Geography

The Lantern Festival falls on the fifteenth day of the first month of the Chinese lunar calendar. Chinese have celebrated the Lantern Festival since the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. – 221 A.D.). On this day, everybody would carry colourful lanterns and then gather in a public place for a big”lantern fair”. Fireworks displays and riddle-guessing contests were later incorporated to add to the festivity of the occasion. Also, it is time to eat rice soup dumplings – the dumplings are round, and symbolize family unity and completeness.

From Harvard Site

Taiwan Government Lantern Site Lots to look at and read.

Lantern Festival some nice photos.

Grade 6 Lesson Plan very basic but useful.

A description of The Lantern Festival of Quanzhou.

About – China Online beautiful photos and interesting information.

Make a Chinese Lantern with Enchanted Learning.

Make a lantern with the Kennedy Center

abcteach lantern – easy to follow instructions.

15 Day Festival

(Starting on New Years Day)

These 15 days seem an ideal opportunity to plan a mini project loosely based on the Chinese year. Below are my ideas for covering some of the themes potentially introduced in this celebration.

Surrounding the Hearth.

New Years Eve and New Years Day are times for the family to be together and celebrate family unity. It is a time to honour dead ancestors and and would be a good opportunity to discuss family roots and relationships.

Day 1: Abstaining from eating meat, in honour of the meeting of the gods of heaven and earth. An opportunity to investigate a vegetarian meal and discuss why this belief might have grown up.

Day 2: The Birthday of the Dogs – the Chinese are extra kind to dogs on this day. Why not spend a little extra time with a pet, learn a bit more about it, or do something nice for it like provide a treat or make a new plaything.

Day 3 & 4: Days for Sons-in-law to be good to their parents in law. As well as discussing family ties and/or visiting why not consider why sons are seen as being so important in China.

Day 5: “The fifth day is called Po Woo. On that day people stay home to welcome the God of Wealth. No one visits families and friends on the fifth day because it will bring both parties bad luck” (Chinese New Year) What is wealth? How is it measured? Is an adults wealth different to a child’s? What is REALLY important to make our lives work? (eg money for bills, time together, toys, food, somewhere to live etc)

Day 6-10: Days to visit friends and relatives and pray at temple for fortune and health. Discuss different temples and how people felt they could improve their chances of health by prayer. Look at ways we keep ourselves healthy in the 21st Century.

Day 7: “The seventh day of the New Year is the day for farmers to display their produce. These farmers make a drink from seven types of vegetables to celebrate the occasion. The seventh day is also considered the birthday of human beings. Noodles are eaten to promote longevity and raw fish for success.”(Chinese New YearA trip to the supermarket to look at veg, discussion of organics, a trip to a farm or maybe make a model farm or some playdough vegetables. Older children could consider the birth of humans on the 7th day with a link to the Old Testament Book of Genesis and its description of the birth of the world- are two myths co-inciding in any way? And then of course you can try eating noodles with chopsticks!

Day 9: Offerings to the Jade Emperor. What is Jade?What other precious gemstones can you think of or find examples of? What is an offering?

Day 10-13: Entertaining friends on day 10-12, followed by a simple cleansing food on the 13th day. Tea party time, cooking party food, discussion of different food groups and what is good for us.

Day 14: Preparations for the Lantern Festival.

Day 15: Lantern Festival.

With Thanks. The basis for all these ideas can be found at Chinese New Year. I couldn’t find a contact link to thank them, but hope this acknowledgement will do!

“Chinese New Year” – The Spring Festival.

Back to Our Chinese New Year Page

This year Chinese New Year falls on February 1st and celebrates the beginning of 2003 The Year of the Ram. Below are the links that I am using to create a mini project for my 3 1/2 year old, based on some of the foods and traditions of this festival. I intend to add accounts of these as we do them over the next few weeks.

In addition I have included a few good links relating to the disney film “Mulan” which has been a big favourite in our home lately and has helped give my daughter a flavour of China. These links were co-incidentally posted on the muddlepuddle mailing list and thanks goes to Alison for finding them.

Information

Taboos, Superstitions, Decorations, Foods and an explanation of the calculation of Chinese New Year.

A basic but thorough explanation of the Chinese Calender the origin of the festival and some of the main events within it.

ChinaPage

DimSum – some beautiful simple and well explained crafts with nice diagrams and also some good simple background information too.

Chinese Culture Centre – probably the most comprehensive site of them all with as much information as you are likely to need to answer questions and plan activities.

The Chinese Cultural Project – although based on last years “year of the serpent”, there is none the less good background info here to answer some of those awkward questions (you know the ones where the child goes… “why……….?”!!!)

Door Gods and More – with absolutely lovely pictures.

Chinatown Online – two New Year recipes – but follow the links on the page cos this looks like a nice site all round.

Chinese Astrology Site – find out what animal you are and what kind of year you will have. Also gives character description for the horse… good for all those MuddlePuddle babies due this year!

All Recipes – some nice menu plans with explanations of red envelopes, homonyms and oranges all thrown in too.

Taboos – part of another site mentioned but worth a link of its own because all these things would be really good fun to do at home!

Chinese New Year Graphics – some really beautiful traditional paintings.

Things to Do

123Greetings Send a Chinese New year Card New 2003

Chinese New Year at Kids Domain – this is such an incredible site -whatever you might want to do is likely to have a link from this site or be directly on it!

Activity Village – five star with excellent activities and, it must be said, some truly awful jokes!!!!!!!

Perpetual Preschools Page – also five star early years learning site.

Enchanted Learning – related arts and crafts.

Web Holidays – an excellent page with lots to do and look at. One of the best of the web in my opinion.

Send a Chinese New Year greeting card

Kiddyhouse offer a page of links, with some excellent follow on opportunites in the teacher section and a dot to dot dragon!!!!

Mulan

Mulan – a disney cartoon – great film, great music!

Lovely Mulan colouring pages

The Legend of Mulan – the real story

Mulan as a Unit Study – lots of links to use for an interesting project.

“….Two years ago we made dragon masks, lucky red envelopes (which we put some
money in) decorated with traditional Chinese lions, all said Gung hay fat
choy (a new years greeting) and bowed to each other. We also had a chinese
feast, stir fry vegetables with noodles, prawn crackers, spring rolls and
fortune cookies. We had sprouted some beans and used these in the meal, and
ate it all using chopsticks, and dressed up in Chinese style clothes.
It was fun and I am ready to have another go.”

Janet, Home Educator and Childminder (taken with permission from the MuddlePuddle Discussion List).