Chinese New Year Themed Preschool Activity: Coloring Chinese a Chinese Gift Envelope and Money

For Chinese New Year (known here as Spring Festival), it is customary for kids and young people to be given money in special red envelopes (hóng bāo, 红包) at family gatherings during this time. As my English tutoring student told me again last week, "Chinese children are very happy at Spring Festival."

You can have kids make their own pretend hóng bāo and Chinese money to keep, exchange, or give away. Decorate envelopes red and yellow and they money brown, green, blue, or red. Or you could have them write notes to put inside the envelopes instead.

For older children, you could even have them practice drawing a Chinese character on the front of the envelope in yellow or gold.

Mandarin Mondays: Candy (糖果)

Spring Festival (Chūn jié, 春节) isn't officially over until Lantern Day (the 15th day on the lunar calendar), but some things are returning to the way they were. The large amounts or firecrackers (biān pào, 鞭炮) and fireworks (yān huā, 烟花) are dieing done now. Shops are reopening. People are beginning to return from their hometowns. Slowly, people are emerging from family functions and things are beginning to look more like they usually do around the city.

Now people are returning from their hometowns with small gifts for their friends, mostly candy (táng guǒ, 糖果) it seems. I didn't know that candy was such a part of Spring Festival, but apparently most families buy lots of it, and everyone eats hard candies, crackers (bǐng gān, 饼干), and cookies (bǐng gāo, 饼糕) all Spring Festival, according to one of our friends.

Now Chinese aunties and grandmothers are looking for adoptive grandkids and showering them with lots candy. Or at least that is what is happening to our boys even more than usual right now. The boys biological grandparents needn't fear, the boys have plenty of candy here. They really are just trying to be nice to our boys. My English student also gave the boys a stuffed dragon. The boys affectionately call him Dino.

Chinese New Year Themed Preschool Activity: Chopsticks Practice

This is a really simple preschool or tot school activity that is great for fine motor skills. You can adapt it in many ways to suit the needs and level of your child.

After we made our pretend jiao zi, I let the boys practice transferring the play dough jiao zi back and forth from one bowl to another using chopsticks or a spoon. Aaron (3 1/2) was able to do this fairly easily with chopsticks, although sometimes he kind of cheated and helped the jiao zi along with his other hand. Andrew (2) got frustrated with the chopsticks but did really well with the spoon.

The consistency of the play dough jiao zi made them stick to the bowl more even than regular jiao zi, and I think that may have given the boys extra difficulty. You could try this with just small balls of play dough or with other small objects like miniature bean bags as well. I think they would work quite well.

It is interesting because small children here don't learn to feed themselves until they are much older than in America. Sometimes they don't start at all until they are even older than our boys, and then they start learning with a spoon and later move to using chopsticks. So several Chinese people have commented on how intelligent, skillful, and clever our boys are to be able to use chopsticks as such a young age. Of course this is kind of funny because they also do things with their chopsticks, like play the drum on their bowl, or squish their nose (the outside, but still) that don't really demonstrate those characteristics.

However, practicing using chopsticks to transfer things back and forth or just to eat with is great for building fine motor control. It is great hand eye coordination practice for any young child.

Chinese New Year Themed Preschool Activity: Chinese Play Dough Creations

For our unit study this January, we're learning about Chinese New Year. For a very simple activity, I got out our red and white candy cane play dough that was a Christmas present for the boys. I had separated it after giving it to the boys into mostly red and mostly white glittery play dough.

With the red play dough, Aaron (3 1/2) made an interesting dragon/dinosaur guy all by himself. If you don't like dragons or dinosaurs you could choose another traditional Chinese animal to have the kids try to make.

Andrew (2) and I made pretend jiǎo zi (饺子), known in the west as Chinese dumplings, out of the white play dough. Jiǎo zi are traditional Chinese New Year food. First, we rolled it out and cut circles, and then put a little bit of "filling" in and folded them over. Andrew liked doing this but did need quite a bit of help, and I was definitely the only one who crimped the edges. However, older kids could do all the steps on their own pretty easily. Then the boys practiced using chopsticks or a spoon to transfer the jiǎo zi back and forth from bowl to bowl. Sometime we'll have to learn how to make real jiǎo zi since we all love it.

Chinese New Year Themed Preschool Activity: Animal Sort and Match Game (Free Printable)

Matching pairs of characters

This January, we're learning about Chinese New Year. This is one more twist on the Chinese Animal Memory Game. For this activity, I also used the Chinese Zodiac Memory Game from here, which is basically just the pictures of twelve animals that correspond to the Chinese calendar. I also made Chinese character cards and English word cards for this activity. I made free printable cards with English words, Chinese characters and pinyin, and different combinations of the three to make it easier for anyone else who wanted to do this activity. They are available to you in A4 size and traditional Letter size PDFs. Your could just use this for an animal themed activity as well and take out any animals you don't want or need.

