Happy New Year from all of us at Angels Day Nursery! We hope that you have a wonderful 2023.
A new year can be a fresh start for many people; a chance for new beginnings. Change can be difficult to deal with for young children, but introducing them to the concept of New Years can be a really good chance to discuss significant changes that might be happening later in the year, such as a change in routine or starting school.
New Years can also represent a fresh start. There might be some behaviours and bad habits that you want to leave behind in 2022. Now is the perfect opportunity for that discussion, although of course, you don’t have to wait for a new year to make any changes in life.
As well as the concept of change, you can talk about setting reasonable goals in the form of new year resolutions. Setting a goal for a year can be quite intimidating for anyone, especially for young children, however if you set manageable goals that can be easily achieved, they seem a lot more manageable. This could be something like trying new foods or learning to tidying up after yourself - both of which are suitable for their age. Something like this also helps introduce good habits to your child at a young age.
Something else important to discuss with your children is New Years in different cultures. In the UK, New Year’s Day was on January 1st, however the Chinese New Year isn’t until January 22nd 2023. There are a lot of cultural moments unique to China that are fun to educate children about, such as red envelopes, lanterns, and fortune cookies.
You can also look at New Years traditions from elsewhere in the world. For example, in Spain they eat 12 grapes at the stroke of midnight, each grape representing a strike of the clock. Another example is in Japanese culture, they eat soba noodles at midnight; the biting of the noodles represents a break away from the old year to the new. It’s really important for children to learn about other cultures and understand the world around them.
However you chose to celebrate the New Years, we hope you had a good one!
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