Chinese New Year!

The pre school children recently have been learning all about Chinese New Year and the celebrations that take place at this time of year. When Alfie came in to nursery in the morning and had seen that all of the decorations had been put up all around the nursery, including a large scale dragon, he was so excited to show all of his friends as they arrived.

At group times, the children have intently listened and engaged in conversations around the celebration and particularly enjoyed listening to ‘The Great River Race’ story. Youcef was extremely amazed to see that a dragon was flying through the sky and Flo was keen to share with her friends, “Remember it is the year of the dragon this year”.

The children took part in many activities throughout the week including food tasting egg fried rice, noodles and lychee juice which was very well received! They also very much enjoyed sensory play with rice and noodles in the home corner where the children used their imaginations to engage in role play with Chinese patterned bowls and plates and attempt to use the chopsticks to pick up the rice! India was very keen to serve all of her friends some rice, insisting that everyone should try some, rubbing her tummy and saying, “Mmmm”.

Another activity that the children enjoyed was writing in Chinese. Sadie chose to try and write Ox whilst Lana chose a rat. They both concentrated really hard when copying the Chinese word on to their own paper and Sadie even praised Lana, “Wow Lana, that’s a very good job” which made Lana smile.

 The children took part in a Chinese dragon dance and party on Friday where they had the chance to listen and dance to some Chinese music whilst wearing Chinese style outfits and dressed in the cardboard dragon that they had all worked so hard throughout the week to make. Sophie thought this was extremely funny when she saw Madan dressed as the dragon head and told him, “You look funny”. At the end of the dancing, the children all gave a Chinese red envelope to each other which Jasper remembered, “It has some money inside it”.