Chinese New Year has great meaning for our family. Please enjoy my resources and recounting of our yearly celebration a few months late.

It is that time of year again, when we celebrate as we were taught by our dear friends who are family back home. I have already sent off my red envelopes and this year special knots to my god daughters and their sibling. This is actually one of the big events that brings me right back to that homesick state of mind.

Neko-Chan got in the groove with Kai Lan as well.

We cleaned the house and sorted out many containers of clothes and toys that we donated this year. We decluttered and made some big choices about broken or half forgotten items. Nothing motivates this brood like the realization that we need to clean for the lunar celebration. It is a reminder of home and love and tradition that the whole family enjoys.

Each of the kids had a trim or haircut, and received new clothes. I lucked out hugely on Amazon with a momentary sale on Qing Dynasty dresses for the girls’ 18 inch dolls. Echo’s new dress matched her doll nearly perfectly. There are other Dynasty reproductions the girls have hinted at wanting. (not hugely subtle hints)

Gavin on left

We had a lovely home made lunch. Zander basically put together the festival rice solo (Gavin helped him with ingredient prep the night before). He used the recipe out of the Runaway Wok book which is a family favourite, minus nuts.

Trinity tried making rice balls from a recipe off Educaton.com, though it struck us more as a Japanese rice ball and was too heavy on the rice wine vinegar for anyone to fall in love.

I made a sweet glutinous rice cake from a recipe shared by All About Ami. I think I will make it again in a larger pan to make thinner slices. I enjoyed it, the kids are only half sold.

After lunch we had our sweets, as usual I tried to branch out to new options. I couldn’t find moon cakes so I picked up something called Wife Cakes.. nope, and the almond cookies didn’t quite cut it.

Don’t forget the red envelopes.

I have been working on my knotting skills and made lucky knots for my god daughters back home using Chinese cord and had the kids make their own very simplified braided version with a charm that represents their Zodiac symbol.

We did our t shirts the day before since the day of we also had homeschool friends coming for a visit.

Then that evening I went to my class as usual, so much fun! And then Ken and I got take out from our favourite Chinese restaurant, Rose Garden. A great way to end the day.

Happy Chinese New Year everyone!!! Welcome year of the dog!!! 新年快乐 / 新年快樂 (Xīnnián kuàilè)

Resources for this year were varied and fun, but since I have shared a lot in the past years this year I am going to give you the best books we found! No links just titles so give them a search and enjoy!

• Fortune Cookies Fortunes by Grace Lin… I loved this book because she discusses how fortune cookies are an Asian American food in her educational blurb at the back. We also read as a family her book The Year of the Dog. Grace Lin includes fun illustrations along with her entertaining reminisces in this one.
• The Runaway Wok by Ying Chang Compestine… we loved this one enough to purchase it brand new. We also have his the Runaway Rice Cake which was a lucky library find in their booksale.
• We had 3 Magic Tree House books this year… A Perfect Time for Pandas (for Emanuel and his panda report), Day of the Dragon King and the companion to this book China Land of the Emperor’s Great Wall. Our landmark report lined up beautifully with our unit study – The Great Wall of China was fun to research.
• You Wouldn’t Want to Work on the Great Wall of China! By Jacqueline Morley was helpful, of course.
• We briefly talked about Mulan with the book Mulan by Li Jian, I was gifted the book Mulan by Shiamin Kwa and Wilt L. Idema which I am determined to make a summer read. I have really been in the research and expand the mind feel lately.
• Another family favourite that is on the to buy list is The Nian Monster by Andrea Wang.
• Videos…  Celebrate With Kai Lan and Nature Pandas (an older film by NATURE) were fun. I am sure we used a second Kai Lan dvd but it isn’t coming to mind.

I hope these inspire you to check out the library. Researching and enjoying other cultures is such a privilege.

Our Chinese Characters work.

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!