We started the week by watching a short video about a little girl celebrating Chinese New Year with her family. Then we had a chat about some of the similarities and differences between the celebrations in the video and our own celebrations. The children noticed lots of differences, including different clothes, different foods and different decorations. The children were intrigued by these so we had a go at making some of our own and throughout the week, the children have worked hard to paint, colour, cut and stick lots of beautiful decorations which are now hung proudly in our classroom. I was very impressed by the creativity of the children, as they thought very carefully about the different shapes and colours they wanted to include on their decorations and why. During the video, we learned that red is the lucky colour for Chinese New Year. This inspired the children to create lots of lovely red lanterns to hang by the door, to bring good luck to our visitors. It also inspired us to find out the lucky colour of our own country, England, which is green!

As part of our celebrations, we have also had a go at making our own clay dragons! The children loved feeling the squishy, slimy texture of the clay and they thought carefully about how to make the different shapes they needed. We rolled the clay into sausages and into balls and we practised using our pinching fingers to add spikes or a pointy tail. I think we have some real artists brewing in Transition!

During literacy, we read the story of The Great Race, in which the Jade Emperor challenges all the animals to a race, to earn a year in the Chinese Zodiac calendar. The children came up with some fantastic ideas about how each animal could cross the river and they were shocked when Rat pushed Cat into the water, so he wouldn’t win. We all agreed that Rat was feeling jealous and that this wasn’t a kind thing to do to his friend. Some of the children then chose to hold their own animal race in the small world area.

On Thursday, we continued our celebrations with some Chinese-inspired food: a warm bowl of noodle soup! We first followed the instructions to help us cook our noodles and to make our broth. Then we explored our senses as we each tried a small bowl of noodles using some chopsticks! These were a bit tricky to use, but the children showed great perseverance and fine motor skills. To get a bit more practice, the children took turns eating in our Chinese restaurant where they each used their chopsticks to serve up noodles to each of the restaurant's guests.

The Pre-prep were treated to a very special assembly this week as we were invited to watch some of the main school children perform their gymnastics routines! The older boys and girls absolutely amazed us with their skills and it was lovely to hear the whispered comments of astonishment from the audience. It was particularly heart-warming to see and hear the pride of younger siblings watching their older siblings perform. What an inspiration.

This performance gave us a boost of confidence for our own gymnastics performance – our Coffee Morning! Transition have worked so hard to develop their gymnastics skills and have been so excited to share these with their families. We were all so proud of the fantastic performance the children gave during their Coffee Morning. What superstars you are, Transition! It’s been a very busy half term in Transition. However, we’re very proud of every child for their positive attitudes, kindness to each other and efforts in trying new challenges. I wish you all a wonderful half-term break.