Hi,

It had been a few days since our arrival at Hong Kong and we could see shops selling amazing lanterns. All the bakeries were selling moon cakes. It was intriguing. What was this moon cake?

It seems as if everyone was gearing up for the mid-autumn festival in Hong Kong.

It felt like Diwali and I loved the lanterns in the shape of a fish, rabbits and the traditional cylindrical and circular ones.

Similar to our Indian festivals, there is a tale with this one too. Here is the story of Chang’e.

We visited the Park to take a look at the amazing lantern displays too but we missed the Dragon dance.

To know more about this festival refer this link.

Our service apartment, The Four Seasons Place,  had set up a fun event. They distributed a small booklet about Mid-autumn festival and they had organised some activities for children. The above picture of the story was from that booklet so we do not know the authenticity of the story but the link above is official.

Here are some of our pictures from the event – Aruja painting the stuffed bunny rabbit, the lovely lantern display,  Aruja and me with the lovely lady dressed up as Chang’e and Aruja with the ladybug lantern she helped make.

As you know, I have a very active child and our books, toys and activity stationery was all in the cargo. So what to do to keep her busy in our limited resources was a big problem for me. Thankfully, a box of paint and few objects to paint and we are busy for an hour or two.

On our way from school, we collected leaves and some empty snail shells. We washed them (30 mins to wash…yippee!) and dried them. You can also see her painting the flat, round cheese box till the leaves dried up (another 30 mins..double yippee!). So the shells, I left to her to paint as she wished.

And the leaves we painted as below. A family of ladybugs, a mixture of lovely colors looked fantastic on the texture of a real leaf. Here are our steps for you to try the same.

Here are the results.

I added a little text to the painted surfaces to get an idea on how to make the frames more meaningful but, I liked them just as they were too.

And of course one was pink and purple with hearts! 🙂

Just keep in mind that the leaves would wilt and dry out in a few days but, we enjoyed the process and the results and we were happy doing this super simple activity.

So do let us know what did you love? The lantern display, the story of Chang’e or the craft?

Love,

Poornima