Sunshine Room - Pingxi

Sunshine Room embraced Pingxi's Sky Lantern Festival by learning about one of the most important elements woven into Taiwans culture - Tea!

Taiwanese tea culture includes tea arts, traditional tea ceremonies, and the social aspects of tea consumption. Many of the classical arts can be seen in the tea culture, such as calligraphy, flower arts, and incense. Tea, especially oolong tea, is a popular drink in Taiwan.

The children held their own tea ceremony with traditional crockery, green tea, Taiwanese oolong tea and a variety of fruit teas for the children to explore (all caffeine free)

They explored the dry tea leaves using their senses, touching, tasting, smelling. Some children used their hands to mark make in the tea leaves, feeling its texture, and others enjoyed emptying, filling and mixing in their cups amongst themselves. Next they spent some time listening to a traditional Taiwanese orchestra, talking about how the sound of the instruments made them feel or what they thought they might be. Suggestions included 'a drum' 'pumpkins' and 'I'm happy it's happy'

They explored green tea and traditional oolong tea, as well as adding water to a variety of cold fruit teas including strawberry, watermelon, mint and orange. The children excitedly anticipated what might happen next with each one as they observed the water changing colours. Then they tasted each tea and communicated to one another if they liked the flavour or not. The strawberry flavour seemed to be the most popular!