Chinese New Year & Exploring Culture through Music!

Over the last few weeks, the toddlers have enjoyed preparing for and celebrating Chinese New Year. As this is the year of the rabbit the toddlers loved venturing out into the woods to search high and low for rabbits. When the toddlers couldn’t find any they decided to become rabbits themselves, by crouching down on all fours and jumping up and down. Back at nursery Oliver, Ellie and Jasper had the best time making a dragon to be hung up in the toddler room. Margot shouted “Look, red paint!"” as she splatted it across the box, table and floor. Sophie picked up a sponge and pressed it into the yellow paint and said “Yellow painting”. As the toddlers worked together to paint the dragon, Youcef started to see another colour appear. He pointed to the dragon and said “Orange”. As part of the Chinese New Year celebration the toddlers had the opportunity to try egg fried rice and noodles. At first Kitty said “yuck” but soon after watching Jude throughly enjoy his, she was willing to try some and to her surprise she actually really enjoyed it! 

The toddlers have also been looking at different types of music from the different cultures they have within the room. The toddlers have enjoyed daily dance sessions listening and dancing to Spanish, French, Italian, Arabic and Jamaican music. Otto loved wiggling his bottom to the Spanish beat while Amèlie enjoyed banging a goblet drum to the Arabic music. Isabelle enjoyed playing her french lute that she had made using cardboard boxes and elastic bands. She said “Ping Ping!” as she pulled the bands to make a sound. Outside, the toddlers explored different ways to make music using different surfaces and objects to make sounds. Sebastian used a sand toy to hit a wheelbarrow, making a high pitch sound. Otto used sticks along the wooden trims in the garden which made a sound that caused him and his friends to laugh and Esmé used her hands to bang on the table making up her very own rhythm. 

The under two’s have been busy with lots of Chinese New Year activities and been using bright red and yellow paint on paper plates to make a Chinese dragon. When using the sponges Harry kept saying “dab dab dab”. Eva watched Harry and started to copy, but she missed her paper plate and made a lovely mess on the table. With a big smile across her face, she looked and said “Oh dear!” which made Oliver laugh.

The children had great fun ripping up tissue paper to make fire for the fire breathing dragon! Rose was the first to get stuck into the paper, babbling as she ripped the paper into pieces, whilst India sat intently watching what Rose was doing. Monty came over to investigate and took hold of the red paper and began to tear it, the more encouragement he was given, the more he ripped the paper, smiling the whole time!

The under two’s enjoyed playing with sticky noddles (although some of us enjoyed eating them more!). We used kitchen utensils to try picking up the noddles, Arlo reached into the messy tray and grabbed big handfuls of noddles then put them towards his mouth, whilst Edward carefully used the ladle.

The under twos have explored the garden during the recent sunny cold weather. Arthur was having fun moving the leaves around the messy tray while Rose found it funny to crunch the leaves between her hands. Rose began to laugh when Kelly threw the leaves up into the air and they fell around her feet. Over in the sandpit, Ave was carefully using the spade to scoop up the sand, Harry watched and then join in, by using a small sandcastle shaped pot to scoop up the sand to add to the pile!