Chinese Culture丨Zhuang culture festival in Harrow Little Lions Nanning
Since the establishment of Harrow Little Lions Kindergarten in 2020, Ms Li has been assisting the children to explore the traditional culture of the Zhuang people during the Double Three Festival.
Following that, let’s have a look at how kids in various grades learn about traditional culture!
PK (Ages 2-3) —
the Double Three Festival with graphics
The PK children’s cultural experience is centered on developing their graphic identification, observation, and language abilities, and Ms Li and the children collaborated in the creation of a Zhuang brocade design. The kids are expected to locate the relevant shapes and carefully examine their places, in addition to being able to independently name and color each shape.
Additionally, we provide various linguistic contexts for the children to express themselves and socialize with a variety of experiences. Ms Li prepares a multicolored rice sensory tray for the children to play with and interact with while expressing themselves. Also, the kids are encouraged to utilize their imagination and ingenuity to make their own creations.
K1 (Ages 3-4) —
the Double Three Festival with Antiphonal Rhymes
When the children reached a more advanced level of language development, we begin include Liu Sanjie’s traditional folk songs in our language exercises. The children sit in couples and study the qualities of ducks, boats, lotus leaves, and mandarin ducks before moving on to guessing riddles and singing the songs. The kids quickly memorized the words and the song’s rhythm, pounding the beat and chanting the song repeatedly.
Besides that, we encourage children to try their hand at traditional ethnic crafts like Zhuang brocade or flat embroidered balls, in which they may use their imaginations to create beautiful patterns and colors with the materials provided, as well as to exercise the fine movements of their small hands.
K2 (Ages 4-5) —
the Double Three Festival and the Embroidered Ball
For 4-5 year olds, an awareness of ethnic culture is developing, and we’ve included ethnic stories and crafts that are more expressive of ethnic culture. We not only sing folk songs together during the Chinese language exercises, but also debate the classic ethnic story “A piece of Zhuang brocade” together. The kids listened to the narrative and engaged in discussion on its plot. Also, Ms Li created a “Predict the End” session, in which children can used their creativity to guess the story’s narrative based on what they already knew: “Will Lao San ever reclaim his mother’s brocade? What do you believe will happen at the conclusion of the story?” The kids participated enthusiastically in the exchange of ideas.
Furthermore, the children learn about our ancient art, embroidery ball, through a game of embroidery ball throwing. We address the composition of forms while making the embroidered balls, such as “how a square becomes a circle” and “how to determine the center of a circle by folding it in half.” The kids adore their embroidered balls. Children’s emotional awareness of national culture is improved.
K3 (Ages 5-6) —
the Double Three Festival and Liu Sanjie
The 5 to 6-year-olds are captivated by the lovely narrative of Liu Sanjie and Aniu. Following conversation, the kids are naturally absorbed in the scenario, banging drums and singing to one another in the roles of “Liu Sanjie” and “Aniu.”
According to their interests, the kids select their favorite ethnic activities. Some children decorate the theme phrases on the Chinese classroom’s cultural wall with multicolored glutinous rice, while others dashed to the calligraphy zone to create brush characters and are able to write the words “the Double Three Festival” without any instruction. In the craft zone, some children create their own Zhuang brocade and develop various types of lovely graphics; in the painting zone, some children use their imagination to create various embroidered ball designs; and in the ethnic zone, some children created homemade copper drums…
Throughout the process, Zhuang culture is the subject of several debates in the Chinese classroom. From cradle rhymes to language reading, from observation skills training to creative creativity development, our Chinese class translated “the Double Three Festival” culture into meaningful “vocabulary.” While interacting with the culture, the kids are also sharpening all sorts of other abilities and skills.
