Lessons: Teaching about the Chinese New Year with Fun Crafts

The Chinese New Year starts on January 23rd this year, but we're gearing up to learn about the Chinese New Year with lots of classroom activities, crafts, and fun for our social studies unit.

First, we read Chinese New Year by Kate Marsico.

I really enjoy reading books from this Cultural Holidays series. Some of the other books in the series cover Cinco de Mayo, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and more.

The reading level is just right for my son an the book covers many aspects about the Chinese New Year with enough detail to make it interesting for children. I'm one still searching for a social studies book that engages and teaches with more than just a lot of pictures and a few words, so these Cultural Holidays books do a great job to supplement our social studies curriculum.

We learned about the Legend of Lian. Lian was a terrible dragon who, on on the Chinese New year, ventured into villages and ate any person he saw. Soon, the villagers discovered that this dragon was afraid of loud noises and red, so they started shooting fireworks and covering the village with red including red lanterns.

For our lesson today, we used a small paper bag, glue, and construction paper to create our own Lian. The directions were to be creative and have fun.

Tomorrow, we will create couplets on RED paper to scare Lian away.