For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been learning about Chinese New Year through a range of activites. As the children I currently have are all very young (all under 3) I’ve mainly focussed on introducing key words by explaining what Chinese New Year is and who celebrate the holiday. The children have enjoyed making dragons and lanterns, exploring noodles using chopsticks and making patterns in glitter!

All super simple but fantastic fine motor activities covering the 7 areas of the foundation stage, I find within the early years a lot of the activities do not have to be overwhelming or elaborate. I find allowing the children to choose and explore allows them and yourself to get the most out of the activity. Learning about festivals celebrated all around the world enables the children to learn about different traditions and become more accepting of less familiar cultures. This can be done in a range of ways depending the ages of the children in your care. As mentioned, the children I look after are all under 3, it is not possible for them to understand all about Chinese New Year. What I wanted to do was expose them to traditional food, chopsticks and how lanterns are symbolised as a wish for a brighter future.

The children in your care probably have not had exposure to festivals such as Chinese New Year unless they are celebrated in the family home or with family friends. Children arrive at settings with their own experiences that they connect in their learning and play. By learning about different festivals and providing a range of different activities you are exposing the children in your care to experiences they’ve probably never had before and helping them experience the awe and wonder of the world they live in. This all comes under Ofsted’s new focus on cultural capital, where inspectors look at how childminders (and nurseries) use the early years curriculum framework to enhance the experiences and opportunities available to the children in their care.

The opportunities and experiences you expose the children in your care to don’t necessarily have to come under festivals, I personally enjoy celebrating festivals and in all the settings I’ve worked at we’ve always done something for Eid, Diwali along with Christmas, Easter and so forth. I also love planning all the activities as there are always so many crafty things to do! 😊 Simply exposing a child to messy play using paint may be something they’ve never experienced before or taking them to the farm- they may never have seen animals so closely. Everyday, in settings we are providing amble opportunities for children to learn about their world which will go a long way in preparing them for the future!

I’ve attached pictures of activities we’ve been doing below, apart from making lanterns which was a 1:1 activity the rest were set up and the children independently explored them. It was lovely to watch how the children extended their play, for example child I added bowls to the noodles and began filling and emptying. I will help extend child’s I learning further by providing more emptying and filling activities, such as water play with different sized containers.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the blog this week, I will be hopefully adding a second blog this week about the fundraiser we held last week to help raise money awareness for Jo’s Cervical cancer trust.

Love,

Sammi