Happy Chinese New Year!

The children have been engaging in activities related to Chinese New Year this week.  Below, we made a list of the things we know about Dragons, in preparation for making our own for a Chinese New Year parade.  As you scroll down the blog, you will see a wonderful engagement by the children in a great Reggio-like project, where the children are invested in what we are doing and actively make suggestions about what we might do next.  This has also become a very well-rounded curriculum that has, so far included both language and math activities.

They are so invested that we will continue this project next week, too!

We talked about how long a Dragon's tail should be and the kids streeetched their arms out to show me "really big!" So we decided to lay on the ground, head to toe and measure how long we were together as a plan for how long we thought the tail should be... 

We used the tape measure to find out how long this was in feet and then went about making our Dragon's tail.  We began painting many paper towel rolls.

 

One day we measured ourselves outside and used chalk to mark the length of the tail ...

 

We marked the number of feet from the tape measure and then took turns counting the number of feet (14) along the chalk line.

Our next step in making our Dragon, was creating his face - below, Noe works on putting "fire"in his mouth and Anders helps her color.

Meanwhile, Jane and Summer threaded together all of the paper towel rolls that we painted earlier in the week (for the tail).  They worked nicely as a team!

We held up our tail, so far and came up a little short of our goal, so we decided to keep on working on it through next week.  The children are very excited about their Dragon!

Another Chinese New Year - inspired activity entailed rice and tea...

I explained to the children that rice was one of the most commonly eaten foods all over the world.  They all agreed that they had eaten it before too.  Below, we compared what the rice looks and feels like before and after it is cooked.

We made our tea...

And sampled our rice.  The children were very patient with their chopsticks!

 

We also enjoyed the sensory experience of playing with a big bin of rice all week.  The children scooped, poured and made mountains in the rice.

Noe and Jane kept wanting to use the same bowl, so they asked me to "set the timer for 7 minutes" and they would take turns.

We had a huge interest in puzzles one day and I observed GREAT progress with the children being able to finish some of the harder puzzles.  They were all appropriately proud!  Puzzles provide excellent visual discrimination practice, as well as enhancing eye-hand coordination.

 

 

We also had a fun time figuring out how to open the salt containers to refill our supply.

We used our cutting skills to cut confetti all week, which we will throw up in the air at our final Chinese New Year party!

 

 Such a great week!