恭喜發財 | Happy Chinese New Year!
The forest has been filled with joy and celebration here at Twickenham as our Little Forest Folk-ers have been busy exploring Chinese New Year!
We started off our days this week retreating to the circle to sing our hello song but using the Chinese word for hello “ni hao” instead! We also discussed how to say Happy New Year in Chinese and we practised our pronunciations of the sounds.
We then got stuck into preparing our celebrations through creating our very own Chinese New Year dragon. We used traditional colours such as reds, yellows, and oranges to paint a box which we would use as the dragon’s head. Some children then used strips of beautiful red and gold wrapping paper to create the dragon’s scales and flames. It was great to see the children paying close attention to detail when applying the PVA glue and sticking the strips in a line.
Whilst the dragon’s head dried through the week, the children also got creative through creating Chinese New Year lanterns. They did this using some red card folded in half which they carefully snipped straight lines into using scissors. Once they had finished snipping, they used Sellotape to stick each end together creating a beautiful, shaped lantern. It was great to see how proud the children were of their creations, explaining that they would put a special candle inside and hang it in their homes. Some children also made multiple lanterns, explaining they were for their families, fully adopting the spirit of Chinese New Year!
Our Little Forest Folk-ers also enjoyed getting creative with some new pens this week, creating some beautiful pictures of various features of their environment. Some children drew pictures of their favourite aliens, whilst others drew animals of all different colours paying close attention to detail when considering their different features. It was also great to see some children challenging themselves with numbers, using the number cookies to practice their counting and having a go at writing the numbers on to paper.
Once our wonderful dragon’s head had finished drying, the children helped to attach special materials on the back to create its body. Other children then got some pots and pans from the mud kitchen and used sticks to bang them like drums. We then recreated a typical Chinese New Year parade as we danced around the forest beneath the fabrics of our dragon, creating authentic music and feeling optimism for the future years ahead!
We hope you also enjoyed celebrating this week in your own magical ways and we cannot wait to see where February takes us in our magical mystical milieu.
Little Forest Folk
Twickenham