Celebrate the Chinese New Year with your children with these 10 Chinese New Year crafts and activities.
Rabbit craft
Are you celebrating the Chinese new year next week? I like to observe celebrations from around the world with the children as I think it open their eyes to diverse cultures, showing them how people around the world are different but how the basis of many traditions are very similar too. We like to make Chinese style lanterns (which are perfect for practising scissors skills) and eating a Chinese meal. This year, which begins on 3rd February 2011, will be the year of the rabbit so here’s an idea for a craft you could try:
Potato Printing a Rabbit
We used potatoes and carrots to print with to make our rabbit. (Seems appropriate to use carrots, don’t you think?) Carrot printing is great for younger children as the carrots are just right for holding in little hands. Potatoes are a little more cumbersome to hold but you can make easier for the children to grasp if you cut out a handle into the top – as shown in the picture.
This rabbit design provides the opportunity to mix in some maths, as we thought about what shapes we could use to make our pictures. We decided to make a picture using just two shapes: circles and triangles.
I used a knife to cut out a triangle from the carrots, the potatoes were simply sliced in half.
We also talked about size as we used a big shape to make the body, ears and carrots and a small shape for the head, nose and carrot leaves.
We enjoyed having a specific project – working out how to form our rabbits and follow our instructions to create the pictures – but it was great to add in time at for some free style printing too, to see what other designs we could come up with using the circles and triangles.
More Chinese New Year activities
Raise a global child! Exploring festivals from different countries and cultures is a wonderful way to learn about the world. You can see our archive of Chinese New Year activities here.
Chinese lantern scissor skills
These paper lanterns are a great way for young children to practise their scissor skills and perfect for decorating the house in time for the Chinese New Year celebrations on February 19th 2015. Red is the traditional celebration colour in China but as the lanterns look so good you might like to make some in your child’s favourite colour and string them up to decorate their bedroom too.
To make one you will need: 2 sheets of paper, scissors, sticky tape or glue (and pens/pencils if you want to add any embellishments)
Following the above pictures clockwise from top left:
Step 1: Fold one sheet of paper in half lengthways
Step 2: Cut lines along the FOLDED length of the paper, but not all the way to the unfolded edge or you’ll just end up with ribbons. I drew lines on the paper for my daughter to follow. She’s just getting the hang of scissors so this was a great craft to let her make something with the scissors which she could pretty much manage all by herself.
Step 3: Open out the paper
Step 4: Add any drawing you like to decorate you lantern.
Step 5: Roll up the lantern and stick the ends together with sticky tape (you could use glue, but you know my daughter won’t wait for it to dry!).
Step 6: Cut a thin strip of paper from the other sheet and stick it on to make the handle. Then string them up to decorate your room
Children’s books for Chinese New Year the year of the tiger
Celebrate Chinese New Year with your children
Celebrating festivals from around the world is a wonderful way to introduce your children to the diversity of other cultures and religions.
As festivals tend to be fun, family-centred events they’re the perfect way to involve your children.
The Chinese New Year is being celebrated on February 14th 2010 and will mark the start of the Year of the Tiger.
QUICK RESOURCE >> Download our ready-made Chinese New Year Unit here
Here are some ideas to bring in the New Year at home:
1. As with most celebrations food plays a major part so why not cook up a Chinese meal and try using chopsticks. There are some recipes here that you might like. Or you could even try making your own fortune cookies and let the children write or draw the messages inside.
2. The traditional colour for the Chinese celebration is red so why not have a red day – wearing red clothes, eating red food, having a treasure hunt to find all your red toys and making a collage picture using lots of shades of red?
3. As it’s the year of the Tiger it would be fun to make tiger masks. We’ll be making one this week, so please come back and I’ll share how we made it.
4. In the Chinese culture the number 8 is considered lucky – so how about playing some number games based on 8s? You could draw a hopscotch grid using chalks in the garden working up from 1 to 8. Or write the numbers 1 to 8 on squares of card to make targets, lie them out in a line and see if you can throw beanbags on to the targets. Anyone who lands on the number 8 could win a small prize.
5. Red envelopes containing gifts of money are very often given at New Year. You could use this idea at home by drawing or writing messages on card, putting them into red envelopes and then posting them off to friends and grandparents. My children love getting real letters through the post so your child might like to address an envelope to themselves and wait and see how long it takes the postman to deliver it.
6. Although it’s the year of the tiger, the dragon also makes an appearance at New Year to chase away any evil spirits. You can watch a New Year dragon dance, and your children could even try to do one themselves.
7. You can also introduce the idea that people speak different languages and write in different ways around the world. Can your kids try saying ‘Gung hei fat choi!’ which means Happy New Year!
You can see samples of Chinese script here and here, and even do some translation here.
Download your ready-made Chinese New Year Unit
Download your copy of the Play Academy’s ready-made Chinese New Year Unit and you’ll have everything you need to lead an engaging programme of learning about Chinese New Year.
In this Chinese New Year Unit your children can:
:: learn about Chinese New Year: what it is and how it is celebrated
:: learn about the animals of the Chinese zodiac
:: learn about Chinese dragons and make your own dragon puppet
:: make Chinese-style paper lanterns
:: play lucky 8s, count to ten in Chinese and play red envelope math games
:: explore sensory painting
:: try a mandarin sensory taste test
Bonus Chinese New Year thematic unit printables
The Play Academy’s thematic units come with practical printables that make the lessons more engaging for your children and easier for you to teach.
No need to go searching for printables to accompany your lessons, they’re all included when you download your chosen unit.
In this Chinese New Year Unit you’ll receive these bonus printables:
:: a Red Envelope mat for math activities
:: three-part colour-in Chinese Zodiac Animals matching cards
How to download this Chinese New Year thematic unit
You can download this unit along with over 50 more from NurtureStore’s Play Academy.
If you are already of the Play Academy, you can download this unit straight away from our Library here.
If you are not yet a member, find out more and choose your first unit here. Your teaching is about to get a whole lot easier!
