Special Greeting for our Bunny

[eirian]

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR

(well, it is the Year of the Rabbit)

[chazzie]

Well done Eirain........ yes Happy Chinese New Year Bunny

[MBH]

Yes - a Gung Hei Fat Choy to those that enjoy this celebration.


But... I happen to know that our Bunny is an OX - so she gets her own sign for her birth AND a year dedicated to her species

[eirian]

[LAT]

There are rabbits on lots of things over here too. But their year starts on 1st January although today is a special day as well. You are meant to throw roasted soy beans out of your door to ward off the devil, and eat one for every year of your age. (That's lots for me!!)

Happy Bunny year everyone!

[Bunnylump]

Oh how lovely! That just made my day. Bit like having an extra birthday!! A very happy Chinese new year to you all.

And MBH is quite right, he and I are both METAL OXEN. But obviously this year is designed to be an especially good one for me, being associated with the rabbit. Here's hoping, anyway.


I helped my daughter prepare some resources to teach her year 4 class all about Chinese New year the other night. I suggested she could link in making the red "good luck" poems which go on banners to literacy by making them write little poems involving similes (eg I hope your new year is as happy as a lark etc.). I cut her out a template of a Chinese symbol meaning "Good luck" so they could decorate their poems (which fitted in with an art requirement). I also found her the traditional Chinese story of how the Zodiac animals were assigned to each year (linking with "stories from other cultures), and made a template for a net to make a traditional money envelope (linking with maths curriculum - nets and shape).

She's also going to be using an absolutely FABULOUS interactive Powerpoint challenge made by our Fraggle to support the maths teaching. (I can't tell you how clever it is -music, pictures, moving parts, interactive, brilliant.)

So who needs teacher training to make lessons interesting and fun for the kids??

[Laura]

Erm, quite a lot of people who aren't as naturally talented at it as you. In fact, some of them probably need a bit more training.

[Bunnylump]

Oh goodness, I didn't mean to suggest that I was any kind of an expert! And it is a VERY difficult job (which I wouldn't want to do!!)

What I meant was that it's (to me anyway) really easy to come up with fun things to do to help kids learn. I'd be absolutely hopeless at teaching them all the boring stuff. I'd also be hopeless at things like parents' evenings (because I don't do diplomacy and am inclined to tell it how it is) and when I'm being observed whilst teaching I turn into a jibbering wreck.

When I was regularly taking a bottom set year 7 maths class, I found it really hard to relentlessly keep ploughing on through the curriculum when I could SEE that they just needed to work on basics. I don't much like being told what to do when and would therefore be a disaster as a real teacher. I must say though, that my class DID always manage to achieve or exceed their target levels, so I suppose I must have done something right.

[Cenwulf]

For those who want to find out their own animal and element, here are the relevant Chinese New Year dates for 1900-2019.

[strep98]

from a water tiger to the metal oxen greetings

Happy new chinese ears bunny

[dramaticat]

I find it hard to believe in an astrology system that doesn't have a cat as one of its symbols

I was a bit put out the first time I found out I was a pig, but having read some descriptions of pigs, they're uncannily accurate!

[tricia]

apparantly I was born in the year of the Horse

Tricia

[LAT]

I was a decisive factor in the Trojan war, or else I'm an instrument of torture - you decide!

[clvrlad]

if i remember correctly im a mutable fire dragon.....



or an evil metal dog

[Cenwulf]

I find it hard to believe in an astrology system that doesn't have a cat as one of its symbols

There's a Tiger - does that count?

According to one version of the story, the Rat was told, and was told to inform the Cat. But the Rat let the Cat sleep and went by itself: when only eleven animals arrived, a servant was told to find one more to make up the twelve, and saw a man driving a pig along the road - so the Pig became the twelfth animal. Then the Cat arrived in a rush, but the twelve places had already been filled.

However, when Chinese astrology was introduced to Vietnam, as there are no rabbits there they had to change the fourth animal, so the Cat replaced it. In Suzanne White's book 'New Astrology', which combines Western months with Eastern years, the fourth animal is the Cat as her introduction came from Vietnamese sources (probably as she lives in France - Vietnam was a French colony).

[clvrlad]

careful you might be converting someone

[Bunnylump]

saw a man driving a pig along the road

Was he hallucinating?