To celebrate the Lunar New Year, our toddlers participated in a variety of activities to learn about the new year celebration and traditional Chinese culture. This year, the featured animal based on the Chinese zodiac calendar cycle, is none other than the infamous dragon.
The children showed a great interest in dragon dancing after reading The Dancing Dragon by Marcia K. Vaughan. To make our own “dragon”, we used hand prints that became the scales of the dragon. Some of the children tried to trace their hands independently while others had hand-over-hand help to do so. We also incorporated some audio stimulation. The teacher beat a drum in a rhythmic way which invoked music and movement for the children to explore and take part in their own dragon dance.
Another experience the children were able to have involved manipulating a pair of training chopsticks. This was a great introduction to how Chinese people use these utensils to eat. The children were eager to try to utilize the chopsticks to grasp multiple items of varying size and shape to strengthen their fine motor control.
As Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, the children were given the opportunity to take part in a heart shaped science experiment. The teacher started off by asking the children, “How do we blow up a balloon”? The children demonstrated by pursing their lips together and blowing air. After this, we asked them how else could we inflate a balloon? We used a heart shaped balloon, baking soda and vinegar for this experiment. The children smelled and touched the ingredients, and we added a large amount of baking soda as well as vinegar to an empty water bottle. This created a chemical reaction. The gas that formed eventually caused the balloon to inflate into a heart shape!
The Toddler 2 class had fun learning about the Lunar New Year and Valentine’s Day. Enjoy these photos!