Gung Hay Fat Choy! Chinese New Year 2011

We celebrated Chinese New Year this year! It's not something we usually get to spend any time on with so many other things we've got going on. Teacher Tom has written some wonderful posts about the things his classes do. (Be sure to check out: Gung Hay Fat Choy, Dragons and Fantastic Creatures, The Boy Who Painted Dragons, and New Years Dragons and Tape Off ). Truth be told, I know next to nothing about Chinese New Year. I have a Chinese American student this year and wanted to make sure we included his traditions into our classroom celebrations.

We made paper lanterns out of construction paper. This was quite an exercise in cutting and following directions. Every year's group of students does some tasks quite skillfully and some with great difficulty. This year's group just cant seem to get the hand of cutting folded paper to make multiples. We've been practicing this skill a lot lately since I know this is something they'll do quite a bit in kindergarten. I had to pull out the tape to fix a few that cut way too far, but that's okay. The purpose was the cutting practice and not a perfect lantern. We hung them around our room for decoration.

We talked a bit about dragons and how the western culture thinks of them as evil, fire breathing creatures and how the Chinese culture reveres them for power, strength and luck.

We read a few books about Chinese New Year that furthered our understanding of Gung Hay Fat Choy traditions.



Gung Hay Fat Choy!