你好 nĭ hăo !
( Hello, mandarin Chinese)
After a lovely long weekend we were very busy learning about Chinese New Year. We watched videos of the street parades and a dragon dance, we read a power point with lots of information about Chinese New Year traditions, listened to traditional Chinese music and we read a story called the Dragon Dance. We had to remember 4 main facts.
- What is the capital of China?
- What food is eaten with nearly every meal?
- How long do celebrations normally last?
- This is this year of the ? I was born in the year of the ?
We showed our learning in many different ways over the next two days.
Task 1- We used our cutting and colouring skills to create a dragon mask. We used bright bold colours and had to cut around the mask really carefully! This was tricky as the dragon had lots of spikes.
Task 2- We completed a worksheet to answer question number 4. This is the year of the dog therefore we had to fill in the missing word and draw a picture of a dog. We then used a calendar to find out what year we were born in. Most of us were the year of the dragon and some the year of the snake. Miss Munro was born in the year of the Monkey which we found very amusing! We had to draw a picture of our animal.
Task 3- We threaded string to create a traditional red money envelope. It was a bit like sewing but without a needle. It was tricky to aim the string through the holes in the card. When we were finished we decorated them with a Chinese zodiac symbol. Some people remembered all 4 facts and received a chocolate coin for their money wallets.
Task 4- We copied Chinese characters to write our names in mandarin. We wrote our names in English along the top and copied the Chinese character underneath carefully with a pencil. We then copied over with a pen. The Chinese characters looked very different to our alphabet.
On Friday afternoon we joined Primary 1C to taste some Chinese foods. We all tried some thick Udon noodles with soy sauce, some egg fried rice and prawn crackers. The prawn crackers were the most popular food and the noodles the least.
The Primary 4s and 5s were invited to watch a dragon dance in the hall and were very kind to film the dance. We then watched the dance on the smartboard and discussed the costumes. Some people found it loud and scary! However most of us loved the bright colours of the dragon and enjoyed when it was naughty and threw the lettuce over the boys and girls.
