P2A have been really enjoying the first couple of lessons within their Mandarin block this term. We have been learning to count to ten in Mandarin and playing lots of fun games to help us remember them. It has been great spending time in our lovely Confucius classroom!

P5 were recently invited to the National Museum of Scotland to support the design of a Mandarin language project and to learn more about chinese object.

The class have written the following report:

P5 Museum Trip

On 19th of September 2019 primary 5 from Dalry Primary School in Edinburgh had the opportunity to visit the National Museum of Scotland to help design a Mandarin educational resource.

Dalry was chosen as we are a primary school with a Confucius classroom and teacher.

We were introduced to the filmmaker David who is going to make an animation to teach people about Mandarin colours. When we got there, we learnt about some fascinating objects like vases, statues, children’s clothing and animals from China. There were wonderful colours on the objects like red, which is hong-se in Mandarin.

Then we had the pleasure to explore the museum. We were split into 2 groups, 1 group went with Ms Younger, the second went with Mr Bennett. We had to draw our favourite Chinese objects and write which colours were in them. We chose objects that had really bright colours that would catch people’s eyes. We also made sure that the objects didn’t have too many colours to make sure it was easy for people to see what the main colour was. Some of our favourite objects were the Chinese fan and the lion dogs because the fan was a beautiful object and the lion dogs were funny.

Next, we got to ask the filmmaker, David,questions about his proposal, so we learnt about the process of designing a new resource. Once we were shown the dragon David had designed for the animation film we got to suggest names for it.

Before January, someone from the museum is going to come and show us small clips of animation so we can give them feedback. Then in January we are going back to the museum for the launch.

We are excited to be part of this project. We think it is important because we it is helpful for people who don’t know Mandarin. They can learn the colours from the resource.