Fisherfield nursery marks Chinese New Year

Children at Fisherfield Childcare’s nurseries enjoy Chinese New Year

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Children at Fisherfield Childcare’s Redvales nursery marked Chinese New Year by decorating the nursery with good luck symbols on the walls, lucky red and gold lanterns and blossom trees, and lots and lots of red – an auspicious colour in Chinese culture.

A Chinese visitor, Louise, talked about some of the traditions and customs of new year.

Louise showed the children a video of a traditional lion dance. The aim of the dance, she explained, is to bring good luck and scare away evil spirits. The lion is accompanied by revellers playing instruments: a drum to symbolise the heartbeat of the lion, and a gong and cymbals to scare away evil spirits. During the dance, the lion scatters lettuce among the spectators, to bring them good luck in the coming year.

Having learned more about the dance, the children had the chance to perform one themselves. They took turns to play the lion, the monk leading the parade, and the musicians responsible for making lots of noise – which everyone did really well.

The lion wasn’t the only animal at nursery that day. Nursery mascot Rebecca Rabbit turned up too, to distribute lucky red envelopes – another new year tradition. She helped the children to learn new year greetings in Chinese – 'Gung hei fat choi' – and how to say 'thank you', or 'dor shair'. They also learned to write Chinese numbers, they found one to three were the easiest to write.

The Chinese banquet included spring rolls and fortune cookies the children had made themselves. Other treats were rice, noodles and sweet and sour chicken. The children got to try eating with chopsticks – even if they ‘cheated’ a bit by using elastic bands to keep them under control.

Little Farmers nurse practitioner Zoe said: “This has been so much fun. We have put in an awful lot of research and planning, but it’s been worth it.

“The children have learned so much, they’ve tried new foods and they’ve enjoyed dancing to the beat of the drum during the lion dance. There’s been quite a party atmosphere here today.”