Did you know?! On the 10th February 2024, many people will celebrate the Lunar New Year, including all of my former colleagues and friends in Viet Nam 🇻🇳. One of my Vietnamese friends sent me this photograph of a spectacular fruit and vegetable creation which last year had been part of his wedding celebration! …
In Viet Nam 🇻🇳 the week before the first day of the Lunar New Year feels very much like the week before Christmas in Scotland 🏴. Children and their families will be looking forward to a break from school and from work, and will come together to eat delicious food and enjoy special traditions.
Recently, we took a look at a map of the world 🗺️ and a globe 🌍 to locate Scotland 🏴 , as well as Viet Nam 🇻🇳and some other countries with which some of us have special connections …
On seeing the photograph of the fantastic fruit and vegetable creatures, some of us decided that we would like to create our own celebratory 🐲dragon 🐉 – to ‘live’ out at the allotment! We didn’t have fruit and vegetables, but instead we used colourful clothes pegs, and a collection of recycled materials. We hope our dragon will be sturdy and strong enough to survive some windy Edinburgh days, at least for a short while! …
We used our reading and spelling skills to discover more about the Chinese 🇨🇳 and Vietnamese 🇻🇳 Lunar New Year …
We made our own red envelopes 🧧 – lì xì – these are a traditional part of Vietnamese culture at this time of year. They contain ‘lucky money’ and typically are given to children by adults, with a greeting wishing health, prosperity and long life such as: “Sống lâu trăm tuổi“, “An khang thịnh vượng“, “Vạn sự như ý“ and “Sức khỏe dồi dào“. …
We also looked at pictures of some of the special New Year food and noticed people using chopsticks 🥢 – that made us want to cook – and eat! So, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to harvest, prepare and share a healthy light snack, and we’d use chopsticks 🥢 when it was time to eat our Vietnamese-style meal! Amazingly, our allotment kale 🥬 has kept growing throughout the winter season – we planted it last spring! So we loved using it again to do some more cooking … and eating! …
Pick, wash and chop …. Each step was interesting and fun … and most of us enjoyed the taste of our freshly picked and washed kale 🥬, even before it was cooked …
Cook, sauté, steam, boil, drain, sieve … just some of the words we talked about as we enjoyed the preparations …
The reward for our efforts! … Most of us thought both the cooked kale 🥬 and the wholewheat noodles 🍜 were very tasty … and we did so well with the chopsticks! 🥢 …
Some of us read about the Chinese New Year Lantern 🏮 Festival, and then practised our folding and cutting skills as we made our own lanterns to contribute to the classroom decor! We also practised our reading and joined-up handwriting skills as we read a few riddles, and chose which one would be added to our lanterns …
On Saturday the 10th February, I will be thinking of all my friends in Viet Nam 🇻🇳 as they wish one another CHÚC MỪNG NĂM MỚI ! (Happy New Year!)
But before then, we have one more busy week at school ahead of our mid-term week’s holiday. Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to hearing more from our P7 campers who’ve had such an AMAZING week at Lagganlia…
I hope everyone has a restful weekend, especially the P7 campers and those terrific TEAM CKPS staff who were with them. 😊 That’s all for now, Mrs Dale