We learned about traditions associated with Chinese New Year, which include cleaning the house, putting up decorations and making wishes for the Wishing Tree. Transition thought carefully about their wishes and are hoping some of them might come true!

We also listened to The Great Race, to learn about why each of the Chinese years is named after an animal. After the story, Transition used our animal figures to act out the story. We loved seeing the team work from the goat, monkey and rooster, and all thought the dragon was very kind!

The children have been enjoying our China-themed play activities, including our sensory rice play and our Chinese restaurant role play. On Wednesday, we had so much fun as we dressed up in fancy clothes, made fortune cookies and listened to traditional Chinese music at our Chinese New Year’s party. Everyone snapped open their cookies to find out their fortune. We loved them all, but decided that keep being you was really important and knowing that you are special.

Our letter sound this week was z. It was a little tricky to think of lots of words, and required a lot of concentration to form the letter, but the children did brilliantly. Their suggestions for the sound were zip, zebra, zero and, inspired by a family outing, zoo! The letter sound gave us the perfect opportunity to explore some zips, and get those fingers working to pull them up and down. Lots of children are becoming more independent and managing to do their own zips on their coats at school too. Great work, Transition!

We’ve also been having a bit of fun with our letter sounds by playing hopscotch. Transition were so good at remembering the sounds we’ve already covered, and impressed me with their hopping and jumping skills too!