Spring has approached. On the occasion of the Chinese New Year, the first week of school was Chinese Culture Week, this was a time to let students experience the Chinese New Year and Chinese culture.

For Chinese culture week, we explored and experienced traditional Chinese games. Preschool children enjoyed kicking shuttlecock, throwing beanbags, playing Pitch Pot, and guessing lantern riddles. At the same time, we did inquiry into materials used to make the shuttlecock, bean bags, arrows and bamboo tube. With Lantern Festival approaching, the children listened to the story about the festival and sang related nursery rhymes. They now have some understanding of the origin of the festival and various customs.

To celebrate Chinese culture week K1A explored traditional Chinese music and instruments. In addition to making lanterns K1A also integrated Chinese culture into math and English by counting and adding money for red packets and learning important vocabulary relating to the Lantern Festival.

This week was dedicated to Chinese culture , K1B had a lot of fun inquiring about a variety of things specific to China. We learned about many Chinese musical instruments, (their origins, how to play with them, how to make them..) we even made our own, we also had a special guest whom taught us how to use some of them. Through out this week we designed our paper cut out Chinese outfits , rediscovered old tradition such as the tea ceremony and shadow play… All in all, the students had some wonderful learning experiences that contributed to their growing knowledge of Chinese culture.

To celebrate the Chinese culture week K2 kids looked into Chinese opera and experienced the narrative and artistic function of it through regional difference and form of performance while understanding how to “sing, read, do and dance” these four basic skills work in Chinese opera. On the other hand, we integrated the inquiry unit focusing on the producing process of products into discussion by exploring where do tea leaves come from, how tea leaves turn into products, what is the difference between green tea and black tea. Then we calmed ourselves down while listening to the Chinese classical music, sipping both types of tea and appraising them through color, smell and flavor. We voted which tea tasted better as the end of the inquiry.

Lantern Festival is the first full moon day of the year. It symbolizes reunion and harmony.

Students brought many kinds of lanterns. There are classic rabbit lights, bull head lights, and innovative dinosaur lights. At this lantern show, students watched beautiful lanterns and felt New Year blessings.

The most classic delicacy of the Lantern Festival must be glutinous rice balls! The glutinous rice balls are round and white, large or small, and the fillings are even more varied. We celebrated the Lantern Festival in a special way. Students made glutinous rice balls by themselves. They couldn’t wait to wash their hands and come to the production table. Seeing the delicious fillings, they concentrate on learning from teachers. Their hand-made glutinous rice balls looked delicious.

Happy Lantern Festival!