Montessori Monday Chinese New Year

Happy Chinese New Year!!

Preschool Class doing the "dragon dance" with the Chinese Dragon we made

Here are some pictures a parent took for me of our Chinese New year celebration last year.  We Studied Asia for about a month, and then we had our Continent party by celebrating Chinese new year.  The whole class worked together to make this Chinese Dragon.  His face is made out of cardboard, paint and tissue paper.  His tale is made out of gossamer and the kids construction paper hand prints to look like scales.  We watched the "Dragon Dance" on you tube and learned a dance to perform with our Dragon.  We also watched the episode on Ni Hoa Kailan about Chinese New year.  We learned that everyone has to work together to make the Dragon move.  It was a great cooperative learning experience. 

Our Works 

Here is one of our works a Chinese Animal Memory game. 

Chinese New Year Symbol Stamps

Our Names in Chinese and  Chinese Character painting.  We painted Characters with ink. 

Chinese counting, Chinese Animals, Chinese New Year Word book from Enchanted Learning.  We also made Clay maps of China and made the flags of Asia. 

Books We Read

We were lucky to have a mom from our school come in to give a presentation about Chinese New Year.  She is Chinese and is from China.  She made all of the kids name in Chinese. 

During the week we discussed the traditions of Chinese New year.  I brought a read envelope for each child with a quarter in it (which symbolizes good luck)

We worked on our sweeping skills and swept off the back porch (to sweep away last years bad luck)

We all tried on new silk Robes from China (to symbolize starting the year new)

To help us remember the places in Asia we learned the geography songs from Asia while we practiced our Asia Montessori Map. 

Party Time!!!

Our Chinese New year puppet, Chinese Artifacts, Chinese Noisemaker favors

We made Chinese Dragon hats and had Chinese food for a snack

If you haven't studied Asia I highly recommend it.  It is a very fun and educational unit.  For extensions we did a unit study on pandas.  I can't wait until we celebrate again next year!