Chinese New Year - Week

Welcome to the week before Chinese New Year.  This new year, 2017,  will be the year of the rooster.

Circle Time - We looked at the globe to find where China is in relation to us.  We also watched a video that told the story of the Chinese zodiac. 

Journal Time - We found out which year we were born.  The boys were all rabbits (Ms. Sara is one too), the girls, born a year later are dragons.

Flag of China - The kiddos created a red collage then added the stars.  They did a great job.
Preschoolers...

Youngsters...


Snack - Chinese New Year Style - We enjoyed some yummy foods today and tried eating with chop sticks.


Shoveling Fun - The kiddos LOVE to help shovel.  And behind our shovel-er you can see that Mr. Adam created a second apartment for the snow cave.  Ha.  He hasn't dug it out yet.  Yeah for more snow!

Squish Dragon - Day 1 - The kiddos began making their Chinese dragon by putting blobs of paint on their paper and then folding it and squishing it.  We'll finish these up on Friday.  They're going to be super fabulous.

I saw this idea on this blog:  Here!

Chinese Squish Dragon - Day 2 - Today we decorated our dragons!  We looked at some pictures to see that they generally have big eyes and lots of whiskers...

Here are a few of our dragons...

This one has big teeth, watch out!

Baking - Moon Cakes - In Chinese culture they celebrate the lunar cycle with moon cakes.  Here is our tasty rendition.  We used jam instead of red bean paste.
The kiddos made a thumbprint, then we filled it with strawberry jam.  
Here is the blog I found the recipe on:  Here!

Real moon cakes are much fancier and have various fillings, like this:


Snow Ice Cream - A family favorite!  We scooped up a bowl of clean snow, sprinkled in some sugar, vanilla and milk.  Stirred and tasted and added a bit more of this or that.  The kiddos wanted it green, so we added that too.It turned out super tasty and very cold.  Brrr!
 
Fireworks - Of course the Chinese celebrate their new year with fireworks.   We created some of our own with glitter glue.  We'll see if they dry by Friday, ha.
 
Guest Speaker - One of the kiddo's family is originally from China, so his Mom came to talk to us about Chinese culture, traditions and to share a story with us.  She also brought red envelopes with Chinese candy and yummy almond cookies for the kiddos to try.  She shared the story of Nian ("year"), the monster who in ancient times would come and eat people and their animals until the people learned how to scare the monster away (the color red and loud noise).

Good Luck Oranges - Toddlers - Chinese culture believes oranges to be good luck, so we made our families a bowl full!

I intended to draw or glue a bowl beneath their oranges, but some how I missed doing that.  Drat.

I saw this idea on this blog:  Here!