Happy Chinese New Year!
Children First celebrated the year of the rooster by performing a traditional dragon dance around the garden. Leading up to the parade, the children read stories about the New Year celebration in China, and learned about the cycle of animal years and the story of the animal race which led to the Chinese Zodiac. After watching some video clips of celebrations and dragon dances in China, the children were ready to create their own dragon during their creative sessions.
Bringing the dragon to life required the children to move as a team.
The head and the tail of the dragon had to move in concert with the rest of the body.
The children noticed that the parades were very loud and decided to create noisemakers for their parade. They had also learned that the colour red symbolises good luck, so they painted their hand drums red and yellow. All the noisemakers together made quite an impressive sound!
Children shaking their noisemakers during the dragon dance.
Some children painted Chinese words on their drums, like ‘Love’ and ‘Happy New Year’
At lunch they also enjoyed using chopsticks to try their spring rolls!
