Activities for Chinese New Year (part 1)

Chinese New Year is just around the corner and of course, most of our recent activities are related to this occasion. JS does not really understand the meaning of the celebration, which is the ushering of a new year based on the Chinese calendar but he knows some of the things related to it, namely the lion dance and ang pows or red packets (which is money given to children or the younger relatives, siblings or friends who are still not married). 

This year, I planned to introduce to him the Chinese Zodiac and also some delicacies related to the celebration. Here, I would like to share with you the Chinese Zodiac activity we did several weeks ago.

I found some pictures of the Chinese Zodiac (I purposely chose the ones in Chinese paper cutting) online and printed them out for this project. 

First, JS had to cut the pictures of the zodiacs and the Chinese characters out one by one. 

To make the chart, he chose a brown coloured paper, which I thought was a good choice because it goes well with the pink zodiacs. 

Here, he learnt how to find the centre point of a paper and drew a circle with a compass. 

JS folding the paper to find the centre point for his circle chart. 

JS drawing a circle using a compass. 

Then he had to divide the circle into twelve parts for each of the zodiac. 

After that he arranged the pictures and the Chinese characters accordingly on the chart. 

And he learnt that his Chinese zodiac is tiger and his sister's is snake. I am also glad that he remembers his Daddy's is dragon and Mommy's is the same as his sister's.