We will be celebrating Chinese New Year this Friday as the culmination of our unit on China. I bought fortune cookies and we have a cute dragon craft to make, but then I am kind of stuck. Whatever we do has to be educational, but this just doesn't seem like much. Most of the ideas I have seen online are too complicated because I have a big group (28) including several SPED and ESL. What have you done that has been fun, educational and easy?

[pattyk]

How I wish I could send you my folder on Chinese New Year...1)we make Chinese calendars...2)we find out what the animal for our birth year is and why we are like that animal (great creative writing)...3)we make a community dragon...36 feet long. For this one we each make a 12x18 accordian fold body section and fill each 1x12 section with a different design...attach with a head and tail, a very long group dragon, often breathing fire. I put the head at the principal's door and back track the dragon down the hall. 4)We try writing in Chinese with black watercolor and brushes (I have a few sum-ie brushes for the purists). 5) we make a shallow cone hat and decorate with signs of the chinese calendar. 6)we eat rice with chop sticks. 7) oragami folding after reading the Paper Crane by Molly Bang. I find that the local Chinese restaurant to be very helpful with the chop sticks and place mats with calendar on them. Hope this helps.

Don't forget the red envelope with a coin in it!