This week, for our Understanding of the World focus, Nursery Mice have been celebrating Chinese New Year. Children have explored the story ‘Mr. Men Little Miss Chinese New Year' by Roger Hargreaves.

 

 

 

 

The small world area has been a jungle to relate to "The Year of the Snake". It has really helped to embed this learning and has brought in other areas of learning such as Maths as we compared different sizes of animals and Expressive Arts and Designs as the children acted like the different animals. We had some scary lions, slithering snakes and noisy elephants in the classroom! 

 

In Communication and Language, the children learnt lots of new vocabulary, which was used in our role play area which was a Chinese Restaurant.

China,

Chinese New Year,

Celebrations,

Dragons,

Names of chinese foods such as prawn crackers, spring rolls, rice and noodles.

We had lots of class discussions regarding the Chinese New Year and the range of traditions they do. The Chinese restaurant reinforced the children's learning as it reminded children of the Chinese lucky colours- red and gold, what fortune cookie are and what Chinese people eat their food with- chopsticks! The children thought they were tricky to use but found their own way to use them. 

  
 

In Expressive Arts and Design we have engaged in a variety of activities from dragon dancing, making dragon masks, lanterns and lots more. We have listened to lots of Chinese music and spoke how it sounds different to other types of music, we have watched lots of Chinese dragon dancing and the children loved it!

"Dragon jumping up and down" -Rueben

"Lots of colours" -Aurora

"Wow!" -Freddie

 

In the provision the children have engaged with lots of Chinese activities such as using chopsticks with noodles, dragon making with blocks and mark making Chinese symbols. The children had lots of opportunity for Literacy to mark make, using tweezers or chopsticks and dough disco daily. The children made independent links as they knew why the play dough was red- lucky Chinese colour! Throughout the provision, children have had lots of opportunity to share their learning with their friends and teachers about Chinese New Year!

"Dragons go around, they are red and gold because Chinese lucky colours" -Derren

"Chinese New Year, stamp stamp, up and down, dragons" -Rueben

"Eating noodles with chopsticks!"- Holly

"Fortune cookies, inside they have a letter" -Vinnie

"fireworks, phew, phew, phew" -Isaac

 

The children also had the opportunity to open their own fortune cookies and receive their own little note! The children had their own Chinese New Year party and were able to taste Chinese foods, show off their work and listen to chinese music.


Learning about Chinese New Year, sparked an interest from many children- where is China? In Geography, we looked at the country China they have lots of amazing buildings and very busy streets! The children also looked at the map and looked where China is and compared sizes to other countries, the children were fascinated by the map! Little minds are interested in the extraordinary!