PUPILS at Symondsbury School celebrated Chinese New Year in style with a busy week of activities and creativity, culminating in a special parade through the village.

2016 is the Year of the Monkey, and the children at Symondsbury rose to the challenge of embodying this symbol of cleverness and quick wits by embracing lots of new ideas and tackling a range of challenges.

Each class got the opportunity to work with local artist Sue Warren to contribute to a giant dragon, as well as creating their own Chinese masks and lanterns, exploring traditional oriental designs, colour and symbolism.

The children had fun learning traditional Chinese dances including a fan dance, umbrella dance and dragon dance, experiencing traditional music and movements. Parent Ines Ford came in to help the children make and sample tasty spring rolls, while head teacher Emma Roberts spent time with each year group on a storytelling session.

All the children were fascinated to learn about their Chinese horoscopes and many enjoyed going home and speculating on which animals their parents and siblings were born under.

Parents joined the children on Thursday for a kite-making workshop with some friendly inter-house competition over how quickly kites were made and how well they flew.

Many children took the opportunity to decorate their kites with some of the writing and symbolism they had learned.

And when it came to flying the kites outside, the promise that they would all fly if the owners ran fast enough held true... but the school is still calculating how much time was spent untangling and re-winding strings.

The hard work culminated in a grand parade for parents on Friday afternoon with pupils, all dressed in the lucky colour red, processing from the school to the Symondsbury Estate Manor Yard behind their grand processional dragon. Once at the yard there was a dance display, carried off with particular style by Class 4 despite a technical hitch with the music and very windy and cold weather.

Head teacher Emma Roberts said: "Congratulations to all the children - what a wonderful week of learning we had.

"I was particularly impressed with how enthusiastically the pupils embraced so many new things and how keen they were to learn about a culture different to their own. I would also like to thank all the staff and contributors to the week and the parents who supported us. Weeks like this create wonderful positive memories for the children and give a real boost to everything we do in the classes during the term."

Pupils at the school are now looking forward to a Valentine's disco and then all the preparations for Easter after half-term, which at Symondsbury culminates in the Colmers Hill egg hunt on Easter Sunday, raising money for the Friends of Symondsbury School.