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新年快乐 / 新年快樂
Xīnnián kuàilè (Happy New Year!)

This week we celebrated Lunar New Year, which is an important festival in our Chinese community. We learnt about the significance of this occasion and acknowledged that 2021 is the year of the ox.

Our tamariki had the opportunity to participate in different experiences to learn about Chinese New Year; this included painting an ox for our wall, making lanterns and fans, making dumplings and learning about the significance of Chinese New Year during group time.

We also made red envelopes (a symbol of good luck) with our children to take home with a treat inside. Our children even learnt how to sing xīn nián hǎo (Happy New Year) and we sang this together in our Tuakana room. Our little people in the Teina room enjoyed listening to Chinese music, dress up in red colour, painting the fans and yummy dumplings 🙂

It is important for our tamariki to experience events like this so that they can learn about Aotearoa’s cultural diversity. It also provides opportunities for our tamariki to extend their learning in skills such as cooking, the visual arts and learning to speak and sing in other languages.