Chinese New Year

Display and Resources

This year (2013), Chinese New Year is Sunday 10th February, although celebrations will take place for the entire weekend. I will be teaching the children about Chinese New Year the week commencing 11th February.

I do enjoy sharing Chinese New Year with the children in school. They have already explored Christmas and New Year a month before so are open to understanding that in China they celebrate New Year at a different time.

Chinese New Year is an excellent way to explore new cultures and talk about different ways of life. There are so many different resources and learning opportunities, there is even a story!

This is the Chinese New Year display in my classroom, it’s almost taking over one wall!

I am very fortunate to have a mother-in-law who can send me beautiful Chinese artefacts to show the children but there are a number of shops in my area which can supply easy to find resources.

You can also find resources for Chinese New Year from learning libraries.

I bought a number of the resources I use in my classroom from the China town in Birmingham.

I’m going to talk about the resources I have in my classroom based on the best of my ability, however if I say anything wrong, please leave a comment and let me know!

It’s Finished!

The Reception Space Station

My role play area is finished and I absolutely love it! It was made entirely by my teaching assistant and it looks amazing! I can’t thank her enough!

The role play area for this half term is a space station. We have used a mixture between pictures and images from Twinkl and things that the children have made themselves. There are lots of speaking and listening opportunities as well as fine motor and construction.

The planets and the rockets hanging from the ceiling were all made by the children themselves. As you can see, the wall is interspersed with images of space from the internet.

We blacked out the windows to allow the children the feeling of being in space. Space images were placed on top to give the children the space experience.

An alien one of the children created, hanging from the ceiling. I want the children to know that if they create something amazing then it will be displayed.

The children have been very creative using their construction and fine motor skills to make some amazing aliens to show us.

Using some boxes we had left over from Christmas gifts, and some kitchen foil, we made this amazing computer for the children to use in the role play area. I saw some children using this computer, they were planning their trip on the space station. Very cute!

I made these badges for the children and I was recently handed one so that I knew I would be allowed into the space station to join the children for a Space Party! Very exciting!

The box for our space shuttle here was almost thrown away! I managed to nab it and it has become the space shuttle. Painted grey and with shapes put on the outside (to encourage shape language) has inspired some wonderful pretend play!

Space is one of my favourite topics so we obviously have some role play costumes and resources already in th classroom. The children have really enjoyed the topic and are even giving me some topic based writing examples!