On Saturday 25th January it’s the Chinese New Year – the new year being the year of the rat. To this end we have embraced Chinese themed activities this week alongside our Winter theme.

We have found China on the map and discussed what we might find in China –  of course the panda bear was a popular choice so our small world play revolved around pandas. Lots of lovely stories were developed using the pandas as the children played.

We added a Chinese restaurant to our role play and the children got dressed into some traditional Chinese clothes to partake in meals at the restaurant. The chopsticks proved a challenge for most children … cleaning the floor of rice at the end of the day proved the challenge for us!!

We listened to the story and then saw a short video depiction of the Chinese story of The Great Race which tells of how each of the years of the Chinese zodiac were named. The children then had to order the animals from first to twelfth … this was easier said than done. Some children had an animal – the other children had to direct them where to stand to get the animals in the correct order.

Our fine motor skills were exercised by trying to fill the bowls and packets with rice using the tweezers… some children found a much easier way to achieve this… borrowing the spoon from our Chinese restaurant was a much quicker and far more successful method!

Everyone had a go at Chinese Bingo – matching the themed pictures and all enjoyed trying to write numbers in Chinese!

More fine motor work, cutting,  folding and sticking a Chinese dragon.

Our igloo building project came to a close and the children have been enjoying playing in our igloo, reading in our igloo and explaining to any class visitors just how it was made. Unfortunately quite early on our roof effort collapsed so we have put an icy  cover over instead!

Our stick collecting was very fruitful and the children have made some wonderful wintry trees.

Following our Winter theme we have all named and smelt a variety of winter vegetables and discussed how/ where they might be grown and if they have eaten them before. Mrs Mooney and I did the chopping ( as the knives were very sharp!) and we made some tasty winter vegetable soup. All the children had a taste, some enjoyed it more than others.

Alongside all this fun we have been finding number bonds to 10, reading individually and in groups, blending, learning new sounds and writing some winter words for our winter tree display. We have had circle times, written our traffic light sentences , made dark and light collages for our RE lesson, as well as using the litter pickers to keep our playground a tidy and nice place to be. In PE we are during a gymnastics topic and the children are working together stretching, rolling, jumping, and balancing.

Have a great weekend Oak Class families. Just a note – I’m away next weekend and might not get the chance to download photos and type up a Blog as I won’t have access to a computer. I will try my best before I go!

Thanks , Erin Bibby