Happy (Chinese) New Year!

Monday was the Chinese New Year holiday. We looked at this holiday as an opportunity to learn about what people who are of a different culture do to celebrate holidays.

We watched a Reading Rainbow episode that showed us the ancient Chinese art of chinese writing. The children were all really impressed that each character was like its very own piece of artwork. We discussed how their letters are different than ours and how they write differently than us.

We also got to watch a video on discovery education that taught us about the Chinese New Year celebration. We learned that it is really not that different than many of the holidays that we celebrate. One of the most important similarities that we noted was that this is a holiday celebrated with family. We all can relate this to a holiday that we celebrate with our families.

We learned that the Dragon is a symbol of power and excellence and that they use this in their celebration as a hope for the year to come.

After watching the video, we made our very own dragons using our knowledge of lines.

Then we had our very own dragon dance to celebrate the new year!