This week, we stepped away from our topic (Out of the Egg) to spend some time finding out about the story of Chinese New Year and how this special time is celebrated around the world.

The children were really taken with the story of the zodiac which tells how the Jade Emperor invited 12 animals to race across a wide river so that the order of the zodiac could be decided.  The animal who won the race would have the first year named after it, the animal who came second would have the second year named after it and so on…

As I started to read the story, one of the children became quite concerned that a pig was lining up for the race as she wasn’t convinced that pigs can actually swim!  So, before we went any further with the story, we decided to do some more googling and find out if, indeed, pigs can swim…

And this is what google told us:

“Pigs haven’t yet learned to fly, but off one island in the Bahamas, they swim. And they’re not shy about begging for handouts. About 20 of the animals live on an uninhabited island called Big Major Cay, one of the 365 that make up the Exuma Cays, Sarah Greaves-Gabbadon reports in Caribbean Travel+Life magazine”.

We found a video of the pigs swimming and the children watched very carefully to make sure they really were swimming and weren’t simply walking along the sea-floor!

Once we had finished our fact-finding we were able to get back to the story of Chinese New Year! Funnily enough, it is actually the pig who comes last in the race (and 2019 is also The Year of the Pig).  So, while pigs may be able to swim, it seems our inquisitive nursery children were certainly onto something when they stopped to question the pig’s swimming ability!

If you would like to revisit the story at home, this CBeebies clip is a good one to watch:

The children also particularly enjoyed finding out about how Chinese New Year is celebrated and the preparations that take place in people’s homes…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cRMRp9-Z08

They loved re-enacting the story in our small-world area…

Making their very own Chinese lanterns to decorate the classroom by carefully cutting, stapling and decorating red card…

And having a go at some Chinese writing…!

This Chinese dragon even appeared on the playdough table – isn’t it fantastic!

What a yummy week we have had!  After re-reading the story of the Very Hungry Caterpillar, we decided to have a go at making our very own fruit salad, using the actual fruits from the story.  We were so impressed by how keen the children all were to have a go!

First, they had to think about using the knife very carefully to chop up the fruit.

“You need to chop it smaller”

“I’m good at cutting, look you just go back and forwards and back and forwards!”

Next, they had to mix the fruit together in the big bowl.  After that, they had to spoon the fruit salad out into their cup.  And finally, and most importantly, they could eat it!

“Mmmm, it’s nice”

“I want to eat it all up and have a big piece of melon, yummy in my tummy!”

The children are now really familiar with the story and they have really enjoyed re-telling it and exploring it in a variety of ways…

We have also been singing lots of number songs this week – one of our favourites, which also links nicely with our ‘Out of the Egg’ topic, is about 5 Little Speckled Frogs…perhaps you know it?

You might like to sing it together at home…

Finally, we also had our first ‘Wow Assembly’ today!  Each Friday, the Reception children will be joining us to take a peek inside our enormous ‘Wow Books’.  This is where we keep all the yellow ‘wow cards’ that you send into us.  Each week, we will share some of these ‘wow moments’ with the children and those spoken about will receive a special sticker.  Please note, we will only read out a few wow moments each week, so if you have already sent in a wow card, and your child did not receive their sticker today, please be assured that we will get to them in the weeks to come.  We will be making sure that each child has a wow moment to be celebrated. Well done to all our wow children this week – we are so proud of you and all the wonderful things you have been doing!

We finished our assembly with a special prayer to thank God for all the wonderful things we can do!