Chinese New Year Celebrations – Preschool

Ni hao Preschool,

This week we have thoroughly enjoyed exploring Chinese New Year, the year of the tiger.

In our communication, language and literacy development, we learned some new vocabulary, Chinese Zodiac, parade, emperor, feast, fire crackers, dumpling and we even learned some Chinese words, Gung Hay Fat Choy an Ni hao. We sat and listened to the stories 'Lanterns and Fire Crackers' by Jonny Zucker, Dragons in the City by Twinkl and 'Dragon Dance' by Joan Holub to enhance our learning and answered questions about the different texts. To develop our early writing skills, we enjoyed using chopsticks and paintbrushes with water to mark Chinese symbols.

During our phonics sessions, our younger children have used one of our favourite nursery rhymes 'Old MacDonald had a farm' to develop and support questioning and understanding skills. Using the animals, we sang the song and made some very realistic animal sounds! Then we played a game of I spy and our brains worked hard to guess the animal from a clue. For example, I spy an animal which is white, who loves to run, has a curly tail, who makes milk. Super listening and understanding.

Our older children learned to identify the next set of the RWI picture cards, 'flower, leg, egg and horse' and enjoyed the game, 'Fred' says show me... We had to show Fred the correct number of fingers asked. We also continued to clap out syllables, we are improving with this skill each week . Finally, we ended each session singing our favourite nursery rhymes.

To support our physical development, we used scissors to snip and cut noodles, created marks with chopsticks and used tweezers to transport noodles and rice. At snack times we tasted some Chinese foods, including, prawn crackers, spring rolls, rice and sweet and sour sauce. During our outdoor play, we have continued to develop our ball skills and this week we have used a bat to hit a ball.

'The Great Race' by Emily Hiles has supported our mathematics development this week. We learned all about the story of the Chinese zodiac and found out that each year was named after an animal. The Jade Emperor decides there must be a race to decide the winner... We have taken part in our own races and then ordered the position that we have come. We then ordered the animals of the Chinese Zodiac 1-12. Can you remember what position the tiger came? We also played daily games to develop our subitising skills, recognising an amount(1-3) by sight without the need for counting the items,

Chinese New Year has been the focus of our understanding of the world development this week and we have enjoyed a lovely introduction to the festival of the Chinese New Year. We followed on Cbeebies a family as they let of fire crackers, enjoyed a Chinese feast, watched lion and dragon dances and hung up lanterns to celebrate the start of their New Year and welcomed the year of the tiger.

Within our expressive arts and design development, we watched a dragon parade on the interactive whiteboard. Then, we created our own puppet dragons. Finally, the exciting part, we danced in our very own Chinese New Year parade. We also created lanterns and made our own paper plate tiger. During the afternoons, we listened to some relaxing Chinese music then using ribbons and scarves we danced around the room.

During our HeartSmart session, as part of our personal, social and emotional development, we learned to read facial expressions and find ways to encourage our friends and cheer them up when they are sad. First, we shared our Boris the Robot story and focused on Boris's face on the last page. We discussed that Boris is smiling and is feeling happy because his heart is filled with love. Next, we played a game involving a ball with a smiley face drawn on it. We took it in turns to roll the ball to each other when we caught the ball we had to smile. We soon discovered that smiling is catching. Boris says, "If you see someone without a smile, give the one of yours."

Some of the activities we have enjoyed during our free play have been, drawing roads, drawing pictures of tigers, casting "magical" spells, role playing teachers, singing nursery rhymes, exploring musical instruments, baking cake in the mud kitchen, scooping up leaves and pouring and filling containers in the rice play.

Thank you for another great week,
Tara