I also used some large flashcards that we already had with characters on one side and a picture, character, pinyin, and English on the other for them to sort and match, too. However, you could just as easily use only the small printable cards for matching.

Matching everything to pictures

Instead of playing this like a traditional memory game where you turn the card face down, leave all of the cards face up. Have a straight line at the top or bottom of cards that the child is supposed to find the other match too. You can do this with just the same pairs, like pictures and pictures, or different pairs, like pictures and words. Or you can have one complete set across the top and try to match all other depictions of the same animal, like a picture row across the top with all other forms of words to sort and match to the right picture mixed up below.

You can do this activity so many ways. Just choose which items you want to match (pictures to pictures, pictures to characters, pictures to everything, etc.) and print off the sheets you want. You could print these on regular paper and tape them onto cardboard like I did here, or you could simply print all of the sheets you want on cardstock that is thick and colorful enough that you could see through the backs.

The boys had fun with this activity. This one was a lot better for Andrew (2) than the other versions we tried. I think the actual memory game part of the others is still a little too hard for him at this point, but matching is fairly easy. He could easily match all of the pictures on his own and a couple of English words like cat and dog that he can read without difficulty. Andrew doesn't know any characters yet and couldn't figure out which ones were the same, so Aaron had to help him with those. This was still a good game for Aaron (3 1/2) and together with the other memory games we played, he learned four characters that he didn't know when we started in about 10 minutes. We'll have to do more of this type of game to help him learn more characters. I think with using the English card set only, this would be good practice for a child still learning to read English animal names as well.

Family Fridays: Helpful Hands

Grating ’tatoes

Aaron and Andrew are getting to be really useful boys around the house. Lately, they have been able to learn how to help even more, and (most of the time) they really like helping mom and dad with little jobs. Both boys have gotten into SuperTuxKart (the Linux penguin racing game), and Aaron in particular wants to race at everything now. This is helping finish his jobs much quicker, especially if we set the timer like when we pick up toys at the end of the night.

There are lots of other little jobs they can help with now too. Together, they can set the table and clear dishes. They can help Dad wipe the moisture off of the windows in the morning to keep it from getting too humid in here. Both boys can help stack cloth diaper wipes into pretty neat piles now, and Aaron is even able to fold simple things like cloth diapers and handkerchiefs. Aaron is also really good at hanging up small things like handkerchiefs, socks, and underwear on our clip hangers so I can hang them out to dry on the line.

Probably their favorite thing to help with though is cooking. They love to help me bake up a treat or get a meal they like ready. Aaron could almost make eggs by himself now, except for getting the eggs out of the high refrigerator, and turning on the stove (which he isn't allowed to do). He already knows all of the steps though.

Clipping up the laundry

None of us are always thrilled about any of these chores—we're all human and get tired and grumpy or would just rather be doing something more fun. I and my boys are no exception. But I am thankful that for the most part they genuinely do want to help us. Sometimes we reward their helpfulness by doing something fun right afterwards, letting them know that if they don't help us do the things we have to do, we won't have enough time left to play. I really hope that if we keep working together as a family and rewarding them with fun times (like reading storybooks, playing, or eating something we've made) that they'll keep some of the desire to help us as they get older and even more useful.

Chinese New Year Themed Preschool Activity: Animal, Characters, and Words Memory Game (Free Printable)

This month, we're learning about Chinese New Year. This is a different twist on the Chinese Animal Memory Game. For this activity, I also used the Chinese Zodiac Memory Game from here, which is basically just the pictures of twelve animals that correspond to the Chinese calendar. I also made Chinese character cards and English word cards for this activity. I made free printable cards with English words, Chinese characters and pinyin, and different combinations of the three to make it easier for anyone else who wanted to do this activity. They are available to you in A4 size and traditional Letter size PDFs. Your could just use this for an animal themed activity as well and take out any animals you don't want or need.

You can do this activity so many ways. Just choose which items you want to match (pictures to pictures, pictures to characters, characters to characters, characters to English, etc.), print off the sheets you want, and play as a normal memory game.You could print these on regular paper and tape them onto cardboard like I did here, or you could simple print all of the sheets you want on cardstock that is thick and colorful enough that you can't see through the backs.

