In celebration of the Chinese New Year, we are having a few activities at home to learn about this big celebration of the Chinese community. Having this cultural activities is an opportunity to explore with your child about foreign countries and different culture and traditions. And because we (Filipinos) are greatly influenced by the Chinese culture, from beliefs, to food, to traditional practices we are joining and celebrating the New Year with our Chinese friends!
I came up with simple activities, again mostly reused ideas from Mavi’s time (Study of Ancient China) and some of these were from Pinterest too. The activities aim to introduce China to Vito as well as the celebrations and traditions of the Chinese community. I also included links to my resources so you can easily replicate these! Enjoy!
Books
These are the books we are using to go along with our Chinese New Year activities. I highly recommend all of these books. The Great Zodiac Race book is just so good! The boys enjoyed reading it with me, loved the idea of a race and for my eldest, he was so fascinated with this mythical story. And for those who are yet to explore Chinese New Year, My First Chinese New Year book is a one stop shop kind of book for you. Here, all the activities and traditions that the Chinese observe leading to the Chinese New Year are presented and explained. Lin Yi’s Lantern tells a beautiful story about a Chinese boy’s selflessness.
China (Country Study)
Our country tray includes a map, flag, and homemade playdough. This will familiarize the child about China, its shape and its topography.
Dragon Puppet
The boys created one of this puppet. I read to them before hand about the zodiac and why the dragon is one of China's symbol (especially in the Chinese New Year). We danced around the house holding the puppet, pretending to be in a dragon dance. The Dragon is a very important symbol in China, so I highly suggest that you discuss it with your kids or read a book relating to it or its significance to the Chinese culture so they’ll be able to appreciate this activity more. You can get the dragon template that we used here.
Zodiac Signs
The boys had fun learning about their zodiac signs. We read this book (Great Zodiac Race) beforehand to introduce the boys to the Zodiac signs and what it means in the Chinese culture. Again, it is very important that you discuss this with your child so they can understand the meaning of this tradition.
This is a race game of tracing lines using zodiac animals to go along with our book. We are using chalk pens here instead of dry erase markers.
All About China
We read a lot of books about China and the New Year. I also get to use our China Learning Pack for Vito. Here, I used the reading materials for Vito, and then had him match the cards to the pictures in our reading book. This is a great tool in introducing important facts about China to a child.
Giant Panda Bear
We learned about the giant panda bear and that they only live in China. We did some imaginative play (Small World Play: Giant Pandas) years ago, and for this year we ended up making some simple paper craft! Vito loves glue, papers, sticky tapes, and scissors these days so I decided to do some paper activities to make use of this current interest.
Chinese Food and Chopsticks
And of course, another thing that defines tradition and culture is food! I mostly cook Chinese, Spanish and Filipino foods at home, so the boys are very much familiar with these. But Vito can not yet distinguish whether it’s Filipino or Chinese. So this activity will help him understand the roots of Mommy’s cooking LOL. Here, I showed him some pictures of famous Chinese food, and introduced the use of chopsticks. We used our Asian Cuisine Learning Pack printable from the shop.
Calligraphy
In China, they use calligraphy instead of writing letters. This is what I told Vito, that they don’t have letters like we do, but they have special characters and strokes that they use to read and write. The boys had fun doing calligraphy in Buddha Board using the zodiac names in Chinese. Mavi and I did this before, but we were making Chinese numbers.
Counting
Of course, I just have to insert a counting activity. We are mastering teens, so we are using Chinese counting cards and our favourite Montessori beads.
Chinese Flag
Last but definitely not the least, I introduced the Chinese flag to Vito, specifying the colors (red and yellow)! The booklet is from our China Country Study learning material.
These activities and ideas come in handy if you are thinking of China Unit Study for your kids as well. They’re all so simple to set-up, with lots of learning and exploration opportunity.
Let me know what you think!
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