All Things Chinese

What sort of lessons do we teach our children about the Lunar New Year? All they know about it is receiving "hong bao," eat pineapple tarts, drink soft drinks, wear new clothes and go visiting people whom they probably see only once a year.




The principal and staff decided to have fun, interactive activities and games for parents and the kindergarten kids as a way to teach the children about the Lunar New Year. Although it is Chinese New Year we had a number of non Chinese families at the celebration.




The K2 children acted out a skit on the story of the Lunar New Year where the villagers got rid of the monster "nian" by using the colour red. Psalms 118:6 from the Bible was brought up as a way to handle fear.






The K1 children came in pairs expressing auspicious well wishes to parents like, "tian tian mi mi," "hua kai fu gui" and many others. The parents then played a mix match game with the auspicious wishes.






Hands on activities were done with parent-child pairs. They had to cut out a paper given to them to make the word, "chun," meaning spring. They also had a hand in caligraphy writing out the word, "fu," meaning blessing. Another hands on activity was making "jiao zhi," a Chinese dumpling.












At the end of it all, both parents and children assembled and ate what they had brought from home.