Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Happy Chinese New Year!

Theme: Chinese New Year

Choosing Time: Dominoes, Tactominoes, 12 special animals, & Little People Village
We had a fun time playing dominoes together. It was a great way to practice matching, counting, & color identification.
Snack: Thank you Mitch for a fantastic snack! It was a special surprise to open our brown bags and find popcorn with little marshmallows! We also loved the juice boxes!
Lesson: We learned a few things about the Chinese New Year and then we compared some of the Chinese celebrations with some of our New Year's festivities.
  • The Chinese New Year Celebration lasts for about 2 weeks. It follows the moon cycle.
  • Our New Year's party only lasts one night.
  • The Chinese have 12 lunar calendar years. Each one is identified by a different animal. We identified all 12 animals and then learned what animal year we were born into.
  • We learned that a dragon is special to the Chinese people. We have many stories of knights fighting the bad dragons, but the Chinese view the dragon with respect.
  • Two things usually occur at a Chinese New Year celebration. One is fireworks. We have fireworks too. The second is a parade with dragons and lanterns.
  • Gold and red are special colors to the Chinese people.
  • We sampled some rice candy and went home with an American fortune cookie :)
Book: The Knight and the Dragon by Tomie de Paola

Music & Movement: We danced with gold ribbons to traditional Chinese music. We loved making our ribbons swirl and squiggle like snakes. We danced as a dragon train too.

Art: Firework pictures

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