Last week Nursery children celebrated the Chinese Lunar New Year. They watched a video about the celebration and learned about the importance of various symbols within Chinese culture, such as the colour red, fireworks and the animals that represent each year within the Chinese zodiac calendar. They also learned about traditions within the culture that are carried out in preparation for the celebration.

The children experienced some real Chinese decorations and artefacts gifted to us by one of our community members, who spoke about them proudly in Crew. All of the children listened carefully and were very interested to look at the materials.

All Nursery Children then explored Chinese New Year further within provision. They were Go for it Gorillas using fine motor skills to manipulate chopsticks to pick up woollen “Noodles”. Some created a Year of the Rabbit, bouncing rabbit, others painted beautiful pictures of Dragons and Chinese symbols used to represent numbers. We sculpted dragons and noodles using play dough and experimented with traditional Chinese dress in the role play area. We even tried Prawn Crackers with Sweet and Sour sauce too at snack time. I think everyone had lots of fun and brought themselves lots of luck for the Chinese New Year.

Today in Nursery we tried a variety of vegetables the colour of a rainbow, as part of our expedition on “How do things grow and change?” Most children were very brave and adventurous trying some vegetables for the first time and others that they are more familiar with. They were asked to choose three as we are practising counting to that number this week. The vegetables included; Cucumber, Red and Yellow Peppers, Radish and Carrot.