Gong hei fat choy!

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.

Image result for gung hay fat choy 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…

Image result for 12 animals of the chinese zodiac list

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!