Ni Hao! Our “Journey” to China

Recently our classroom celebrated the country of China for our yearly Cultural Celebration. The children were incredibly excited to study such a fascinating place, learning all about its people, music, food, art, history, and language. Many activities were planned for the morning. Our class explored and tried on clothing from China and practiced serving tea in a dramatic play area, learned

to count to ten in Mandarin by painting the symbols on paper, and read many Chinese folktales. We were lucky enough to have a parent who lived in China come in to teach the children a silly nursery rhyme in Mandarin! We also tried our hand at cooking vegetable fried rice and dumplings, using a wok. Paper lanterns were cut out and assembled in our art studio and the children spent time making Chinese fans which we later used in a special Chinese dance. Our busy morning ended with a group snack of our homemade veggie fried rice and dumplings. Best of all, we had chopsticks on hand for each child to practice eating with during our meal. Everyone tried a bit of everything and our meal was declared delicious by the majority of the class!

Maria Montessori believed that it was of utmost importance to teach young children about our world and its different cultures. She lived during turbulent times and witnessed how hatred and prejudice can destroy humanity. She understood that if the world was to find peace, we must start with the education of children. So little by little, we travel the world in our classroom, teaching the children about our world’s cultures and hopefully inspiring peace and acceptance within our youngest citizens.