NCERT Solutions for Class 5th English Chapter 10 A. Crafts and their places · B. Your State or UT · C. A dot rangoli — Let us Do
Book page 129–130 Updated on2026-09-19
Q1.
Firozabad is famous for glass bangles. Find out and write the names of places in India known for the following crafts.
1. Madhubani painting
Answer
Madhubani district, in the Mithila region of Bihar.
The craft takes its name from the place: Madhubani means “forest of honey”. The art is also called Mithila painting, after the whole region, which covers Madhubani and Darbhanga districts.
What the picture on page 129 shows: A Madhubani painting on a cream background, with figures outlined in thick black lines and filled with red, blue and yellow. Every empty space is filled with tiny lines, flowers and leaves — that is the mark of this style.
How it began: Women of Mithila painted these pictures on the mud walls of their homes at wedding time, using colours made from flowers, leaves, soot and rice paste. Later they began painting on paper and cloth, and now their work travels all over the world.
Q2.
2. Paithani Saree
Answer
Paithan, in Maharashtra.
Paithan is an old town on the river Godavari, in the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad) district. The saree is named after it. Paithani sarees are also woven today in Yeola, in Nashik district.
What the picture on page 129 shows: A saree with a deep blue body covered with small dots, and a broad border and pallu woven with pink lotus flowers on a cream ground.
What makes it special: A Paithani is woven by hand from silk, with pure gold or silver thread in the border. The peacock and the lotus are its favourite designs. One saree can take a weaver many months — sometimes more than a year — which is why a Paithani is passed down from a mother to her daughter.
Q3.
3. Blue pottery
Answer
Jaipur, in Rajasthan.
What the picture on page 129 shows: A tall blue vase, a domed jar and small bowls, all painted with white flowers and leaves on a deep blue ground.
Why it is unusual: Most pottery is made of clay. Jaipur blue pottery is not — it is made from ground quartz stone, powdered glass and a little gum, so it is not baked in the usual way and does not contain any clay at all. Its blue colour comes from a natural blue dye called cobalt. The craft reached Jaipur from Persia through Kashmir and Delhi, and Jaipur made it its own.
Q4.
4. Phulkari embroidery
Answer
Punjab. (The same embroidery is also done in parts of Haryana.)
The word phulkari is made of two words — phul (flower) and kari (work). So the name itself means “flower work”.
What the picture on page 129 shows: Rows of orange, pink and green circles set in a diamond grid, all stitched in bright silk thread on a dark cloth.
How it is done: The thread used is called pat, an untwisted silk. The woman embroiders from the back of the cloth, using a long darning stitch, so that the pattern appears on the front. A grandmother would begin stitching a phulkari for her granddaughter at the girl’s birth, ready for her wedding many years later.
All four answers together: Madhubani painting → Madhubani (Mithila), Bihar · Paithani saree → Paithan, Maharashtra · Blue pottery → Jaipur, Rajasthan · Phulkari embroidery → Punjab. Find each of these places on a map of India, as the Note to the Teacher suggests.
Q5.
Find out what your State or Union Territory (UT) is famous for. Speak about it.
Answer
How to find out — three steps:
Ask at home and ask your teacher: “What is our State known for?”
Pick one thing — a craft, a food, a dance, a fabric or a place.
Find out three facts: what it is, which town or district it comes from, and why it is special. Then speak for about a minute.
What a good answer needs: the name of your State or UT, one thing it is famous for, the town it comes from, and one detail that makes it special.
Sample answer: My State is Uttar Pradesh. It is famous for many crafts, but the one I want to talk about is the glass bangle of Firozabad, which we have just read about. Firozabad has been making glass for hundreds of years. Its artisans heat the glass in a furnace, shape it into rings and colour it by hand. Almost every glass bangle worn in India comes from this one town. Uttar Pradesh is also famous for the chikankari embroidery of Lucknow, the brassware of Moradabad and the silk sarees of Varanasi. I feel proud that so many beautiful things are made by the hands of people in my own State.
Follow these steps to create a beautiful rangoli. (Seven steps are shown on a hexagonal grid of dots, followed by a blank grid for you to try on.)
Answer
First, look at the grid of dots. It is a six-sided (hexagonal) grid. Count the dots row by row: 4, 5, 6, 7, 6, 5, 4. That makes 37 dots in all. Every step of the rangoli is drawn around these dots — never between them.
The dot grid printed at the bottom of page 130, ready for you to draw on. The yellow ring shows Step 1.
The seven steps, exactly as the book shows them:
Step 1 — the centre. Find the middle dot of the middle row. Draw one small circle (a loop) all the way round it. Everything else grows out from here.
Step 2 — two petals. Just above the centre loop, draw a long petal shape that curls round the dot above. Do the same below the centre. You now have one loop with a petal above and a petal below.
Step 3 — the first star point. To the right of the centre, loop four more dots and join them with straight lines that come to a point. A star tip begins to appear.
Step 4 — the six-pointed star. Carry that same shape all the way round until you have a six-pointed star. Inside it, seven dots are now each wearing a loop — one in the middle and six around it, like a flower.
Step 5 — lines going out. From the sides of the star, draw straight lines outwards towards the edge of the hexagon. They look like rays.
Step 6 — the outer loops. Loop the dots that those lines pass, and join the loops with curves. The pattern spreads towards the corners.
Step 7 — finish it. Keep going until every one of the 37 dots has a loop around it and all the loops are joined. Now colour it. The rangoli is done.
Three rules that make a dot rangoli work:
1. Loop the dot, never cross it. The line goes round the dot like a bangle round a wrist.
2. Work outwards from the centre. Never start at a corner.
3. Whatever you draw on one side, draw on all six. That is what makes the pattern look balanced.
Why it is built on dots: The dots are a map. They keep every petal the same size and every arm the same length, so the finished rangoli is symmetrical — the same all the way round. Without the dots, one side always ends up bigger than the other.
Try this: Draw the 37 dots on the ground with chalk, or on paper in pencil. Do steps 1 to 4 first and stop there — a six-pointed star flower is already a lovely rangoli. Do steps 5 to 7 the next time.