We have been celebrating the Year of the Rooster in our Chinese classes over the last few weeks, focusing particularly on our writing skills – looking at the development of Chinese characters and how radicals are put together to make characters, then characters put together to make words. We practiced in sand and then made posters using the animal character and the written Chinese numbers for the year of our birth. We also made Red Envelopes (hong b’oww), tying it in with our own versions of Rabbie Burn’s “My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose”.

Practicing writing our animal characters in sand, then shaking them to disapear!

Our oral focus has been on talking about different food types and how to say I like (war shee-hwuan) and I want (war y’oww). To hit it home we learnt how to make noodles, first kneading the dough, then rolling and using the noodle maker to make strings of noodles. We put them in our home-made ember bowls and used our whittled chopsticks to eat them!

We also learnt the story of how the Rooster lost its horns and how the dragon managed to persuade the Jade Emperor to let it join the New Year Race. Here’s a brief clip from the story: