Chinese New Year!

 Gung Hay Fat Choy! I was very excited to teach my kids about Chinese New Year for I am Chinese American. I remembered when I was in kindergarten, we made a Chinese dragon. I wanted to recreate that for my students and we did! I started off by reading Nicks' Chinese New Year. It is about a Chinese American boy who shares the inside scoop of Chinese New Year! Some things consisted of cleaning the house, the color red as being good luck, dim sum, and the Chinese dragon dancing. Throughout the week we made fire crackers, lantern, and a dragon. I also handed out a red envelope with a golden chocolate coin inside! It was a hit!

Fire crackers are used during the Chinese dragon dance to scare away the evil spirits. We recreated the firecrackers with red paper and glitter! Parents donated glitter glue (thanks!) for the kids to decorate on red paper for the fire crackers. I then took empty toilet paper rolls and wrapped their creations around it and hung it by gold string.

The lantern is created with a large piece of construction paper. Fold it in half hot dog style and create lines on the folded part half way. Kids will practice fine motor skills by cutting the lines. Wrap around and attach a paper handle!

Kids painting the lion head red. (cardboard box)

Students decorated the dragon body (made out of a table cloth) with felt shapes they made. 

The completed Chinese dragon! We walked around each classroom with the dragon, lanterns, and firecrackers to start off the year of the snake!

Gung Hay Fat Choy!