Diwali Mehndi Pattern Activity Pack

EYFS Creative Art, Mark Making & Loose Parts

Explore the beautiful art of mehndi with this versatile Diwali-inspired activity pack! Featuring realistic, diverse hand illustrations, traditional-inspired henna patterns and decorative design discs, this printable resource encourages children to explore patterns, develop fine motor skills and express their creativity through hands-on play.

Perfect for Diwali celebrations, creative provision, mark-making activities and cultural learning experiences.

What’s Included:

A4 mehndi inspiration mat featuring photographs and illustrations of traditional henna designs.
Mehndi hand design discs for visual inspiration.
Henna pattern discs featuring decorative shapes, flowers, swirls and patterns.
Diverse hand printouts in A4 and A3 sizes, representing a range of skin tones.
Printable resources suitable for drawing, decorating and loose-parts activities.

Learning Opportunities / Benefits:

Develop fine motor skills, pencil control and hand-eye coordination.
Explore lines, dots, swirls, shapes and repeating patterns.
Encourage creativity, imagination and self-expression.
Develop concentration, attention and perseverance.
Practise careful placement and manipulation of small objects.
Introduce vocabulary associated with mehndi, patterns and Diwali.
Support cultural awareness and appreciation of different traditions.
Encourage conversations about similarities, differences and individual creativity.

How to Use:

Print the resources and offer children a variety of ways to explore mehndi-inspired art.

Activity ideas:

Draw your own mehndi: Print the hand templates and invite children to decorate them using pencils, pens or crayons.
Reusable mark-making mats: Laminate the A4 hands or place them inside plastic pockets for use with wipe-clean pens.
Loose-parts mehndi: Use the A3 hand templates with buttons, gems, beads, sequins and other loose parts to create temporary decorative patterns.
Pattern inspiration: Display the mehndi and henna design discs to encourage children to explore different shapes and arrangements.
Fine motor exploration: Provide tweezers to pick up and position small loose parts onto the hand templates.
Creative invitations: Combine the hand templates with playdough, natural materials or collage resources.
Cultural learning: Use the A4 mehndi mat as a conversation starter to explore how henna is used during Diwali, weddings and other celebrations.

The A3 hand templates are particularly suitable for transient art, allowing children to create, change and rearrange their designs without a fixed end product.

EYFS Links: Expressive Arts and Design (EAD), Physical Development (PD), Understanding the World (UW), Communication and Language (CL), Mathematics (M).

Perfect for Nursery, Preschool, EYFS, Pre-K and Reception.

Play-based EYFS | No worksheets.