Happy Lunar New Year! It is the year of the HORSE!
We started our celebration at our preschool by taking a “flight to China”. We visited some famous sites and learned more about China.
We also had a big parade to celebrate. The kindergarten class made this beautiful dragon, and the TK class made the spectacular lion. The children made rice shakers in maker space the week before, to shake during the parade.
The Truth About Dragons by Julie Leung connects to Lunar New Year through its focus on dragons — an important and positive symbol in many Lunar New Year celebrations. Its message about dual cultural heritage is a bit sophisticated for most of our preschoolers, so instead, I leaned into the dragon theme and the illustrations to use it as a doorway into talking about culture and celebration.
The illustrations are breathtaking — we could gaze at them for hours. They invite us into a world far outside our own, sparking curiosity and imagination.
Our vocabulary word. It means bun or precious. “Bao bei” – my precious baby.
We put on our “capes” and went on his “epic quest”.
We did not listen to the hobgoblins! (A favorite page!)
Nor did we listen to the whispers of the will-o-the-wisps.
We learned about this red dragon from this grandmother.
The bamboo and the nine-tailed fox took us to Asia.
“The nine-tailed fox is a powerful, mythical entity from East Asian folklore (Chinese huli jing, Japanese kitsune, Korean gumiho) known for havig nine tails, high intelligence, and immense magical abilities.”
We entered this beautiful palace and drank tea with another grandmother. We learned about the blue dragon.
Do we want to be the blue dragon or the red dragon?
What if we can be both?
For a child who does have a duel cultural identity, this book is so special.
We know grandmothers will always be there for us.
Each child took home a lucky read envelope with a horse on it. Who does not want Berto Bucks?
How will you spend your Berto Bucks?
On the projector:
We are lucky enough to have some amazing moms who brought in some food for our children to taste. They loved it! So much can be learned about other cultures through food.
We celebrated school wide, we made a collaborative dragon (not pictured), and classes made all sorts of wonderful crafts.
Each child took home a souvenir before we “left China”.
During my after school classes, we looked at all the zodiac signs of the Lunar New Year. We then made these horses.
We also donned our red capes, grabbed our lanterns, and had our own “epic quest”. We found bamboo – are we in China? We also found the hobgoblins. We did not speak to them. We just marched right past them.
We also found “will-o-the-wisps”, we ignored them too.
Could this be a dragon egg?
We found dragons!
We colored them, and then became dragons.
We also counted them and picked our favorite dragon.
Berto and I want to wish you a very happy Lunar New Year!
Find more Lunar New Year fun here:
More dragon fun here: