'Xinnian Kuaile' Happy Chinese New Year
February 13th, 2018
Dear Parents,
‘Xīnnián kuàilè’
This means Happy New Year in Chinese. We wished all our friends and teachers when we came to school today. Few of us like An and Li were dressed in traditional clothes while most of us wore red to mark this special event. We took the lanterns we made last week and went to Buds class, Flowers class as well as the office for a lantern parade and sang special Chinese New Year song ‘Xīnnián hǎo’ and ‘Gōngxǐ’. After that, as tradition goes, we gifted them a ‘Hong Bao’, a red envelope which had play money and a chocolate cookie inside. They wished us a Happy New Year too and said ‘sheh sheh’, which means ‘thank you’ in Chinese.
Pauline and Goh san read us a book about Chinese traditions called ‘Bringing in the new year’ by Grace Lim and we discussed various Chinese traditions during this time of the year like cleaning the house and decorating it with spring poems and good wishes, getting a new haircut, wearing a new qi pao dress for the New year feast, bursting fire crackers, dragon dance and lighting lanterns to scare away the evil spirits and giving offerings like ‘hong boa’ are all really important rituals.
Most food eaten during this time have symbolic meanings like oranges, dumplings and whole fish mean wealth and eating them brings prosperity into the new year. Hence, Goh san got oranges for us and we shared it with our friends. We even practiced our fine motor cutting skills by cutting the orange peel into pieces with a scissor. Tai couldn’t help smelling it as he cut it into small pieces.
Pauline and Goh san also prepared for us ‘Hong Bao’, red envelopes containing play money and a cookie. They said elders give it to the young ones during the New year as a custom for good luck. Thank you, Goh san and Pauline, for such a lovely Chinese New Year celebration in school.
We got so caught up with all the fun Chinese New Year activities that we ran out of time to go to the park and hence did some exercise in class with Sayaka.
We continued working on our passports today as we talked about the country we are from and how the flag of our country looks like. We also wrote our names on the passport and the number of our age. Apart from that, we had fun playing with building blocks, solving puzzles as well as feeling the sand paper with our fingers and guessing the right number while being blind folded.
Along with happy moments, there were some sad moments in our day today. Our beloved Mr.Spotty came back to school with a broken tail and our hearts almost broke when we looked at him. Mo suggested, “I will look for the tail in my house”. Tem said, “I am sad because Spotty don’t have tail”. Mo then had an idea and said, “Mama can fix it”, Pooja asked, “Is Mumma an animal doctor, a vet?”, to which Mo nodded. Wil was just about to cry and made a really sad face as he said, “my mama and papa can fix it” and Er was sure, “Mommy can fix it”, because her mummy is a doctor too.
We all wanted Spotty to get better because we thought that he was very “ouchie”. Log then suggested, “we can fix it with tools, with drill and saw”. We all were very impressed with his suggestions, but unfortunately, we don’t have these tools in our class and so we decided to fix Spotty’s tail with bandage. Log wasn’t convinced with our suggestion and wondered aloud, “bandage will work?”. We all wondered and most of us agreed that it will work because as An said, “when you have an ouchie, you put bandage”. We decided to take the bandage off after a few weeks to check if it really worked for Spotty. We wish Spotty a speedy recovery and then did Sol’s ‘Show and Tell’ with him.
Sol got lots of pictures with Spotty and pointed to one of the pictures as she said excitedly, “I go swimming pool with Spotty”. Sol said that as she was swimming, “mummy broke the tail”. Then we looked at a photo in which she was crying. Sol said, “I am sad, I am crying because Spotty tail broken”. She also told us that she enjoyed going in the scooter with Spotty and she wore “Kaito’s helmet” as she rode it. Sola ended her Show and Tell with Spotty by saying “I go in the car with Spotty to Baba and Juju’s house. Baba love Spotty. She give him strawberry. Spotty say thank you.” Thank you Sola for a lovely Show and Tell. This week Ry is very excited to bring Spotty home. We will see you again soon Mr. Spotty!
Love,
Little singers in Petals Class