At the end of January, the Preschoolers at RisingOaks | John Sweeney celebrated the Lunar New Years with costumes, games and learning about traditions. We wanted to extend on learning about the Korean culture and their cuisine. An educator displayed a board of ingredients for the children to see and to create pretend gimbap/Korean Sushi, all the colours represented ingredients that were placed into the sushi roll. Educator May sat down with the children; she first showed the children an example how to put the ingredients together step by step into seaweed and then showing the children how to roll the gimbap and cut into small pieces. The children showed lots of interests creating their own sushi roll with the ingredients that were placed on the table. The children displayed interests into continuing learning about the Korean food was a joy to observe.
Continuing with this activity, How Does Learning Happen, the children are learning through engagement through play and exploring new foods. Educator May placed play dumplings with a set of play dumplings baskets on the table, the children showed interests in learning about the dumpling set by helping each other place dumplings in the baskets and using their fine motor skills to pick up dumplings with chop sticks, at first the children had trouble picking up food with chop sticks but they gradually learned the ability to use them.
Through observations, the Preschoolers showed lots of interests in learning about another culture foods and taking in these experiences with different activities the children learn different traditions and different words from the Korean culture.
