[brandi]

Does anyone have any neat ideas to do with the Chinese New Year? I have never done this before and really want to because I have two adopted girls from China in my class this year and they have talked about it. Thanks!

[Lilacs]

they can make the lanterns. I have the kids use the zodiac to see what year they are. My zodiac only gives one year, so they have to count back to see what animal they are.

[BookMuncher]

One year, we worked together to create a chinese dragon. We made the head out of a box and the eyes out of two big plastic cups, turned on their side. I cut the box so the child under the head could see out the front of the mouth. The kids took turns with our aide painting the head and then we attached a long piece of fabric to the back, painting gold scales on it. The whole class could fit under it, and after studying the Chinese New Year, we did a parade around the school saying "Gung hay fat choy!"

[calumetteach]

There are some books out there written in English and Chinese. You can also get Chinese writing from a restaurant. Discuss how many characters there are in the Chinese language and how they transcribe their writing differently from us.

I had a newspaper page that has basic words in Chinese ... dog, cat, love, mom, dad etc. (you can probably find them online... mine were from the newspaper's "mini-page for kids". The kids wrote a simple message in Chinese using black watercolor paint. Then they wrote what it said in English underneath. It looks awesome and it ties in well with soc. st. studying other cultures etc. I don't worry if they've done the writing correctly... if there was someone who could really read them it would be fun to have them try to figure them out!

If you can find a copy of the Chinese zodiac have them look to see what year they were born in and what their animal and sign represents. You could list the things they do to prepare for the New Year and contrast it with what we do for the New year. Then they could choose a tradition and draw pictures to go with the Chinese and American holidays.

[bethbeth81]

In our class we celebrate Chinese New Year for a week. Sometime during the week we have a party where we eat stir fry and fortune cookies. We make it with all kinds of veggies and try to keep it very traditional...even eat it with chopsticks. Many kiddos will say "eww...I'm not going to eat that" but almost everybody does..and most even like it! It's fun...here's a list of websites I found that look helpful. I'll send you the recipe and shopping list we use each year if you're interested. It's pricey, so I wouldn't recommend it unless you can fill out a purchase order.

Create laisee with students
http://www.newton.mec.edu/Angier/Dim...d_envelop.html

or this one: http://www.chinatown-online.co.uk/pa...ss_packet.html

Chinese lanterns...I just make these with my kiddos using plain red paper...and attach strips of tissue paper to the end...we hang them from the ceiling during the week.
http://www.kidsdomain.com/craft/lantern1.html

A cool story about the Chinese New Year with a different lantern idea
http://www.funlessonplans.com/holidays/anewyear.htm

Info about the Chinese zodiac:
http://www.c-c-c.org/chineseculture/zodiac/zodiac.html

scholastic chinese new year lesson plan
http://content.scholastic.com/browse...plan.jsp?id=44

Another chinese new year lesson plan...
http://teacherlink.ed.usu.edu/tlreso...s/chinese.html

[Wanda]

Check out the following website. It has instructions on making a book and several links to other sites. The links are Chinese Calligraphy, More Chinese Calligraphy, and the part I think is quite neet, having your name in Chinese.

file://localhost/private/var/tmp/folders.501/TemporaryItems/fcctemp/Attach0.html

[KJ]

http://www.esl-resources.com/new_yea...rigami_pig.htm