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
• 

February 3-5

First off – HAPPY 8TH BIRTH DATE TO EMANUEL on the 3rd of February! It was doubly official with the yearly Grandma birthday call. Though it was brief since she called on break from work.

Of course we still had school. There was a party to reflect on in our journals…

Zander drew his special gift from Aunty Holly that came on time – a Unicorn

Chocolate bars to enjoy from their Aunt and Uncle and cousins. There was some lovely examples of sharing going on.

We had a very timely delivery of a Panda focused National Geographic Kids magazine. I love it when we get something in the mail that furthers our learning spontaneously.

And our drawing of some foods we saw on a Food Network special.

The girls were busy bees with their Nana braids, playing their games together.

I especially loved Trinity’s combination of many patterns and colours in her outfit.

She, Echo and myself joined Emanuel at the Novak’s for Scouts. It was my first time going. The girls hung out in the basement with the other 3 Novak boys while Emanuel and Aidan did their thing. They learned all about the new food pyramid. It is a rather good group of boys that all seem to get along relatively well. Ken and the twins were out at swimming lessons so we had to hang out afterwards until we could be picked up. It was nice to have some adult visiting  time and get to know the Scout troop leader Pam a little better.

Tuesday was our in between birth DATES day. And the three littles took advantage of some of our downtime with getting ready for Nana and Baba leaving and Daddy’s sudden tooth extraction (thank goodness we DID do it while they were still here… he reacted more strongly to the meds they used and could not have driven home) and had a COSTUME dance party! I especially love Baby Batman!

Miss Trinity followed Art for Kids’ instructions to make a lovely heart card HERE. It turned out TERRIFIC…

Then she noticed that one of the left over scraps of paper looked like a bird so we had to put it in her journal! Very creative eye there!

And then…. HAPPY 10TH BIRTH DATE TO ZANDER AND GAVIN on the 5th! Since when were you two allowed to become double digits??? And this from 10 week preemies who came into this world at 3 lbs. 1 3/4 oz. each!!!

This was also the last day with time with Nana and Baba so school was super light. The girls worked with some old catalogues and magazines to clip out pictures to glue together for fun.

Emanuel and Ken got to work on their very first pinewood derby car! This is exciting – the road to Emanuel’s very first badge!!!

The twins worked on pictures from the newest instructions from Art for Kids. I honestly will continue bragging on this site for as long as they put up things! I have never found better instructions for the kids. Trinity even gets results without frustration!!!

As we are now planning for Valentines Day I had the kids make a wreath to replace the one we had up for Christmas out of hands. This was a kit I bought on clearance last year from Walmart!

In between helping out Nana and Baba where they could the kids also watched the Wild Kratts episode on Groundhogs.

And then it was time for hugs, kisses and bye byes. Nana and Baba ALWAYS fly out in the middle of the night/super early in the morning. 9 weeks at Roatan! They are going to come back so tanned and relaxed!!!