As part of our learning about Chinese New Year the children have been keen to paint dragons and try out some Chinese writing in the art area. We thought that we would share a selection of their work.
Click on the photos to make them bigger.
Last week some of the children in the Rainbow Room decided that they wanted to make their own dragon to go on a dragon dance round school. Those who were not under the dragon formed a band to accompany the dragon on his journey.
Here you can see the procession on their way to see Primary 3 and the Primary 1 classes. Primary 3 used our visit to think of “wow” words to describe our dragon dance and had some great ideas. “Magical, sparkly, musical, fantastic, ambitious, bright, colourful, super, huge, wow, loud, wonderful and great” were some of the words they used in their descriptions. Thank you Primary 3 for your super work. We have displayed your drawings and “wow” words beside our paintings.
Carmen’s Mum enjoyed the recent photo in the Chinese restaurant:
“Aw wow! I love this photo of these three kids. Carmen says Lexi and Ava are her best friends. I asked her what she had in her bowl “she said broccoli mum”. She said she had to ask the boys and girls what they wanted to eat and she had to write it down. Ava took the money after they had eaten. Carmen didn’t tell me they had got dressed up that day, so I’m glad the teachers took photos or I wouldn’t have known.”
The restaurant has been a busy place over the past week with lots of good teamwork happening as the children take turns to write down orders, cook and take the money. Most seem very aware of what happens in a restaurant and have enjoyed taking part in imaginative role play.
This week the morning children had a visit from the Financial Education Officer who provided a range of activities which engaged the children. They were all keen to talk about how they like to spend money and loved the interactive reading session which included lots of rhyme and actions. They showed good knowledge of how much the different coins were worth and had great fun making rubbings of coins. Thank you very much to Bev, the Financial Education Officer. We look forward to your visit next term when the afternoon children will enjoy learning about money with you.
The Chinese restaurant is now very popular and some are getting right in the spirit of it. It’s lovely to hear the children being so polite to their customers as they take their orders and some of the dishes on offer have sounded very interesting. There have been lots of writing opportunities as the children write down what their customers want. The till is always a popular addition in the role play area and our restaurant till helps to develop the children’s learning about money. We thought these photos of life in the restaurant were too good not to be shared. 
Over the next week or two we will be learning about Chinese New Year. We have begun to talk about what we already know and lots of the children’s comments seemed to centre round food as many have visited local Chinese restaurants. We now have a Chinese restaurant in our role play area in each room and on Friday we tasted some Chinese food. As you can see, some made a good attempt to try using chopsticks while others preferred forks and spoons but most children were confident to try some of the food on offer.
As our learning about Scotland and Burns celebrations begin to come to an end, we want to share some of the tartans that the children have designed using different techniques. I wonder if any of them can spot their design?
We have another lovely comment to share after the children’s singing performance on Friday:
“We really enjoyed the Children’s singing and Thom was especially pleased to spot his big sister at the front. Well done to all the staff for teaching the pupils all the words, I bet they had the songs in their heads ALL weekend, I know I did!! ;-))”
They are very catchy tunes, it’s true. We thought the children did well to remember them because we had only been learning them for a week.
Our Scottish celebrations continued this week with a fantastic performance by Kailey’s family. Her Dad kindly brought in his bagpipes to entertain us and both Kailey and her brother showed super skills as they performed several Highland dances to his music. Everyone clapped along and thoroughly enjoyed their wonderful performance. Thank you so much to Kailey, her Dad and her brother Conlay. We really appreciate you performing for us and think that you are a very talented family.
