Chinese New Year

Tomorrow is Chinese New Year and it is the year of the pig!

Red and Gold Clothing - Red and gold are colors of good luck.  Check out all our red!

 
Red Lantern - The kiddos decorated a cup with red and gold, then we popped a battery run votive inside.  Taadaa!  Chinese lantern!

 

I saw this idea on this blog:  Here!

Snack - Noodles - We enjoyed noodles and fortune cookies!

Firecrackers - Sort Of - Ha!

To Go Boxes - The kiddos enjoyed packing their box with all sorts of things...

Learning Station - Chop Stick Stacking

A bit tricky!  But such fun!  We built towers and walls.

Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year

Clay Hearts - The kiddos helped me roll out clay and we cut out hearts.  We'll let them dry and paint them on Wednesday.

 I got this clay recipe here:  Here!

Clay Hearts - Oh dear!  They just crumbled as we tried to handle them.  Drat!  Toss that recipe out!  So we just enjoyed crumbling them to bits.

Tissue Box - Valentine Box - The kiddos decorated their valentine boxes with stickers.



Raining Love - The kiddos added fluff to their clouds and raindrop hearts.
I saw this cute idea on this blog:  Here!

 

Valentine Delivery - Oh so exciting to be able to stuff each other's boxes with love!  The kiddos did a great job of reading each other's names as they delivered.

Journal Time - Donuts - A kiddo brought donuts for her Valentine treat.  We decided to spread out the goodies and have a donut with our journals. 

Love Books - We created books full of the many things we love... 

 

Heart Wreath - Toddlers - The kiddos added tissue paper squares to their heart. 

Journal Time - We cut out a heart and glued it in our journals.

Today is Chinese New Year!  And it is the year of the dog!


Science - Weather - Today, while checking the weather, Gideon reported that it was "at the 0".  Wow, that's freezing!  So we decided to test it out.  We put a smidge of water in cups and placed them on the porch to see if they would freeze during preschool...

Circle Time - China - We found China on the globe.  We also refreshed on where Korea is (Olympics) and Hawaii and California and ....
 
Journal Time - Chinese Videos - We watched the song for 2018, dragon and lion dancers, and listened to traditional Chinese music.  We also munched a few Chinese snacks.  And finally, we watched a video sharing the story of the zodiac.



Red Lanterns - Red and gold are lucky colors.  We made globe lanterns (we painted cereal boxes red last week.)  We added gold glitter.

Science - Freezing - It worked!  Wow!  Brrrr!

Learning Station - Chopstick Stack

Now this is tricky!  I got some kid friendly chopsticks and set the kiddos to it.  They did well.

 

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!

Learning Station - Chopstick Stack

Ok, we gave up on the chopsticks and went with tongs, which were still tricky!  The kiddos stacked tall towers and short ones.  Walls and patterns.