A week of celebrating Chinese New Year enabled us to explore all 7 areas of learning, not just Understanding the World.
The children have produced a Chinese New Year dislpay, the centre piece of which is a colourful painted dragon which children of all ages worked on together at the easel, a very sociable activity.
Making different types of individual Chinese dragons gave the children, of all ages an opportunity to practice fine motor skills. Some carefully coloured and cut out dragons accompany the group effort on the display, while concertina folded dragons were taken home.
We used the computer to learn more about CNY celebrations and then did our own dragon dance.
Some of the parents put lots of effort into quite authentic costumes on a dressing up day ...
... but for some of the boys it was just a good opportunity to be superheroes!!
We used chopsticks for a sorting and counting maths activity,
making the learning fun!!
Then at snack time, having practised, the children were only able to eat their toast after putting them on their plates using their chopsticks!
An invitation from school to share in their celebrations gave some of the children who will be going to school in September their first opportunity to experience ‘big school’. They all seemed right at home, which bodes well for that big transition later in the year.
Our After School children also shared in the fun. They used the computer to find dragon images they liked and enjoyed craft activities. When it came to using chopsticks for their tea...
some were experts
...
and as for the others determination won through!!