This year, Chinese New Year – The Year of the Rooster – began on Saturday January 28, so we had to start our celebrations a day early.
We started off by learning all about Chinese New Year. We learnt that red and gold were seen as lucky colours, that’s why we all dressed in red for the day.
We also learnt a Chinese New Year Greeting – Kung Hei Fat Choi (gōng xǐ fā cái), which is a traditional Chinese New Year greeting meaning: Congratulations and best wishes for a prosperous New Year!; Happy New Year!
We all tried to say it whilst Mrs Marriott took the photo!!
We then set about making some Chinese crafts, whilst listening to some lovely Chinese music.
Lucky Money Packets – (We put Yuan banknotes in these, not real ones unfortunately.)
Chinese Glass Lanterns – (We put Happy New Year on these in Chinese writing.)
Chinese Paper Lanterns – (These had all the zodiac animals on- but the main picture was of the ‘Rooster’.)
Chinese Fans – (We were decorated these by drawing dragons and Chinese flowers on them.)
Creating our crafts had made us all extremely hungry, so it was time for our Chinese restaurant to open!
One of our lovely parents had bought us all a pair of chopsticks too, so we were very keen to try these out! Some of us managed to eat with chopsticks for the entire meal.
After lunch we learnt about ‘The Great Race: The Story of the Chinese Zodiac Animals’ We then went into the hall and had our own race. We all got to be one of the animals from the story, and run around the hall twice. We had to make sure we followed the track and jump over the water (blue hoops/ blue markers), not swim like in the story. We absolutely loved this, and especially when we came 1st in the race!!
We then found out the year we were born in. It turned out that we were all either rabbits or dragons! Mrs Marriott gave us all a sticker with this information on so we could share it with our parents.
We finished our day off with a dragon dance.
We had brilliant time and leant lots about Chinese New Year!
A big thank you to everyone who brought us items in to support our celebrations.
