Written by Roseline Yang, Community Relations Officer
In the January newsletter, we had a staff focus on our Heads of Chinese Department from ECE, Primary and Secondary. The interview was preceded by a great discussion about how Chinese New Year is prepared and celebrated by our students, our teachers and the whole community! This is what they had to say about Chinese New Year events at YCIS.
Click here to see photos for ECE & Primary and here to see photos for Secondary.
- How is Chinese New Year celebrated at YCIS?
Michelle: The Chinese New Year Celebration happens every year. This is part of the bilingual curriculum, which is not only about language but culture as well.
In ECE, the traditional Chinese costumes are introduced to our young children, children will participate traditional activities. They dress up in traditional dresses and also enjoy the traditional Chinese dances.
We spend one and a half week before the Chinese New Year to talk about by introducing 12 Zodiac, the traditional way of how people celebrate the Chinese New Year.Every year level focus on different activities according to their developmental levels:
- K2s learn to sing Chinese songs,
- K3s dance and make traditional crafts
- K4s make fans and use chopsticks and explore to write calligraphy.
There is an internal celebration party between children and teachers. Parents are invited to the classroom activities such as reading a story, doing an activity, creative art, making dumplings and so on.
Sissy: Students learn Spring festival in Chinese Studies lessons along with some year-level celebration activities like introducing the festival and its costume, learning Chinese New Year songs and making dumplings… But the learning period of this celebration culminates with the Annual Chinese New Year Family Celebration Day that takes place at last Friday night! This is the 2nd year that we make the Celebration event being a project-based learning, which means that it is not an event organized by Chinese teachers only, but it involves all class teachers and subject teachers as well as students. Everyone takes part of the project to feel involved and get excited about the event. While Year 1 to Year 5 teachers and students choose the theme to decorate their classroom board for which parents will be able to vote, all specialist teachers offer theme-related activities: students explore all the cities with Minecraft in ICT class, they do some paper-cutting in Art, and some dog jungle games in PE class and as usual they read about Chinese New Year related stories during Library time.
R: What is different this year?
Year 6 students who are connected to Secondary schedule and program for their transition, are more involved in the community service. They are able to share what they learn and show their leadership to other year level students. During Chinese Culture Day, they were in charge for this. During that night, they assisted the teachers. Also, the performance part that usually includes music teachers’ performance and student performances from CCA Chinese Dance had a new item this year with a parent performance to complete the whole school community picture!
The meaning of the Chinese New Year is: “United with your family, share the happiness”! Family is the core of the celebration. Therefore, we want to make sure that students and parents can enjoy this moment at school together.
Amy: In Secondary, on Friday we celebrated Chinese New Year at Century Park with an afternoon full of fantastic performances and many different activities for our annual House Competition. All week, students were busy preparing creative performances with their Houses to represent elements of Chinese culture and celebrate the Lunar New Year. More information will click here. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/gEO-KlidcXfu-wN1A-n3dg
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