Shinnen kwai le.....gong hay phat choy

“Wo huhn kowsing shinnen kwai le” – Happy Chinese New Year!These words mean, I am happy, Happy New Year! All over the world today and for the next five days, people are celebrating Chinese New Year and we did today. Mabel, Chloe’s mum came in to our class and helped us make “lai see” (Cantonese) or “hong bao” (Mandarin). These are the red envelopes that grandparents usually give to their grandchildren for good luck and happiness. The Giving of Red Packets – If people want to give red packets to others, they prepare them in advance e. g. after the New Year's Feast. When the bell rings to signal the start of New Year, children begin to pay New Year visits to greet their grandparents and other family, and then it is customary for them to receive the red packets. “Hongbao” can also be put under children’s’ pillows by their parents if they fall asleep on New Year’s Eve. Our “lai see” are going to go inside our workbooks/portfolios. Mabel prepared them so our task was to glue the sides together and leave the top open, so that we could put some coins inside. After we had glued the sides, we cut out patterns in gold, shiny origami paper and pasted the gold onto the red paper. Then it looked just like a “lai see” or “hong bao”. We put two one yen coins inside because Mabel said that we should have even numbers inside not odd numbers. One is an odd number and two is an even number.

Mabel knows how to play the piano so she played our little keyboard and we sang “Wo huhn kowsing, wo huhn kowsing Wo huhn kowsing, shinnen kwai le”. We read a story about children sitting in a Chinese restaurant around this time of year and when they looked out of the window they saw a lion…….was it a real lion? Hmmmm…..it was a lion dance, which is part of Chinese New Year celebrations. Before New Year starts, people clean their houses and sweep out all of the bad luck so that all the good luck and blessings have space to come into their

homes. Of course, Monday is gymnastics day, so we had lots of exercise and we had some time to go to the park. Brrrr…..it was cold outside today even though the sun was shining. We did our regular warm up exercises and enjoyed the class with Miyashita sensei. We are learning how to develop more strength in our arms because most of us have strong legs. The one exercise which we are really good at which strengthens our arms and in fact gives us a great work out for many muscles in our bodies is making a table. You can see how hard we are trying to keep our tummies up to make a realistic table with our bodies.

We want to say thank you to Mabel for coming to share her idea about how to make “lai see” or “hong bao” for Chinese New Year and really had fun singing with her. When our mums or dads picked us up at the end of the day, we sang to them as well. So now we know some Chinese words. We also want to wish Goh san “Gong hay phat choy” because she celebrates Chinese New Year. We are looking forward to learning more about the countries where our parents were born, and some of us too.

Love always the children in Petals Class.

“Wo huhn kowsing shinnen kwai le” – Happy Chinese New Year! These words mean, I am happy, Happy New Year! All over the world today and for the next five days, people are celebrating Chinese New Year and we did today. Mabel, Chloe’s mum came in to our class and helped us make “lai see” (Cantonese) or “hong bao” (Mandarin). These are the red envelopes that grandparents usually give to their grandchildren for good luck and happiness. The Giving of Red Packets – If people want to give red packets to others, they prepare them in advance e. g. after the New Year's Feast. When the bell rings to signal the start of New Year, children begin to pay New Year visits to greet their grandparents and other family, and then it is customary for them to receive the red packets. “Hongbao” can also be put under children’s’ pillows by their parents if they fall asleep on New Year’s Eve. Our “lai see” are going to go inside our workbooks/portfolios. Mabel prepared them so our task was to glue the sides together and leave the top open, so that we could put some coins inside. After we had glued the sides, we cut out patterns in gold, shiny origami paper and pasted the gold onto the red paper. Then it looked just like a “lai see” or “hong bao”. We put two one yen coins inside because Mabel said that we should have even numbers inside not odd numbers. One is an odd number and two is an even number.

Mabel knows how to play the piano so she played our little keyboard and we sang “Wo huhn kowsing, wo huhn kowsing Wo huhn kowsing, shinnen kwai le”. We read a story about children sitting in a Chinese restaurant around this time of year and when they looked out of the window they saw a lion…….was it a real lion? Hmmmm…..it was a lion dance, which is part of Chinese New Year celebrations. Before New Year starts, people clean their houses and sweep out all of the bad luck so that all the good luck and blessings have space to come into their homes.

Of course, Monday is gymnastics day, so we had lots of exercise and we had some time to go to the park. Brrrr…..it was cold outside today even though the sun was shining. We did our regular warm up exercises and enjoyed the class with Miyashita sensei. We are learning how to develop more strength in our arms because most of us have strong legs. The one exercise which we are really good at which strengthens our arms and in fact gives us a great work out for many muscles in our bodies is making a table. You can see how hard we are trying to keep our tummies up to make a realistic table with our bodies.

We want to say thank you to Mabel for coming to share her idea about how to make “lai see” or “hong bao” for Chinese New Year and really had fun singing with her. When our mums or dads picked us up at the end of the day, we sang to them as well. So now we know some Chinese words. We also want to wish Goh san “Gong hay phat choy” because she celebrates Chinese New Year. We are looking forward to learning more about the countries where our parents were born, and some of us too. Love always the children in Petals Class.

These words mean, I am happy, Happy New Year! All over the world today and for the next five days, people are celebrating Chinese New Year and we did today. Mabel, Chloe’s mum came in to our class and helped us make “lai see” (Cantonese) or “hong bao” (Mandarin). These are the red envelopes that grandparents usually give to their grandchildren for good luck and happiness. The Giving of Red Packets – If people want to give red packets to others, they prepare them in advance e. g. after the New Year's Feast. When the bell rings to signal the start of New Year, children begin to pay New Year visits to greet their grandparents and other family, and then it is customary for them to receive the red packets. “Hongbao” can also be put under children’s’ pillows by their parents if they fall asleep on New Year’s Eve. Our “lai see” are going to go inside our workbooks/portfolios. Mabel prepared them so our task was to glue the sides together and leave the top open, so that we could put some coins inside. After we had glued the sides, we cut out patterns in gold, shiny origami paper and pasted the gold onto the red paper. Then it looked just like a “lai see” or “hong bao”. We put two one yen coins inside because Mabel said that we should have even numbers inside not odd numbers. One is an odd number and two is an even number.

Mabel knows how to play the piano so she played our little keyboard and we sang

“Wo huhn kowsing, wo huhn kowsing

Wo huhn kowsing, shinnen kwai le”.

We read a story about children sitting in a Chinese restaurant around this time of year and when they looked out of the window they saw a lion…….was it a real lion? Hmmmm…..it was a lion dance, which is part of Chinese New Year celebrations. Before New Year starts, people clean their houses and sweep out all of the bad luck so that all the good luck and blessings have space to come into their homes.

Of course, Monday is gymnastics day, so we had lots of exercise and we had some time to go to the park. Brrrr…..it was cold outside today even though the sun was shining.

We did our regular warm up exercises and enjoyed the class with Miyashita sensei. We are learning how to develop more strength in our arms because most of us have strong legs. The one exercise which we are really good at which strengthens our arms and in fact gives us a great work out for many muscles in our bodies is making a table. You can see how hard we are trying to keep our tummies up to make a realistic table with our bodies.

We want to say thank you to Mabel for coming to share her idea about how to make “lai see” or “hong bao” for Chinese New Year and really had fun singing with her. When our mums or dads picked us up at the end of the day, we sang to them as well. So now we know some Chinese words. We also want to wish Goh san “Gong hay phat choy” because she celebrates Chinese New Year.

We are looking forward to learning more about the countries where our parents were born, and some of us too.

Love always the children in Petals Class.