Kits News - 20th January 2023

This week the Kits have been celebrating the ‘Lunar New Year’, and learning about its celebrations and traditions. On Monday we watched a video of traditional Chinese Lion Dancing and then looked closely at a real Chinese Lion mask which we have at nursery. The children bravely approached and touched the mask, describing it as “fluffy” and “smooth”. We then danced to some traditional music and developed our gross motor skills as we waved scarves in the air to the rhythm of the music.

In Art we continued our focus on the Lunar New Year by making fans. We painted and decorated them in red and discussed that this is an important colour because it represents ‘good luck’ in Lunar New Year celebrations. We refined our fine motor skills through burying gold coins in the playdough and kinetic sand and we also supported the children’s Maths development by counting how many coins we found at the end! 

We have been looking at different scripts throughout the week and the children have experimented with trying to drawing Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese symbols. We used sticks and thin brushes to make marks in the glittery sand and used thin paintbrushes to draw lines to represent symbols on colourful paper. 

Our Role Play Area has been set up as a Chinese restaurant for the week and the children have been busy preparing each other delicious meals using the ‘loose parts’ such as ribbon and tinsel as pretend ‘noodles’ and ‘dumplings’. The children have also embraced learning how to use the chopsticks with a good level of success! 

On Thursday in our Cookery Focus Time, we made ‘Vegetable Fried Rice’. We talked through the steps in the recipe and discussed the different ingredients needed. The children all used knives to chop the precooked carrots and broccoli and fresh mushrooms. They had a bowl each and enjoyed mixing the vegetables with the rice using a spoon. The children loved tasting their finished dish afterwards and we were very proud to see them enjoying their vegetables!