We enjoyed celebrating the beginning of the 'year of the rat' with lots of exciting activities in school.  We used our creative skills to make Chinese lanterns, lucky red envelopes, fans and dragons.  We developed mathematical understanding of ordinal numbers and sequencing numbers to 10.  It was great fun listening to the legend of the 'great race' and using our language and reading skills to retell the story using pictures and props.  We were excited to find out the animal for the year we were born...the year of the goat (2015) or the year of the horse (2014).  Great perseverance and concentration was needed when we all had a go at the 'chopstick challenge' with the chopsticks that Sophia kindly brought in from home.

On Wednesday, Reception and Nursery came to school dressed in the colours of good luck (red) and good fortune (yellow).    We enjoyed dancing with ribbons with Mrs Neild, then the whole school came to a standstill when Reception visited each class with our carefully made Chinese dragon, playing drums & chimes as we paraded.  We were delighted to be rewarded with chocolate coins and fortune cookies from all the teachers and we even enjoyed a Chinese banquet prepared by the kitchen staff for school dinner too!

*Thank you so much to all our Reception families who took the time to visit Chinatown over the weekend (despite the rain!).  We loved opening your emails and sharing your Chinese New Year photos/videos on the smartboard.