Maple class - Spring 1, week 6
Date: 13th Feb 2026 @ 12:08pm
This week we have been learning all about Chinese New Year, and out book focus has been Ruby’s Chinese New Year by Vickie Lee. We have enjoyed finding out how it is celebrated – by decorating the house, special meals, fireworks and dragon parades. We found out about The Great Race, which decided how each year would be named. This year is the year of the Horse (carefree, loves to travel and have fun, solves problems quickly). We found out that some of us were born in the year of the Rat – 2020 (clever, curious, loves to eat and stay up late, has talent for writing) or the Ox - 2021 (hardworking, steady, trustworthy, loves to eat – especially snacks!) In drawing club we thought about other animals that could join the race and what their magic power could be to win. We also made our own lanterns to decorate the home corner, we had to cut the slits very carefully.
We learnt how the Chinese use different symbols in their language. We had pictures of how they write numbers 1-10 and really enjoyed trying to copy them. We used playdough and pencils to create the numbers. In the home corner we have loved recreating the Chinese new year home celebrations.
In Phonics this week we have learnt 3 new diagraphs (2 letters making one sound). These were ‘oo’ (moon, food, roof), ‘oo’ (cook, look, foot) and ‘ar’ (star, car, park). We also learnt the new tricky word ‘you’. We are getting really good at recognising our digraphs and trigraphs and have demonstrated fantastic independent writing this week, even writing if our role play Chinese café is open or closed and also writing out menus. Keep practicing at home, it really does make all the difference. When reading words with digraphs or trigraphs in we say “digraph or trigraph (children then tell you which are in the word) … sound talk the word” this helps children to spot digraphs or trigraphs in words and not read them as single sounds.
In Maths this week we have been taking away from 6, and we have used numicon to do amazing subtraction from 6, giving brilliant explanations! We have also looked at repeating patterns containing a pattern using numbers, children were amazing at spotting the patterns and continuing them.
On Wednesday we loved performing our Chinese Dragan Dance to you at 3pm. Earlier on in the week we had watched a video of a Chinese dragon dance. We then created our own dragon before practicing a dance to perform to parents. The dragon dance is also known as Longwu or Longdeng, and is a traditional dance performance involving a team of performers using poles to rhythmically move a dragon prop.
On Thursday morning we were so excited to be cooking with Mel – what a brilliant time we had! We made Chew Mein. Mel showed us the rainbow vegetables we would be using and we thought about if they grow above or underground. We thought about their shapes and colours. Mel demonstrated how to cut our vegetables safely using our hands like a claw. We loved smelling all the ingredients that go into the sauce – garlic, ginger, ketchup, fish sauce, oyster sauce and soy sauce. We also looked at a beansprout really closely. We showed amazing cutting skills and were very careful using the knives. We fried up all the vegetables then added the noodles, bean sprouts and sauce before giving it a good toss. We hope you enjoyed it – I enjoyed some for my lunch on Thursday and it really was delicious! I have popped the recipe in your child’s book bag incase you would like to make this at home – I know I’ll be making it with my children!
On Friday we had a fire drill and all the school were amazing at sensibly leaving the building and lining up to be counted – great work Maple. We enjoyed our Dough Disco session and the Dough Disco challenge at the end was to create a bowl of noodles and/or a Chinese dragon – what amazing creations we had! In the afternoon, the children were given the choice of a games afternoon or Forest School. They chose a games afternoon which is probably a good thing as the Forest area is so muddy at the moment and it would be nice to give it a two week break to try and recover slightly before next term. We played a range of board and card games such as snakes a ladders, spotty dinosaurs and Jenga, to name a few, while listening to relaxing piano music with the fireplace on the whiteboard – perfect for a cold and wet Friday afternoon! What fun we had! We also had a 'Blind Date with a Book' whereby children chose a wrapped up book to open and read. If they wish they are able to bring these home for the week - but please ensure they are returned to school after half term.
On Friday we also looked at how our name would be written in Chinese and how it would be pronounced and what their name meant. We printed these off and sent them home with them on Friday, we we hope they enjoy sharing them with you at home.
We hope you have a wonderful half term break. The children have been so excited sharing all their plans with us!
We have sent home a wooden spoon with a letter in each child’s book bag – this is explaining the exciting things we have planned for World Book Day in March, we thought you may want to take the half term week to get creative and organised!
See you next term, for, fingers crossed, some less rainy, more sunny warm weather!
