Happy Chinese New Year

Celebrating holidays from other countries gives us yet another opportunity to talk about how everyone looks different , might talk in another language and even eat different kinds of foods. Today is the day the Chinese celebrate the New Year. This year is called the year of the dragon. I have a theme box I bring out that has items from China in it. The kids always love exploring the new things and trying them out. Kimber made me sad. He asked me ” Ms Debbie, where are the boy clothes…?” 🙁 I have never run across them so if you see some boys authentic clothing from China, I would love to add it to our collection ! ( Mommy Stacy, please do not tell Kimber he made me sad. I thought it was very observant of him. )

One of the first things we did today was make chinese lanterns. I was SO proud of my preschoolers. They decorated the paper and then I took the paper and folded it and drew red lines on it to use as a guide for them to cut the slits. I modeled it for them saying ” STOP” when I got to the end of a line. ( If you but all the way through the paper it will not work right .) Each one of these kiddos did it right ! NOT ONE.. not even the younger ones cut past the end of the line . A lot of teachers would be saying… SO proud they can cut. We are above that already.. we are proud to be able to cut on the guided line and stop when the line stops! These are super easy to make the the kids loved them. If you get bored on a Saturday, I bet they would love to make them at home !

lanterns1 — Kingston cutting his lantern

This was really a lot of fun !

lantersn4 — All our pretty lantern before they were

I think they looked very pretty !

After making our lanterns we decided to make dragon mask since this is the year of the dragon. It was a very teacher directed activity but the kids loved it.