Chinese New Year is a holiday we have tried our best to celebrate for at least 5 or 6 years now. This is all thanks to the families of our two gorgeous god daughters (Anna and Isabella). Their moms are from the same city in China (Ghangzou) and have been kind enough to help us learn how to fully embrace this holiday. I love the changing date of the celebration based on the lunar calendar and it has come to mean more than the “traditional” North American New Years to me. We do a significant amount of preparation for this holiday, cleaning, researching and shopping for food, reading out favourite themed stories (The Runaway Wok by Ying Chang Compestine). This year it was Trinity’s turn to do a full on lapbook for the season. She worked really hard on it and it shows.

We finished up our day with take out from our favourite Chinese food restaurant – The Rose Garden.

I have worksheets to share:

• Activity Village HERE
• Education.com collection HERE and chicken collection HERE
• Definitely make sure you search EnchantedLearning.com for their resources HERE

Books to suggest:

• Happy Chinese New Year, Kai-Lan! HERE
• The Nian Monster by Andrea Wang (a new book for us!) by Andrea Wang HERE
• Celebrate Chinese New Year by Carolyn Otto HERE
• Chinese New Year Crafts by Karen E. Bledsoe HERE
• Chinese New Year by Grace Jones HERE
• Celebrating Chinese New Year by Diana Hoyt-Goldsmith HERE
• Chinese New Year by Ann Heinrichs HERE
• Long-Long’s New Year by Catherine Gower HERE
• The Runaway Rice Cake by Ying Chang Compestine HERE
• Fortune Cookie Fortunes by Grace Lin HERE
• Red Butterfly by Deborah Noyes HERE
• Red Kite, Blue Kite by Ji-li Jiang HERE
• Kai-Lan’s Great Trip to China HERE

And a few DVD’s for you to hunt down:

• Celebrate With Kai-Lan! HERE
• Stone Soup (a read-along) HERE

Of course there is the lapbook Trinity used! Currclick has it for 3.00 HERE. This is put out by A Journey Through Learning Lapbooks.

And don’t forget our yearly video!

For our Chicken/Rooster research we had a couple books as well:

• Chickens by Katie Dicker HERE
• Young Chicken Farmers by Vickie Black HERE

I used this amazing designer to make this year’s Zodiac animal – the rooster. I used her last year to make a monkey as well (see my County Fair post from last here HERE). Her site is called All about Ami and you can find her rooster pattern HERE and the monkey HERE.

We also splurged this year and bought two dresses for the girls off of Amazon. They were not overly expensive and definitely not high quality, but so cute!

Of course we also picked up new shirts for the boys at Walmart. And buzzed the twins’ heads. New clothes and fresh haircuts in a clean house. And I mean CLEAN! We threw out, sorted, donated… you name it we got rid of excess. And it felt amazing. So Happy Chinese New Year All! Let’s hope the year of the Rooster is auspicious and prosperous!

The girls love to sort through their toys and find theme friendly pieces.

 We really do enjoy celebrating Chinese New Year and this year was no exception. This is our first big unit in months as our work on Thanksgiving and Christmas was much more worksheets and stories than actual research. This is also our first unit trying a more Notebooking sort of theme. Though after working with the twins I definitely want to try and put more lapbook aspects into our notebooks – the folded little booklets and the like – to add to the look and the ease of use.

So in 2015 I am trying to over view a month which was working with the blog when I got behind instead of daily reflection. But with big units I still want to make these individual blog entries to share our resources and the like. Bear with me we LOVE covering China and Chinese New Year so there is a lot to share!!!

Links of Specific Interest:

