Kung Hei Fat Choi

2017 The Year Of The Rooster

The children thoroughly enjoyed learning about Chinese New Year and taking part in celebrations at nursery. We chopped up vegetables to make Chinese stirfry and ate it using chopsticks for snack! The children developed their hand eye coordination skills, cutting and joining techniques while making lanterns for the role-play restaurant.
In the Chinese restaurant children ordered food, make deliveries, took orders over the phone, cooked and served up meals for their friends. Some enjoyed browsing through Chinese cookbooks and Chinese newspapers.
The children loved dressing up and dancing like dragons, snakes and tigers when Fen Fen came to visit. Fen Fen told us the story of Chinese New Year and we talked about the story of the animals race and how the tricky rat climbed on the Ox' head to cross the river first. We replicated the race with animals in the sand and some children dressed up as the Jade Emperor. Some children make models of Chinese dragons out of blocks, Lego and Mobilo construction kits.
Fen Fen also showed us calligraphy and the children took turns using paintbrushes to replicate Chinese writing. Fen Fen wrote everybody's names in Chinese to take home. Fen Fen told of the story of why firecrackers are used in the New Year celebrations and also why red is seen as a lucky colour. 
The children enjoyed a Chinese banquet of prawn crackers, mango chutney, prawn toast, spring rolls and took home fortune cookies too. The children made red lucky envelopes, writing  their names in gold: they took the envelopes home with chocolate coins inside to celebrate the Chinese New Year.