Chinese New Year 2026

St Mary's celebrated the Year of the Horse with wonderful support from our families from our Chinese community. A group of parents from the Friends Of St Mary's kindly prepared a wide range of delicious home-cooked Chinese dishes, which were enjoyed by all of the children (and staff!). The parents also kindly donated gifts and a set of chopsticks for each child - we had fun learning how to eat with the chopsticks. In the morning, there was a Chinese cooking workshop which was enjoyed by children and parents.

After lunch, our amazing parents also led Chinese craft workshops as the children learned calligraphy, lantern making and paper design. Everyone in the school wore RED clothes as this is a lucky colour in China. We learned the story of the great race, when the Emperor chose the Chinese animals that would be in the zodiac. There was even a Maths problem solving challenge - did you know that there would need to be 66 races if the 12 animals raced head to head? Many thanks to our Premises Manager, Mr Scrivens, who created a wonderful Chinese dragon. Every class took part in a Dragon Dance, the children loved learning a new dance technique!