This year, 2016, was the year of the monkey in the Chinese Zodiac. I have 2 ethnically Chinese children in the room. Both of then are first generation New Zealanders. We watched the story of  the Chinese Zodiac on youtube and then discussed which year we were born in, All the children in the class were Tigers having been born in late 2010 or early 2011 before CNY that year. We talked about what Chinese people believe about people born in the Year of the Tiger. Did they agree? Were they brave, daring or sensitive?

I am a rat, so I talked about my cleverness, charm,  imagination and honesty ;-) 

We are very blessed to have around 38% of our children from Indian homes in our area. This means that we are able to access cultural resources in local Indian food markets. A couple of times a year we love to have the mums (and grandmas!) come in and decorate the childrens' hands with henna tattoos. We usually coincide this with Diwali and/or the Holi festival, but if a school holiday is in the way we go ahead and have fun anyway. This year we even combined it with our school's Funky Feet day for Travelwise awareness. Some kids and one teacher (me) even decorated their feet. We also had our first dad volunteer this year. He was kept busy with spiderweb designs and batman logos on request. 

I encourage the children to greet me in the morning with a wide range of greetings from around the world. I model these through the roll and allow the students to respond in any language as long as they are respectful.