Happy Lunar New Year!

Our EYFS class recently enjoyed a wonderful learning experience exploring the Lunar New Year, and we are excited to share what the children discovered.

Lunar New Year is a festival celebrated in many East and Southeast Asian countries, marking the beginning of a new year based on the lunar (moon) calendar. It is a time for families to come together, celebrate good fortune, and welcome happiness and prosperity for the year ahead.

Throughout the week, the children took part in a range of fun and engaging activities to learn about Chinese culture and traditions including a food tasting session, writing their own wish which they put inside a special red envelope, making traditional paper lanterns and more! They discovered how homes are decorated with red and gold colours for luck, explored traditional celebrations such as dragon dances, and learned that each year is represented by a different animal in the Chinese zodiac, 2026 being the year of the horse! We had horse-themed activities out in the morning for Clever Fingers to celebrate this.

The class especially enjoyed learning about Chinese food. We talked about special dishes that families share during celebrations and even tried some new flavours together, the children particularly enjoyed opening their own fortune cookies and seeing what their fortune was. The children were very adventurous and excited to taste foods they had not tried before such as chilli crackers, noodles and fortune cookies.

Mr Goodman also introduced counting in Mandarin to the children, they learnt the numbers 1-10 and they loved practising saying them with their friends. It was fantastic to see their enthusiasm and curiosity as they explored a culture that was new to many of them.

The children had a brilliant time and showed great interest, creativity and respect while learning about Lunar New Year. We are very proud of how engaged they were and how keen they were to share their new knowledge.

EYFS Chinese New Year