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Preschool 2015/2016: Chinese New Year Unit

February is Chinese New Year (Lunar New Year) Month!! This is our unit for the preschooler (she is 3)

It is so exciting because I LOVE CNY!





We read these

We were so blessed to have a friend who is a teacher at a Mandarin Preschool and she invited us to their CNY party. It kicked off our month so well! These are the goodies we got from the party


Lil Sis and Baby Sis did this craft at the party. This is the year of the monkey.

We also tasted some fun foods, like ē™¼ē³•(a kind of steamed cake, signifying prosperity), č˜æ蔔ē³• (turnip cake, signifying, good fortune, 儽彩頭), oranges (signifying blessedness, 吉ē„„ļ¼‰ and applesļ¼ˆsignifying peace, 平安ļ¼‰. Many foods in Chinese New Year have special meanings due to their sounds.

These are the other foods we had this month
包子 Buns - 包銀

金ē“œ Pumpkin (Golden Gourd) with Brocc and chicken - gold, prosperity
We talked about heaven having streets of gold.
We ate the ē™¼ē³• (Fa Gao) at the New Year Party: ē™¼č²” (prosperity)


Fishballs. Anything that is "round" is good for New Year, signifying complete and bliss


SWEETS! A sweet year.
This is what we ate for New Year's Eve. YUM!!
Fish - abundance
Turnip Cake (č˜æ蔔ē³•) -彩頭Good fortune
Veg - ditto
Chicken - sounds like family 家 in Taiwanese
Spring rolls - Like gold bars
ē«¹ē­č±†č…ēš® bamboo shoots- ē«¹å ±å¹³å®‰ peace
北äŗ¬ēƒ¤é“Ø
We made dumplings on the first day of Chinese New Year. The dumplings are like gold nuggets (元åƶ)

幓ē³•Nian Gao. Sticky Rice Cake. I like it fried in a batter of flour, egg and water.
幓幓高升 (progress every year)
ę—ŗ來 (Ong Lai) in Hokkien, means comes prosperity


Noodles: Longevity
Oranges. 吉ē„„ Blessedness/fortune


Fun games from this download


Counting games

We watched a lion dance at the party (and also through videos)


Then we made a lion dance puppet

We made different lanterns. This one takes very little work.

Fish has the same sound as "surplus" in Chinese. So fish is good symbol for Chinese New Year. I also taught the kids that in the bible, we learnt we must be fishers of men! This fish craft is fun to do. I used the "rainbow fish" template from here.

Red sparkly play dough!!


Red packet made by Big Sis


Lantern made by Lil Sis
We got this new book for Baby Sis and she has a lot of fun with it




The RED page was so fun for CNY!

I do like this book. I think it's reasonably priced (about $6), has lots of great colors. VERY easy for the 3 year old. And nice stickers. I would probably get another sticker book for her but this one has lots to do.


Fan. Instructions here

Decoration

Dragon Dance puppet
Coloring pages


painting toilet paper rolls for the fire cracker craft

Toilet Paper firecracker craft (complete with glitter)





Chinese Hat!


We played animal zodiac Bingo. I made my own. But you can get printable ones here
Bingo is always more fun when played with snacks. When they get their own zodiac sign or Monkey, they get double points. =)



These are the training chopsticks we use at home.


Got the tongs from Dollar Tree so we tried that too.


Monkey Box. She painted, mommy did the box.


Drawing Koi Fish. Mommy did a lot of the drawing and she did the painting (and some drawing).


Easy Tissue Plum Blossoms. ę¢…čŠ±

Lanterns!


Dragon for my little dragon lady. =)

And that's a great wrap!! Now on to March: BEARS!! We are going to have such a blast!


We watched all kinds of videos, from firecrackers, lion dance or dragon dance, to cartoons on Chinese New Year.

Our favorite is still this Singaporean produced short film 回家過幓

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