2017 Chinese New Year falls on January 28th. It is the Year of the Rooster according to Chinese zodiac. Celebrating the Spring Festival is a great way to experience traditional Chinese folk customs! Chinese New Year has more than 4,000 years of history!
Before the Spring Festival, every family will have a thorough house cleanup and go shopping for festival items. The spring couplets, Fu Character, and the animal paper cut are hung for decoration. Also, new clothes must be bought, especially for children. At the reunion dinner on New Year’s Eve, people from north will eat dumplings and people from the south will eat Niangao (glutinous rice cake). Red Envelopes are given to kids and elders to share the blessing.
Celebrate the year of the monkey during your morning meeting! Learn how to correctly speak a New Year Greeting in Chinese.
In the video below you will learn all about the traditions and legends that make Chinese New Year the most exciting time of the year in Chinese culture. Join the celebration at http://www.celebratecny.com
Read: Sam and the Lucky Money by Karen Chinn, Cornelius Van Wright (Illustrator), Ying-Hwa Hu (Illustrator)
Detailed descriptions of the sights and sounds of the Chinese New Year celebration! Sam receives four bright red envelopes decorated with shiny gold emblems as part of the traditional Chinese New Year celebration, each containing a dollar. He accompanies his mother through Chinatown and realizes that the “lucky money” won’t buy as much as he had hoped. His mood is further sobered after an encounter with a man he stumbles upon in the street. He nobly, though not surprisingly, concludes that his four dollars would be best spent on the barefoot stranger.
Below is a Google Slide show of Sam and the Lucky Money.
Imagine working for one of the largest manufacturers of fortune cookies! What fortune(s) would you write? Watch the video below and actually make paper fortune cookies for your friends and family!
Stage Left Children’s Theater is working with William O. Schafer’s second grade students to create an environment where the excitement of the theater is shared by all. Our students will experience a high quality, innovative, participatory theater arts event, taught by theater professionals and teaching artists. The participatory theater experience of A Year With Frog and Toad will develop enthusiasm, confidence, self-esteem, communication and social skills in all of our second grade students.
Students will be cast in the roles of several characters. Students will research their characters using the website, Exploring Nature (username & password: Rockland) or Pebble Go (username: newyear password: reading) to record their information on the Character Analysis Template. Students will also practice their citation skills. Earlier this year, we learned when researching information you must cite the reference.
CLICK HEREto listen to individual songs for “A Year With Frog and Toad”
Below is the script. Students can download and print additional copies as needed.
Be Positive! Optimism is the ability to remain hopeful and confident about the future or successful outcome of something. Assembly Read Aloud: Pete the Cat I Like My White Shoes by Eric Litwin
Books with Optimism Theme:
Be Positive! A Book about Optimism by Cheri Meiners
Wanda’s Roses by Pat Brisson
Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin
