We started the week off by watching a very interesting video about two children celebrating Chinese New Year with their family. Transition had a go at creating their own Chinese lanterns to decorate the classroom. We chose the colour red because we learnt from the video that red is a lucky colour in China! We have also been reading the story The Great Race to learn about why each of the Chinese years is named after an animal. We decided that the rat was very sneaky in the story and were fascinated to learn why there is no year of the cat!

The children have been enjoying our China themed play activities, including our sensory noodles play and our chinese restaurant role play. In preparation for our Chinese New Year celebration on Thursday, the children have been creating their own Chinese dragon during their free play. I have been so impressed with their creativity, teamwork and independence in completing this. By Thursday, we were ready for our Chinese New Year Celebration! We had lots of fun listening to Chinese music and taking turns to dance around in our dragon costume! We then had a special treat and tried vegetable spring rolls and noodles!

Our letter sound this week has been o. All of the children have really got the hang of our weekly letter sound sessions and are getting much more independent in thinking of words beginning with our sound. This week, the children thought of octopus, orange, ox and olive! We all had a go at squeezing oranges to make some delicious fresh orange juice that we enjoyed at snack time!

We also had lots of fun heading out on a sound walk this week. Each pair of children had a sound that we have learnt this half term and were on the hunt for words beginning with that sound around the school. The children did a fantastic job at working together to come up with lots of ideas!

Finally, we have been talking about why we celebrate Valentine’s Day and who we love in our families. The children had lots of fun measuring, mixing, baking and decorating Valentine’s Day cookies that we hope they shared with you at home! Some of the sprinkles were very cheeky and ended up jumping into our mouths! It was so lovely to hear the children talk about who they love and clear that they are all also very loved!

It’s been a very busy half term in Transition, however I am very proud of every child for their attitudes to school, kindness to each other and efforts in trying new challenges. I wish you all a restful half-term break.