This has been a very funm busy and exciting couple of weeks for us. We had a long weekend and we have been learning all about Chinese New Year! Did you know that the Chinese New Year holiday lasts for two weeks but there is one special day and on that day everyone wishes each other ‘Kung Hei Fat Choi’ which means happy new year and good fortune.

We decided to make our role play area a Chinese resaurant and we thought about all the different things we would need. We looked in some books to get some ideas. Some were fiction  (which means they are imaginative books) and some were non fiction (which means that they are all about real events, objects and facts which are true). In one of the books we discovered that Chinese people eat with chopsticks instead of cutlery so we put these in our restaurant and we also saw that people ate sitting on the floor at a low table so we put cushion to sit on instead of chairs. We all really love being in the restaurant and practising using the chopstick to eat as well as using the wok to cook in. 

We learnt that instead of presents Chinese people give each other red envelopes with letters of good luck inside and money ( we all liked that idea!). Sometimes at family meals there would be a decoration covered in red envelopes and people would take one when they when home.  We have been trying our some Chinese writing at our writing table and some of us made our own red envelopes to give to our friends.

Did you know that the Chinese New Year is named after an animal? 2013 is the year of the snake. We wanted to know about why the years were named after animals and how they worked out which order they would come in. We heard a story all about a race which the Emperor’s daughter organised because all the animals wanted to go first. We all really enjoyed the story and lots of us said that we thought that it was a very clever way to solve the problem.

To try to help us remember the sequence of the animals who won the race by completing a cut and stick worksheet. It was tricky but we all did well.

In literacy we all completed a fact sheet to show what we have been learning about Chinese New Year. Some of the pictures we had to draw were already in our classroom and that really helped us.

In art we all made our own Chinese dragon puppet. We had to design a head design and tail design then fold the paper carefully using the fold and flip method. We all did really well and were so excited about them we all took them straight home to share with our families!

In music we have been learning about chinese music and rhythm which is the musical word for pattern. We learnt two songs. One was about two tigers and the other song was called Gong Xi which means good fortune. We were really good at singning them so we played some musical instruments following the rhythm. We used a tambourines, indian bells, symbols and wooden blocks. It was really fun and we are looking forward to learning some more songs and trying to play different rhythms.

 We were lucky to work with Ms Gauld this week. She let us taste and smell lots of Chinese foods. We even got to wear some chinese clothes. It was all really good fun and we learnt lots. Almost all of us thought that the smell of ginger was the nicest thing.

On Tuesday we were all really hungry because it was Pancake Day which is sometimes called Shrove Tuesday.

Some of us remembered that we had read a reading book where Dad makes pancakes ( but they don’t eat them which we thought was funny). We all talked about the ingredients that Dad needed and we made a list. Then Mrs Mackay showed us a recipe on the promethean board and we talked about what it tells us to do and equipment we would need if were going to make pancakes at home would be. Next, we made our own recipe sheet and made a super job of it!

Before we went home we read a really funny book called Mr Wolf’s Pancakes. Mr Wolf was really trying to be nice to all his neighbours but they are all horrible and use terrible manners. Nobody would help Mr Wolf but he still managed to make his pancakes in the end but then his mean and rude neighbours turn up at his door and demand some pancakes (how rude!)…. don’t worry Mr Wolf soon gets his own back but we don’t want to give away the ending!

In ICT we have been learning all about using programmable resources like Beebots and controling the turtle by progamming his path. We all to take turns programming the Beebots to travel to our friends then we took part in a Beebot Challenge where we had to work out how to make our Beebot make a pattern on the floor. We made shapes, flowers and went forward and back as well as in a circle.

We are still learning all about subtraction in numeracy. We are all getting much faster and able to answer more questions correctly using the activexpression in self paced challenges in addition and subtraction every day. We are also finding tha cubes really helpful when we are working out our subtraction and addition work in the classroom and ALZ. After we finish our work we self evaluate and then we show it to our teachers and they evalute our work too. It helps us to think carefully about what we can do well, what we need to work on and we are getting so good at it that we normally have the same evaluation as our teachers.

This week we had our Open Afternoons. It was lovely to see so many of our families and we enjoyed showing them around our classroom and Active Learning Zones. We also had fun telling our grown ups about what we have been learning by going through our folios with them. After their visits our grown ups left us a note in our special folder.

Week Beginning 18th February 2013