3 February 2011
Year one enjoyed a special celebration with Daniel and his family to welcome the Year of the Dragon as the start of the Chinese New Year.We learnt about the traditions of the festival: cleaning houses to sweep away the old year, new clothes, special food, decorating the house in red to ward off the evil spirits (we now have our own special decoaration in the classroom, right above Lesley's desk!) and why dragon dancing is part of the celebration.
We also found out about how the 12 different animals represent each of the Chinese Years and how big and small animals raced across the river to be named in order by the Emperor.
We saw a video of a traditional Chinese dragon dance and set about making out own dancing dragons. We used a variety of techniques to make our dragon puppet: painting, cutting, paper folding and decorating - they looked great and danced energetically!
Then we had a special visit from Daniels mum and grandmother Yingli and Shuhua who were able to tell us about their celebrations in the local Chinese community. Daniel showed us his beautiful new dragon clothes and sang a Happy New Year song in Cantonese. We were taught Chinese phrases and given a fortune cookie, the messages indicated we have lots of exciting things to look forward to! We also tasted some traditional food: home-made Chinese dumplings and noodles with chopsticks- yum yum!
We all enjoyed our 2012 celebration year of the dragon - tradition dictates that the year ahead will be advantageous for great deeds, innovative ideas and big projects - sounds like a normal day for us in Pre-prep!