The boys had fun with this activity. It was a little too hard for Andrew (2), but he liked trying. This was a better challenge for Aaron (3 1/2) than the first memory game, and he learned four characters that he didn't know when we started in about 10 minutes. We'll have to do more of this type of game to help him learn more characters. I think with using the English card set only, this would be good practice for a child still learning to read English animal names as well.

Chinese New Year Themed Preschool Activity: Animal Memory Game

For this activity, I used the Chinese Zodiac Memory Game from here, which is basically just the pictures of twelve animals that correspond to the Chinese calendar. I just printed out two sheets of animals, cut them out, and tapes them onto colored cardboard that I upcycled.

You could just use this game for an animal unit study also, and even just take out the dragon if you don't like them. Actually, starting with smaller sets of animals is easier for young children than trying to do all twelve at first anyway. It seems easier to start smaller and add pairs as they (usually even more quickly than adults) master the game.

We actually did a bunch of variations on this activity, but the most basic way to play is like any memory game. Turn several pairs of cards face down, mix them up, and arrange them in a grid. Now have the player turn over cards two at a time, trying to find a matching pair. If the player doesn't turn over a matching pair they should try to remember what cards are where but return them face down. Then it is either another player's turn to turn two over to try to find a match or, if only one person is playing, the same player can just keep playing until he finds all of the matches himself.

The boys had fun with this activity. It was a little too hard for Andrew (2) and almost to easy for Aaron (3 1/2), but Aaron has been playing and mastering memory games for quite a while. I'll share more variations on this game soon.

Handcrafted Wedding Favors: Delicate Crocheted Bookmarks

Another of my favorite wedding favors that we gave away at our wedding were these beautiful crocheted bookmarks. I can crochet, but since I was already sewing my wedding dress and doing a lot of other project for the wedding in about six months time, I asked my grandma to crochet these for us.

My grandma is so sweet and graciously agreed. I found some free patterns online and gave them to my grandma along with ribbon in our wedding colors. I think she actually had all of the crochet cotton she need already, as many of her friends would give her balls that they no longer wanted, and bookmarks take so little material. My grandma is so fast at crocheting that she said she just did a few each evening and was done with the entire 200 in no time.

This was another really inexpensive wedding favor that can be easily customized to fit the style of your wedding. Crochet pattern central has a lot of bookmark patterns for free, and many other site to as well. The materials to make the bookmarks can be purchased very inexpensively, especially if you watch for the frequent sales and coupons that crafting and hobby store usually offer. Picking patterns and colors that go along with the rest of your wedding can make this wedding favor uniquely yours and give guests something both beautiful and useful to remember your wedding by.

Mandarin Mondays: Happy New Year (新年快乐)!

Huge lantern

Happy New Year! (xīnnián kuàilè!, 新年快乐！)

Yesterday was the official start of Spring Festival (Chūn jié, 春节), which is Chinese new year. This is the year of the dragon (lóng, 龙). Dragons, lanterns (dēng lóng, 灯笼), and other red (hóng sè, 红色) and yellow (huáng sè, 黄色) decorations are all over the city now.

The week before Spring Festival was very busy in the city. Everyone was buying new clothes, gifts, special food, and lots of fireworks. Going to the store was like shopping on the day after thanksgiving in the States...all week long. Bringing gifts, food, and money in red envelopes back to the family celebrations is very important here for this festival. People from the city were stocking up before they would travel, and people came in from the countryside to do their holiday shopping too.

Now that the festival has started though, most shops have closed down and the streets are nearly empty. Everyone who is able to has traveled back to the hometown of their oldest living relative. There they will celebrate for several days giving gifts and enjoying family dinners. Not returning home at this time will mean you are considered a bad son or daughter. Our family is wishing we were adapting to the culture and returning home now too, but travel is crazy now with everyone trying to travel at once. So I guess we're bad children right now.

But now that many people have left the city, it is quite quiet. That is, except for the massive amount of firecrackers (biān pào, 鞭炮) and fireworks (yān huā, 烟花) going off almost all of the time. Last night (the actual evening of their new year day, instead of new years eve like we celebrate in the West) they lit off tons of fireworks at midnight and periodically all throughout the night into the morning. Literally at midnight our windows shook, but the boys managed to sleep through it just fine. The boys actually love to watch the fireworks and get really excited when they are awake to see them. We can see a lot from our back porch as the fire department lights a bunch off each night, and we are right behind them.

Fireworks for sale

Update:
We learned later that we were kind of confused on the dates. The actual New Year's day this year was January 23, but the festival starts New Year's Eve, so people refer to this as the start of the holiday. So anyway, the biggest firework day is the New Year's Eve night into the New Year's Day.

It will be interesting to see what else this quiet/noisy week holds here. Hope you all are have a great week and have a happy new year!