2016 Chinese New Year falls on February 8. It is the Year of the Monkey 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 that can be used for a read aloud.

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!
Make fortune cookies for your friends and family.