Four of our Chinese students popped over to Nursery this week to inspire some of the children about their language and culture!
One of the core books that our ‘Nursery Two’ children are exploring at the moment is ‘The Magic Paintbrush’, written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Joel Stewart.
With her magic paintbrush, the story’s main character, Shen, can paint steaming pots full of fish and oysters to feed the hungry people in her village, but when the evil emperor hears of her gift, he commands Shen to paint gold for him instead. She is determined to keep her promise to paint only for the poor, but how can she match the emperor’s mighty power?
Our Nursery children are so enthralled by the story, Shen’s integrity to withstand the corruption of power and greed, and the book’s references to China and all the different languages and dialects that there are!
Miss Kayleigh Darkens, who is one of our Senior Nursery Practitioners, decided to invite Mr Michael Ruta, Housemaster of School House, and a few of his students to visit Nursery on Tuesday, February 6th to meet the children and to read to them in both English and Chinese.
Jimmy, Alex, Bruce and Zarek, who are all studying the Year 11 KEI programme here at King’s, read extracts from the popular children’s book, ‘Guess How Much I Love You’, written by Sam McBratney and illustrated by Anita Jeram. They read to the children in both English and Chinese to show them how different the two languages sound.
The fabulous foursome also explained to the children the meanings behind each of their traditional names, and taught them how to count from 1 to 10 in Chinese!