Chinese New Year Activities and Freebies

We are exploring Chinese culture this week as we learn about Chinese New Year.  Here are some of the activities we have done so far.  We listened to a fable about how the animals in the Chinese zodiac got their position (recording can be found here) and then we reviewed ordinal numbers while sequencing the story using these zodiac animals.  Students also practiced ordering in a pocket chart.  We also discussed the character traits of the animals in the story, and listed adjectives to describe the characters.

Here's the activity if you would like it.



Today we learned about Chinese characters, the significance of the color red, the dui lian, and the fu.  We started by painting a fu.  We talked about how painting the characters was different than coloring or painting we do in our classroom, and we practiced making single brush strokes for our characters.  This is the printable we used on red construction paper with black paint. Sorry, I forgot to take pictures!
After we practiced brushstrokes with a guide, we moved on to making our dui lians freehand (12x18 red construction paper cut in half lengthwise.)

 

These are the character reference sheets that I gave them.  I found them HERE.
Here are the ones that I made on butcher paper to decorate our hall doorway.

We also read

We explored tangrams, practiced forming a square with our tangrams, and we attempted a fox, using the book as a guide.  This book and the tangrams will go into math stations tomorrow.

ignore the black paint still on the table :)

Speaking of math stations, here are a few of our math stations for the week.

Dragon Tally Marks - students draw a number card (printed on red cardstock), build the tally marks with craft sticks, and then write them on the recording sheet.

Lucky Money Envelopes - students will select a red envelope, count the coins inside, and write on recording sheet. This goes with the the book Sam and the Lucky Money, which is at our listening center this week.

Here are the envelope labels and the recording sheet.




We are also doing a measurement activity similar to this one by Mrs. Parker.

I have so much planned for the week that we may spill over into next week, but since Chinese New Year lasts for 15 days it's OK, right?  I'll try to post throughout the week!