We have been reading books about Chinese New Year
this past week and one of my favourites is
“This Next New Year”.
The story is from the perspective of the little boy and
what he and his family do to prepare for the New Year.
Here are a couple of my favourite pages in the book.
They clean their house to sweep out the old so there is room
for the good luck to come in.
The last page “I have so many dreams,” connected me
back to our fairy lane. That was a dream that has come true.
Many people have been visiting Fairy Lane in the last little while,
all leaving them gifts. So much so that some of the fairy doors
were getting cluttered.
To make the connection stronger for the children between what we
learned at school and what we can do in real life, we decided to
visit Fairy Lane and sweep out the old.
Nicole, an ECE practicum student, and I made little brooms from
doweling and dried corn husks.
We prepared the I Spy nature bags and were ready to go.
As we walked through the woods some of the doors we could spot
quite easily because of the brightly coloured treasures that were
piled at their doors.
Each child picked a door and decided what to collect in to their bags.
They had to decide what would stay behind too because we didn’t
want to remove all the treasures, just to tidy.
They used their brooms to make one last sweep then
left the brooms for the fairies.
Before and after.
After all the cleaning we had one more activity to do.
Emptying out the bags and sorting what we had collected.
As the children sorted in different ways the grown ups helped them
label and record how they sorted.
I collected all of our work and took it back to the school to share.
The fairies are now ready for a new year and may good luck come their way.
