Chinese New Year

There are so many great opportunities to dress up your classroom and have fun with holidays. Not only are they exciting and capture student's attention but they are a wonderful way to introduce the world to young minds.

This year I decided to take Chinese New Year to a whole new level in my classroom. First, for my fellow teachers who read my blog, I purchased some really nice decorations this year from Oriental Trading. They were running a special on free shipping and have 12 ft. long dragons to hang from the ceiling for a reasonable price. Also, I purchased 6 set packages of 12" red lanterns. These will be perfect to leave up for Valentine's Day!

Giant Dragon

My favorite project we have done all year was this giant dragon. I used a large roll of white craft paper and laid it out the length of our room. Students were assigned a section and were able to decorate their area with any designs and colors they wanted.

They were very excited and got straight to work on making it look beautiful.

Some of the students even threw in some of their own designs within the pre-drawn scales. They were very enthusiastic and this brought out their creative side.

For the head of the dragon I used the empty Oriental Trading boxes to construct a giant head. The head was made by super gluing two boxes together. The mouth section was created using an Exacto knife to carve a zig-zag. I then hot glued the top of the mouth at a slight slant. The bottom of the mouth was attached to the side with brads so that it was able to open and close. I cut out small holes on the sides to act as the handles. The final touch was to paint it red and add some side flares. Here was the final product.

After the entire dragon was completed, we took it on a traditional dragon dance parade of the school. We flew through the halls and entered classrooms proudly roaring. We had one girl control the head from the inside and another girl walk in a traditional dress opening and closing the mouth. All of the students in the other classroom were excited to see the students' creation. This was amazing because every student was a part of this creation and got to show it off. No one was left out!!

In the halls

Chinese Lanterns
At the end of the day we learned about Chinese lanterns and made our own. The students decorated them with colorful pictures and fireworks. Then, the paper was folded in half, small cuts were made, the yellow was glued to the top and bottom, and finally rolled up to make a lantern. Very easy but beautiful project.



Chopstick Race
This year we have read a few stories that included other cultures that use chopsticks. Every time this happens in one of our stories the students love to talk about it. For our celebration I brought in 8 sets of chopsticks. We learned the correct way to hold the chopsticks and how to use them. In two separate races, the students raced to move Smarties and a Laffy Taffy from a red sheet to a yellow sheet, keeping in the tradition of Chinese New Year colors. It was very amusing to watch the students come up with their own ways to get the candy to move. The prize at the end was getting to enjoy delicious fortune cookies.