On International Languages Day, we celebrated Chinese New Year and focused on raising awareness of Chinese culture and language. Our whole school assembly was inspired by the story of the Chinese zodiac animals and James, Jason and Thomas shared insights of how New Year is celebrated.  In lessons, the children learnt to count in Mandarin, at lunchtime the catering team put on a delicious feast and at break-times the Fitzjames was buzzing with a hive of different activities, from stone-painting in different languages, paper-plate painting as part of our collaborative Chinese dragon project and Chinese calligraphy writing using Indian ink on a long scroll.  To top it off, the IDL Challenge Card entries are rolling in and the children can gain points for their house by completing a huge variety of challenges from baking a cake to represent a country (entries in on Monday!) to recording a tongue twister in another language.  Of course, it wouldn’t be International Day of Languages if we didn’t embark on a whole-school French song and this year, we shimmied and chorused our way through Mama Africa in assembly to help start the day with smiles and laughter.