The Year of the Snake

This week, millions of families across the world held celebrations to mark the Lunar New Year. On 29 January 2025, Chinese and other Asian communities ushered in the Year of the Snake, the sixth of twelve animals represented in the cycle of symbols from the Chinese zodiac, welcoming in good fortune and prosperity.

Taking inspiration from this year’s symbol of the snake and the popular custom of adorning the home with paper decorations during the Lunar New Year festivities, the children in the Art Room created their own striking, snake-like artworks by cutting, folding, gluing and assembling together pieces of paper and card.

Our preschool class was full of energy with ten young artists and their carers working together to decorate multiple segments of a snake’s body with rainbow paint colours and collaged paper shapes, sequins and fabric. Once assembled with split pins, their cardboard snakes wiggled proudly out of the Art Room to display their joyful and highly patterned new skins.

After school, a nest of paper snakes took shape as our young artists carefully constructed long and bendy bodies by folding together colourful strips of paper cut from old magazine pages before attaching a uniquely coloured and patterned head. Lots of fun was had as the finished snakes were playfully coiled and concertinaed to display to the class!

The serpentine theme continued with our oldest artists who demonstrated great creativity in working exclusively with paper collage.  Reimagining the vibrant designs from magazine spreads, the children cut unique shapes and reworked interesting printed textures to build their own distinctive snake collage. Often associated with great transformation, the snakes in the finished art works were undoubtedly signs of the creative prosperity and well-being shared around the Art Room table this week.