PUPILS at Frome’s Steiner Academy celebrated Chinese New Year recently with a day of music, stories and crafts.
On Wednesday 1st February parents and children at the Steiner Academy Frome were joined by some local residents to share Chinese songs, music, stories, crafts, and culture.
The pupils, who learn Mandarin at school from age six, celebrated the dawning of the year of the rooster.
The school’s Shannon Coggins said, “Through the week, the children made Chinese New Year decorations to decorate their classrooms. To mark the year of the Rooster, one of the parents made a huge seven-foot rooster lantern from local willow and tissue paper.
“Parents and friends worked with pupils from the older classes to make 350 authentic vegetarian and pork steam buns.
“These were shared with all the children and parents who attended the festival, and for the whole week the children found that the school snack-shop had extended its range to include Chinese fruit, party food and fortune cookies.
“On the day of the Celebration the children performed two traditional Lion Dances with drumming support from their classmates, a ribbon dance from the circus skills after-school club, storytelling, and a local Kung Fu group demonstrated their amazing skills. Every class contributed a song or verse in Mandarin.
“The festival helps the Chinese culture come alive for the children and is a natural complement to their Mandarin lessons. Mandarin is a wonderful language with a rich tradition, which the children initially learn through singing, poetry and story-telling, before moving on to learn to write and understand some of the more than 50,000 characters that make up the alphabet.”
Yuan Hollingsworth, the lower school Mandarin teacher said, “Learning about Chinese culture is at the very heart of learning Mandarin. It was a really lovely day with so many of the children wearing red and taking part with such enthusiasm.”
Local resident, Yanlin Lu, who helped the community with preparing and making the steam buns said, “Being part of the Festival brought back wonderful memories for some of the Chinese community here in Frome, and helping make the steam buns really brought back the flavour of home. Some of the pupils’ singing touched us very deeply and brought tears to our eyes.”
