

It is healthy to have hobbies, especially for the younger generation, as they help in the overall development of the personality. Animation could be a great hobby for the new tech-savvy generation. In schools, an Animation Club is an excellent program to steer students from being the end users of games to become creators of the game. The students get an opportunity to “create” through imagination, in the new medium of technology.

At Sancta Maria, we introduced Animation Club this year. It started with the fourth grade students watching a short demo on animation I had created. They could hardly contain themselves from the excitement that they were going to create their own animations. The presentation did not take long, but I was truly amazed at how much they were able to pick up in such a short amount of time.

Students soon began creating animations of different characters, both animals and humans; sometimes the animations were much evolved like a cartoon, including dialogues between the characters.  The innovation in their thought process was evident from the marvellous animations they created. This experience with fourth graders was so encouraging that, we extended the activities of the animation club by including the third graders into it.

The fun and the celebration of creativity know no end in our Animation Club!