Session 5 - Chinese New Year

Today, we were off to China.  Mrs. Sears forgot to bring their passports, so I had to charter a plane and we snuck across the border.  We will stamp them next week.  I was happy to see that some of the children learned a little about Chinese New Year in class that day.  We talked about each year of the Chinese calendar being named for an animal.  2014 is the year of the horse.  Last year was the year of the snake. We looked up everyone's birth year to find out what animal represented the year they were born.

We talked about how people typically celebrate Chinese New Year. I was surprised to learn that on New Year's Day you are not supposed to wash - yourself or your house - because you would be washing away all the good luck that was brought to you for the new year.  The second day of the New Year, you are allowed to gamble (the only day of the year when it is not frowned upon in China).  We talked about the parades and celebrations, dragons, and lanterns.

For our art project today, we created dragon masks and performed our own parade set to music.  Some of the pics are a little blurry because our parade went around the room at lightening speed:)

Next Thursday is our last session.  Clue for where we are visiting: not many people live there, but those who do are usually "well dressed".