Chinese new year

Throughout the week we have been learning about Chinese New Year –the year of the pig. Our playing and exploring helped us to find out about how Chinese people around the world get ready to celebrate Chinese New Year,

We learned that Chinese New Year is an important festival in the Chinese calendar, sometimes called Spring Festival and that this year in the year of the Pig. We watched a program about some Chinese children, who were celebrating Chinese New Year and learned about the lucky red envelopes that they receive and a celebratory dance that they do called the Dragon Dance. During the week we have made our very own red envelopes and had a go at writing in mandarin (the language of China) The characters of written mandarin are very beautiful but quite difficult to copy!

We have listened to Chinese music, tried some traditional Chinese food, tried to eat with chopsticks which was very tricky and listened to Chinese music as well.

It is very important for our young children to learn, understand and respect the different ways in which other people and other cultures celebrate. Learning such as this raises the children's awareness and acceptance of what, how and why other people celebrate and their right to do so. It puts our own cultural identity and celebrations into context and increases the children's knowledge about other cultures which forms an integral part of our learning on British Values.

The children worked hard throughout the week creating a Dragons head so that on Friday we could have a go at a traditional Dragon Dance. The children loved dressing in the dragon costume and playing instruments as the music played and we dance around the nursery…it really was a fantastic way to end the week!