Chinese New Year!

Chinese New Year is a great, colourful celebration and goes on for a while, this year starting officially on the 23rd January, so you can do these activities and ideas for a few weeks yet.

• Dragon - make a dragon with a show box covered in green paint.  Add a tail and a face and cover with red and yellow paper.
• Chinese snacks - try prawn crackers at snack time (beware of fish allergies!) and see what the children think about them.
• Chinese Music - Find some Chinese music on line and do some dancing to it.  Try and be a Chinese dragon and hold onto each other and try to dance about!
• Ribbon dancing - do some ribbon dancing.  Stick some wavy ribbon to a wood spoon and make some lovely patterns in the sky.
• Chinese Script - Try out some Chinese writing.  Take a look at Chinese script (there are websites that translate British names to Chinese) and see if you can get the children's name in Chinese.
• Chopsticks - try and eat some noodles with chop sticks.  Its very tricky!
• Chinese food - see if the local Chinese restaurant owner will come in to have a chat with the children and perhaps bring some fortune cookies.
• Story telling - if you know someone who speaks Chinese, see if they will come in to tell the children a story in Chinese.
• China Town - if you are near a China Town go and have a look.  If not, see if you have find any images in books at the library.