As you get ready to celebrate festival of Holi, why not engage your children in colourful, fun Holi Activities for kids? We have lined up the best Best Holi Activities for kids just for you! These include Fun Holi Games, STEM Holi Activities as well as Literacy and Numeracy worksheets.
Practicing STEM activities at home gives your children a great advantage to explore concepts hands-on and in a fun way, without any academic pressure. That’s when pure learning takes place.
But before you start with the activities, here is the science behind Hoil. Holi, the festival of colours, is celebrated on the last full moon in the lunar month of Phalguna. It marks the end of winters and welcomes spring. According to Hinduism, it also marks triumph of good over evil.
Holi is said to be the day when broken relationships and friendships are mended and mistakes forgiven. Now that you know science of Holi, let us get the fun started.
Holi STEM Activities for Kids
- Oil, Water and Colour Experiment: You will love this experiment as it teaches your kids how applying oil before playing with Holi Colours can protect their skin.
Apply baby oil on your child’s one hand and dampen the other hand with water. Now take Holi colour and rub it on both the hands. Ask your child to stay with coloured hands for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, ask her to wash the colour off her oiled hand and then off the other hand.
Which hand was easier to colour off? Oil does not mix well with colour, thus forming a thin barrier between the skin and colour. Water on the other hand mixes easily with colour, hence it is more difficult to get the colour off from the hand that was dampened with water.
Also read: Science Experiments with Water
- DIY Water Gun: Children love playing with water guns and the idea of making their own water gun will surely get them excited. What you need is an old plastic bottle, old newspaper and Fevicryl paints.
Step 1: Take an empty, old plastic bottle. A 500ml water bottle works best as it is neither too big nor too small.
Step 2: Spread newspaper on worktable to prevent any stains. This is the most fun part of DIY water gun. Place the bottle flat on the newspaper. Now ask your child to pour Fevicryl paints on the bottle. Use different colours to create your very own pour art. Hold the bottle with its mouth and rotate it to spread the colour all around. Let it dry for a day.
Step 3: This step requires adult supervision. Take the lid off the bottle and poke a hole in its center using a scissor or metal skewer.
Step 4: Once the bottle is dry, fill it with water, cap it and squeeze it for endless water gun fun.
- Rainbow in a Plate: Make a rainbow in a plate with this simple candy experiment. What you need is a packet of Gems or M&M.
Line up the gems around the circumference on a plate, creating a colourful pattern. Add water to discover how colours melt off the candies to form a rainbow in your plate.
Gems are coated with food coluring. Water dissolves this food colouring to make coloured water. Without the coloured coating, all of them appear alike.
- Disappearing Colours: This is a really great experiment and never fails to amaze children. All you need is food colouring in different colours, laundry bleach and droppers.
Mix food colouring with water in different transparent glasses. Add laundry bleach with a dropper to each coloured solution to see what happens. Depending on the colours you have used, some will fade faster than the other.
Keep adding bleach till one of the coloured water fades away completely.
You just uncovered the science behind bleach. Bleach contains oxidisers, which react with colour molecules making them loose their colour. That’s why you add bleach to stains and spots. That’s how a bleach works!
- Dancing Colours: This is fun experiment for children of all ages. Younger children will enjoy watching it while your older ones will have a blast doing it.
Take two transparent jars. Add ice cold water in one jar and hot water in another. Let your child squirt two-three drops of food colour into both the jars.
As the colour mixes in the water, it appears to be dancing. Do not stir! Observer in which jar colour dances/mixes faster.
- Rainbow Crayons: To celebrate this festival of colours, we decided to make our very own rainbow crayons for family and friends. As Holi comes near the academic session, there are plenty of old broken crayons. It is great idea to recycle and give new life to old battered crayons.
Step 1: Ask your child to peel the stickers off the crayons and sort them according to colours.
Step 2: It requires an adult’s help. Cut the crayons into 2inches pieces with the help of a knife.
Step 3: Arrange the crayons in a silicon ice/bake dish following VIBGYOR pattern. We used a robot shaped silicon ice tray.
Step 4: Bake it in the oven at 225 Fahrenheit for 10-15 mins.
Step 5: Let them cool before your kids pop them out of the moulds.
7. STEM Holi art: If you don’t prefer messy play, then this one is for you. All you need is a deep dish(tray), some glass marbles, paint and a white craft sheet.
Stick the craft sheet on the bottom of the dish using two-sided tape. Next, take three marbles and dip them in primary colors. Put them colored marbles on the paper and let your child tilt the dish in various directions. Marbles will roll to create not only an amazing pattern but also secondary colours. Simply delightful!
8. STEM Magic Painting: Take a white craft sheet and with a white wax crayon write ‘Holi’ in the center in big, bold letters. Add different paints and water to spray bottles to make spray paint.
Stick this sheet on a clothesline using clips. Ask your child to spray color the sheet using different spray color bottles. The water will slide off from the wax crayons, coloring the remaining parts of the sheet. As your child will color, the letter will come out as if by magic.
Holi Fun Games
9.Water Balloon Cricket: Give a twist to water balloons splat this time with water balloon cricket. Bowl in the water balloons and your child has to hit them with a cricket bat. All you need is plenty of balloons.
10. Tie-Dye Shirt: This Holi, make a tie-dye shirt with your loved one. Grab an old plain white or any other solid t-shirt in a light color and roll it up. Once rolled, ask your loved one to tie elastic bands on the t-shirt at various places.
Now comes the fun part. Grab fabric paint or tempura paints and let your child color it using his creativity. It is a good idea to use plastic gloves when coloring it. Once done, let it sit for an hour before washing. Dry in shade and ta-da…your Holi t-shirt is ready.
11. Holi Book: This craft embodies the spirit of love-the essence of Holi. Take a few white sheets of craft paper and assign one sheet to each family member. Stick their pictures on their name sheets.
Ask your child to think of a colour that best describes that family member. Mention that colour on the sheet. And if your child can write, ask him to describe how that particular colour describes the concerned person. For younger children, they can draw fruits and vegetables that person likes.
12. Water Balloon Art: This is fun craft that can be done with many children together. You will require open space for this craft and a large size white craft sheets. You can also use an old bed sheet for this.
Dilute water paints in different water buckets and use this colored water to fill up the water balloons. Once the balloons are ready, let your children throw the balloons on the sheet to make some incredible Holi art.
13. Water gun cup toss: Holi is incomplete without water gun play. Add another dimension to this by stacking disposable cups on top of each other and inviting your children to toss them by shooting water from their water guns.
Holi Learning Activities
14. Holi Ladoos: After all these creative and fun filled activities, your child deserves a special treat. Banish hunger on the festival with these yummilicious healthy coconut ladoos.
To make them you will need desiccated coconut, condensed milk, food colors. Heat the skillet to dry roast the coconut for 5minutes. Add condensed milk and stir the mixture till it start leaving the sides of the skillet.
Divide the mixture into different bowls according to the number of food colors you have. Now ask your lo to add 4-5drops of the coloring and roll the mixture into ladoos. Your Holi ladoos are ready.
15. Holi Math & Literacy Fun: Teach your little ones about the festival and story behind it. This will help them understand their culture and traditions. To help them understand the story better, we have designed FREE HOLI worksheets for your kids.
Let your children practise skip counting, math manipulative these free Holi Math worksheets. These free math and literacy printable will ensure that your children have fun while they learn.
Click here for FREE Holi Worksheets
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