We have been learning about and celebrating Lunar New Year all week long. Starting with the well-known story, ‘The Race’, we discovered how each year is named after an animal character from the story. We were surprised that the clever rat won the race despite being the smallest animal. However, it did not go unnoticed by the children that the rat was not keeping the Golden Rules when he pushed the cat into the river! As a class, we acted out the story using stick puppets, following the order that the animals crossed the river.
We researched information on the computer and learned that red is a very lucky colour and gold means wealth. We had great fun with this week’s art activity as we made our own Chinese dragon using egg boxes, paint and collage. We also looked at Mandarin symbols and all had a go at writing some on Mrs Guest’s silk scroll using a special paintbrush and some water. We watched some amazing video clips of the dragon dance and the lion dance, and this was the spur to us making our own masks and trying to copy the moves. There has been lots of fun in our Chinese restaurant role-play area, taking friends orders and then busily cooking their requests before serving them with delicious meals. We also tried our hand using real chopsticks.
Our celebrational week finished with cooking and tasting some egg noodles. First, we observed, touched and smelt the noodles before they went in to the boiling water. We made predictions that the noodles would change once they came out of the pan. We then insisted on trying the noodles – they were delicious!
Naturally, alongside all of the above, we celebrated Children’s Mental Health Week, discussing different moods and how we deal with them, focusing particularly on what makes us feel happy and how we can make our friends feel happy. Safer Internet Day also was celebrated along with the rest of the School; we enjoyed a story about ‘Buddy the Dog’ who shared top tips about keeping safe online and we sang his accompanying catchy song to reinforce the important messages – do ask you child/children if they can remember it!
After half term we are learning about fairy tales, starting with Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
