Raising Our Successful Children, Singapore Mom Blog: Our Chinese New Year Big Book

Our Chinese New Year Big Book

Activity 1: The Legend of Nian.

Faith and I made a mini book for the Legend of Nian. I printed the story out, stapled it into a book and Faith was tasked to paste in the images. I chose a longer version of the story so that it is suitable for my 2 older children as well.

Download The Legend of Nian

Faith is pasting on the pictures.

We made a pocket on our big book to keep our mini book.

Activity 2: The Chinese Traditions

In activity 2, I am just highlighting some very basic Chinese New Year Traditions and what they mean to us.

Activity 3: Learning about the 12 Zodiac Animals.

More than just learning about the 12 Zodiac Animals, I'm emphasizing on word recognition for Faith and spelling for Emmanuel. All these words and animals are removable and hence, Faith could play with this for a long time.

Download the resources for the Zodiac Animals

Zodiac Animal words

Zodiac Animal Pictures

Activity 4: Cheng Yu and Phrases about the 12 zodiac animals.

This activity is an introductory activity for Cheng Yu and Phrases about the 12 zodiac animals. For Natalie, these phrases are going to be useful for her writing. It's all velcro taped so that I can test her in a fun and easy way. There is also a quiz on the english phrases at this website for the children.

Activity 5: Chinese ART

Chinese Painting of 梅花 using 毛笔。
This is Faith's first experience at painting with a chinese brush. She is so fascinated with the feel and the outcome of the different strokes.

Emmanuel decides to join in the painting as well.

For the little details, a toothpick was used to replace the brush.

Faith's final product.

Chinese Calligraphy

I showed them how to use a brush to write on red paper.

Natalie who found it difficult to write with a brush, decided to imitate me by writing with a black marker on red paper.

Chinese Paper Cutting

I learnt how to cut this pattern on the border via a website.

The design inside is cut randomly.

Thumbing Printing of 梅花
Faith can't get enough of the 梅花. So this is another craft on it.

大吉大利
We found a beautiful red packet and we wanted to make something with it. After some thought, we decided to use it as our "flower pot" for our little mandarin orange plant.

Activity 6: Chinese New Year Items and their Symbolic meaning

The kids are constantly asking me " Why is it that people are hanging pineapple, ingots decorations?" So, we did a few crafts here to learn about common Chinese New Year Items and their symbolic meaning.

Activity 7: Making Firecrackers.

Every year, the children enjoy rolling the red packets.

The ones we made last year are still hanging at grandma's house.

This year, the children decided to make some more new ones to decorate our house with it.

Activity 8: Making Our Red Packet Lanterns

Make this shape for the top of the lantern. You can make this in multiples of 6 or 8.

Using Scotch Tape, tape one end of the red packet ( landscape) , layer by layer over. Once done, open it up as seen in the photography below. This will form the skeleton of the top of the lantern.

6 red packets which has the design that you want your lantern to have and tape it to the edge of the skeleton of the top of the lantern.

Top of the Lantern: You should get this shape at the end.

Bottom of the Lantern: The shape of the bottom of the lantern should be the same shape as the top of the lantern.

Using Scotch Tape, tape one end of the red packet (Portrait) , layer by layer over. Once done, open it up.

Use the design you want and tape the edge to the skeleton.

Final, using scotch tape, tape the top of the lantern to the bottom of the lantern from the inside.

Final Product

This is the lantern that we made for my Mother in law. So, we picked a more traditional design. The design that you see in the pictures above is the design for another lantern.