Happy Chinese New Year

Happy Chinese New Year to you all.
We just past the Chinese New Year's Eve a few hours ago based on the Lunar calendar at the Asian time zone and it's officially the first day of the Year of Snake today.
We learned stories of Nian (年) and how it becomes the celebration of the beginning of a year. We sang songs, did calligraphy and did arts and crafts and made our classroom the most festive room ever. We learned how different food symbolized different wishes and how they turned into lucky phrases we need to say during Chinese New Year when we meet our families and friends. As a Chinese tradition, we also got red envelopes from Ms Liao. Everyone wore bright or red color or even traditional Chinese clothes to say good bye to the Year of Dragon and welcome the little dragon (snake).

Wish you the best in this new year.

By the way, if you go to google.com, you will also see a fun game with a little red snake in it trying to eat all the lucky signs of Chinese New Year.

Chinese New Year Week

This week is our Chinese New Year's week. It's the Year of Snake (we usually call it Year of Little Dragon)

According to the Lunar Calendar, Chinese January 1st is on 2/9 Saturday in American time zone (but it's on Sunday 2/10 to Taiwan, China, Singapore and Malaysia, etc.)

We will talk about the customs of Chinese New Year and what we do with a lunar calendar. We will learn how we name different days and what Chinese people do on each day during the biggest holiday. Also we will learn Chinese New Year stories, twelve zodiacs, songs and arts and crafts.

Students can wear red or bright color clothes if they want, but we don't force them to do so if they don't want to wear. If you have traditional Chinese clothes, you can wear it to class on Thursday and I plan to do so too.

Also, we will do calligraphy on Thursday. Please bring old newspaper to school. We will use it to cover our clothes to prevent ink stain on clothes.

Here are some resources to learn about Chinese New Year.

Chinese Twelve Zodiacs

Lucky Phrases

Chinese New Year Food

Chinese New Year Songs