With the Chinese New Year beginning last week (but the celebrations continuing on through this weekend), I decided to ride the momentum of their enthusiasm of other countries and do a sort of Chinese New Year week here at the house. Due to unforseen circumstances known as "life", we haven't done Chinese New Year stuff every day, but almost.
Today we started off by decorating the dining room with Chinese paper lanterns (that were a little too difficult for the kids to make themselves so I cut them out really quick) and printing out some tiny little animals and their Chinese symbols and taping it to pieces of plastic straws. Then, using good old Google, I recited the story of the Jade Emporer and the Great Race that created the Chinese Zodiac. It's a cute story that explains the animals and why they are in their particular order. I used this adaptation of the story here, and then used the little animals on their sticks and moved them across a paper "river" as a visual aid.
After they learned about the Zodiac, we talked about which animals represent who in this house. All 4 of us are different. I am a Rat, Brad is a Tiger, Calen is an Ox and Camden is a Rabbit, and then we talked about how this year is the year of the Rooster. Because they're little boys, Calen was totally bummed he wasn't a Snake ("because Cobras are awesome") and Cam asked why he wasn't a Dragon (born one year too early to be a Dragon). But they were very excited to learn the story and how we all represent different animals.
Disclaimer: No they don't actually believe in the spiritual part of the Zodiac, no we didn't even touch on that subject, no we are not Buddist. It's just a fun story.
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| The great race! |
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