• We had Zander choose two famous Chinese people and write a few sentences… he used a general list HERE thanks to Buzzle, and then to further our knowledge about the more contemporary individual used Wiki to learn more about basketball player Yao Ming HERE.
• 10 Good Luck Foods thanks to Chow HERE. I admit it, we did do some Wiki peeking when we found things we were not totally familiar with but I am sure you can figure that out!
• Something on the more traditional side I was assured by my experts… The Kitchen God HERE thanks to about.com. For a picture to include in our notebook we used Activity Village’s picture HERE.
• Learn more about the Lion Dance (sometimes mistakenly… ok OFTEN… called the dragon dance) with HelloKids.com HERE, and on Wiki HERE.
• We learned all about the meaning and history of the Chinese flag on the site A China Family Adventure HERE. With a little additional information HERE thanks to Facts.co.
• We get TONS of information from Activity Village. Their printables are amazing… HERE.
• For interesting landmarks we used the top 10 attractions listed on ChinaHighlights.com HERE.
• China’s phyisical geography thanks to About.com HERE.
• General country facts on Science Kids HERE.
• An excellent map on iLibrarion HERE.
• When you think of animals you inevitably come to the Giant Panda. Science Kids has a fact page HERE.
• We discussed tea and China… totally Gavin’s idea on that one! You can find 10 interesting facts about tea at the Food Network HERE. For its history and cultural connotations in regards to China you can read China Highlights HERE.
• Zander researched the couplets you put around doors during Chinese New Year. There is a great example (that we copied into our notebook) HERE thanks to China Page. And a bit more of a description and a way to purchase some for yourself HERE thanks to China Sprout.
• Of course we did a page on goats… I basically looked up goat facts and let the twins at it. You can read up on what we found HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE. Thanks to Lively Run Goat Dairy, Edelweiss Acres, One Kind and Animals by Pawnation.
• Of course we had to cover some animals found in China. Each child chose an animal and wrote a few facts for us to include along with an illustration. Trinity chose the Chinese Pink Dolphin. We used the WWF page HERE for hers. Gavin chose the Golden Monkey (Golden Snub-Nosed  Monkey) and while he just sort of wandered the zoo and such sites this is the one I found that I liked thanks to Konica Minolta HERE.
• While watching Wild China I heard mention of an amazing bridge… so of course I had to find the way to spell it and look up some OTHER bridges. Check out 4 HERE on Vision Times.
• Introduction to Buddhism for kids thanks to World Religions HERE.
• A good topography map thanks to Ilibrarian.net HERE.

Craft Ideas:

• Dragon Parade Puppet thanks to Crayola HERE.
• New Year’s Dragon paperbag puppet thanks to TeacherVision HERE.

Resources to Purchase:

• Teachers Pay Teachers has a great mini unit for K-3 gr. You can find that HERE. Super thanks to creator Emily Nutt Bynum for an amazing file that both Trinity and Emanuel enjoyed and learned from.

Books:

• The Runaway Rice Cake by Ying Chang Compestine
• The Runaway Wok by Ying Chang Compestine (this is a family favourite)
• A to Z Mysteries: The New Year Dragon Dilemma by Ron Roy
• Chinese New Year (Cultural Holidays) by Katie Marsico
• Chinese New Year (Holidays, Festivals and Celebrations) by Ann Heinrichs
• Sam and the Lucky Money by Karen Chinn (another family favourite with a great message about compassion)
• Max Celebrates Chinese New Year by Adria F. Klein (a great level reader)
• Kai-Lan’s Great Trip to China by Mickie Matheis (from the show Ni hao, Kai-Lan)
• Bringing in the New Year by Grace Lin
• A Gift by Yong Chen (great art and a wonderful story about love from a distance)
• The Dragon New Year (A Chinese Legend) by David Bouchard
• Ms. Frizzle’s Adventures: Imperial China by Joanna Cole
• New Year Traditions Around the World by Ann Malaspina
• When the Circus Came to Town by Laurence Yep
• Chinese New Year Crafts by Karen E. Bledsoe (this was our go to book for crafts this year)
• Night Sky Dragons by Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham

Animal Books (We did not use many and was mostly online with our looking but here are the ones we used):

• Pandas by Donna K. Grosvenor
• Goat (Farm Animals) by Katie Dicker
• Life on a Goat Farm by Judy Wolfman
• The Summer of Stanley by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock (a story about a family that is given a goat. Gorgeous pictures and good story)

We covered Origami this year. While commonly known as a Japanese art, it originated in China! You can check out our informational links HERE and HERE thanks to Origami with Rachel Katz and About.com and also check out the books we got to play around with:

• Folding for Fun by Didier Boursin 
• Uber Origami by Duy Nguyen
• Paper-Folding Fun by Ginger Johnson
• Dinosaur Origami by Duy Nguyen
• Easy Origami by Dokuohtei Nakano

Movies and TV Shows:

• Celebrate with Kai-Lan! a Nickelodeon Show
• Wild China Mini Series. We watched this series on Netflix. There are listings where you can purchase it. Though not new it is AMAZING in images and cultural history. A must watch if not for anything but the imagery.

