Celebrating Chinese New Year-Day 4 Activities

Year of the Monkey is just around the corner. Let’s send out our best wishes and New Year greetings. You can make a card, write spring rolls or sing a nice, catchy song!

How about starting our greetings with a card? Let's write a card or even make our own card!

 Click to download the Lesson Plan on Making Greeting Cards

During Chinese New Year, front doors of houses are adorned with poetic "spring couplets" (春联 chūnlián), wishing people good fortunes such as ‘a long life’ or ‘good health.’...Chinese New Year is also a time to pay one's respects to both the family and spiritual deities. Elders hand little children red envelopes (红包 hóngbāo) containing money, while adults reunite with family members they do not get to see otherwise.” (From Lesson 40 in Discovering Chinese Pro.)

Let’s learn one of the most popular greetings for New Year in Chinese: 恭喜发财[Gōngxǐ fācái]

 Click to download the full page Finally, best wishes for you and your family!
 

Looking for more ideas or resources on teaching Chinese New Year in your classroom? Check back for our daily updates on Chinese New Year activities or contact your account managers (Kelly , David and Wendy) or at (888) 384-0902 for assistance.

 

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Have you ever heard of the story of Year(年)? Do you know it was actually a monster? Then what would it look like? Fire up your students’ or kids’ imagination and have them draw a picture of Year(年)!
What is the story of Year? Come and check out the full story in Story of Year.  Click to download Chinese text with Pinyin
听力录音  Click Here to download the MP3. Narrated by: Amy Liu Then, Let's Practice Writing the Character "年".  Click to download the full worksheet.  Finally, Let's continue with our New Year decorations. For Day 3, we are doing paper-cutting!

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Let's start decorating our rooms and classrooms! Here's the lesson plan for you to teach your students or your kids to write "福".
  • Students : K-12, Adults/ Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
  • Learning Objectives: Student will be able to:
  1. Discuss various traditions and customs of Chinese New Year
  2. Write “福” with right stroke order
  3. Judge their own and others’ works
  • Assessment:
  1. Students use prior knowledge, brainstorm the traditions of Chinese New Year, express their ideas in Chinese as soon as possible
  2. Students practice writing “福” themselves, while teacher evaluates how well students do in writing the character stroke by stroke
  • Assignment: Students take their works back home and put them up on their own room doors and take a picture for teacher to collect
 Let's Write "福" and put it up!
  • Warm-up: Teacher ask students about traditions of Chinese New Year they know and show them the folk song about what Chinese people do for new year.

[Language Point] 春节, 习俗, 贴春联, 放鞭炮, 吃年夜饭, 看春晚, 拿红包; “过年好!”, “恭喜发财”

  • Explicit Instruction:
  1. Teacher introduces the character “福” in terms of its meaning and strokes (Based on students’ levels, teacher can have students come up with phrase or sentences including “福” )
  2. Teacher relates “福” with Chinese traditions and tell or ask why Chinese people put up “福” on their door.

[Language Point] “福”, “福” 到/倒, 幸福,福气, 祝福, 幸福; “我们一起写’福’字”,“我们一起贴’福’字”

  • Guided Practice:
  1. Teacher gives students time to practice “福” individually on the writing worksheet or have students color “福”. Click to Download Worksheet
  2. Students write “福”on a piece of square-shaped red paper
  3. Teacher have students display their works on the wall and invite parents/ students from other classes to watch the Chinese character show.
Let's sing Happy New Year 新年好! Click to Download the full Sheet Music

  Looking for more ideas or resources on teaching Chinese New Year in your classroom? Check back for our daily updates on Chinese New Year activities or contact your account managers (Kelly , David and Wendy) or at (888) 384-0902 for assistance.

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The Year of the Monkey is slowly coming down the pike. Do you have Chinese New Year activities all planned out? Here are some ideas Better Chinese would like to share for teaching Chinese New Year, and we are sure your students will enjoy learning it very much! Remember to check back for daily updates.

First, Let's know about Chinese New Year Traditions:

Start out with a story that gives students an overall view of Chinese New Year celebrations. Students can work in groups or read individually for 5-10 minutes, then come back as a whole class to discuss: 1) What is the story about? 2) What are the main characters in the story? 3) What do people do in the New Year? 4) What are some of the new words/sentences that you don’t understand? You can also create exercises (matching/ filling in the blanks/ multiple choices, etc.) for students to work on while reading? Teach new vocabulary or sentence structures that you think are important in the book. You can use direct instruction in this part, or use the Total Physical Response approach for students to physically interact with vocabulary words and improve their pronunciation. The book, Chinese New Year from Chinese Traditional Festivals is a very good book to start with.

Like Thanksgiving to America, Chinese New Year is the most important festival for Chinese people. The book Chinese New Year introduces various celebrations and traditions, including some traditions including lighting firecrackers (放鞭炮, fàng biān pào), making dumplings (包饺子, bāo jiǎo zi), gathering family together for reunions (家人团聚, jiā rén tuán jù), conducting a New Year’s eve vigil (守岁, shǒu suì), and reading the Story of Year (年的故事, nián de gùshì) and etc. Read the book with your class and introduce the traditions with your students. Second, Let's learn by doing some interactive activities! If you have enough time, bring up a dumpling session in the class! You would need only dough, filling, pot and heater. It’s an easy and fun activity to do in school or at home.

Another fun and easy activity is to lead students make their own New Year hanging decorations.

Looking for more ideas or resources on teaching Chinese New Year in your classroom? Check back for our daily updates on Chinese New Year activities or contact your account managers (Kelly , David and Wendy) or at (888) 384-0902 for assistance.

 
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