Chinese New Year and Shrove Tuesday

We have had a wonderful week of celebrations with Chinese New Year and Shove Tuesday or Pancake Day as it is more commonly known.  

For Chinese New Year we learnt all about the customs and traditions behind the festival and the story of the 12 animals crossing the river that became the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac.  We made our own dancing Dragons, masks, money envelopes and even created our own Dragon Dance to music.  We tasted noodles with soy sauce and prawn crackers and had great fun using chopsticks.  We also learnt the game of 'Chinese whispers' and made cards to our family "Kung Hei Fat Choy"

Pancake Day was another celebration as we learnt all about the Christian festival of Shrove Tuesday the day before Lent.  We learnt about the reasons behind having Pancakes on this day and why Shrove Tuesday always occurs before Lent.  We also watched how other countries celebrate this day and had fun watching pancake racing on youtube.  Our favourite part of the day was our own pancake races and of course having our very own pancakes made in font of us and eating them!!!  We wrote a list of ingredients for our favourite pancake and then imagined what we could give up for Lent.

Enjoy the photos......