Not so much because the kids needed it, but I decided to make dividers for each of the sections of sheets we had to go with our notebook project. I have confirmed these are the correct words… enjoy

• China HERE thanks to NamesOnline.org
• Book HERE thanks to a dictionary site
• Schoolwork HERE thanks to the same dictionary site
• Drawing or picture HERE thanks to above dictionary site

Hopefully I have included most of the resources we used. It was a lot of fun to take our usual China and Chinese New Year study a little further than we have in the past! Here are some pictures of our Notebook! Enjoy!

We do love our Chinese New Year celebrations. All thanks to some of the family we chose… specifically the den Otters! So even here in Minnesota we do our best to hold onto the new traditions we added to our family while in Alberta. One of these is to spend a month on China, Chinese New Year and Chinese characters. This year we chose to do another poster… and of course with that comes a boatload of resources!

Books!

• Celebrating Chinese New Year by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith
• Chinese New Year by Alice K. Flanagan
• Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations Chinese New Year by Ann Heinrichs
• Sam and the Lucky Money by Karen Chinn
• Children Just Like Me Celebrations by Anabel Kindersley
• I Wonder Why Countries Fly Flags by Philip Steele
• Kai-Lan’s Great Trip to China by Mickie Matheis
• Pandas by Donna K. Grosvenor
• Chinese New Year by Lola M. Schaefer
• Max Celebrates Chinese New Year by Adria F. Klein
• A Gift by Yong Chen
• The Runaway Wok by Ying Chen Compestine
• Chinese New Year by Fay Robinson
• Asian Holidays by Faith Winchester
• National Geographic Kids March 2014 issue (special focus on twin baby pandas)
• Celebrate Chinese New Year by Carolyn Otto
• Happy Chinese New Year, Kai-Lan! by Lauryn Silverhardt

Videos!

• Celebrate With Kai-Lan! HERE
• Ching’s Chinese New Year HERE

Our general helpful links!

• Activity Village is the place to go for printables! First Chinese New Year itself list HERE.
• The Horse of the Zodiac specifically HERE.
• China specific HERE.
• And of course the horse as an animal HERE.

Chinese Flag!

• Gotta cover the flag right? You can find out printable HERE thanks to Rainbowkids.com.
• If you want to find out some history on the flag check out this link HERE thanks to the site A China Family Adventure.

Dragon Dance!

• GMA News Online’s image for 2014 HERE. What a gorgeous looking dragon!
• And then there was the video we watched. I do so love watching the dances. This one was done in Hong Kong in 2013. The dancers are AMAZING and well worth a watch. Thanks to HongKongMap on youTube.

Chinese Music/Instruments! We did not cover a ton on the music. More of a surprise addition when I came across a neat picture of what is commonly called a guitar. So I grabbed a couple website, some music and an image to colour.

• The YueQin on Confucius Institute Online HERE
• Top 10 Chinese Instruments on China Whisper HERE. This girl was amazing. Thanks to NoodlesFaced on youTube. This is XiaoMu Ming.

• Our second video was of some traditional Chinese music entitled Shepherdess’ Song. Thanks to MadePossible on youTube. 

• Our original printable that started this train of interest is found on Rainbowkids.com HERE. They have a great list of resources on their site HERE. It is an adoption site with some great printables for kids. 

The horse itself!

• Animal Facts HERE thanks to Science Kids.
• More facts and breed information on Ducksters HERE.
• A great video of wild horses thanks to National Geographic.

• Zander wanted to know all about the world’s tallest horse so I had to help him out and check into that fact. HERE Guinness World Records site.
• A great list of horse related crafts thanks to Activity Village HERE.

Check out some Zodiac predictions for 2014 HERE. (Huffpost Living Canada)

Links for the three places of interest covered by Ken and the kids:

• Terracotta army thanks to Ducksters HERE
• Great Wall of China thanks to Science Kids HERE
• Shanghai Tower thanks to Wiki HERE
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