Chinese New Year

Pickles just told me how excited she is for Chinese New Year because of all the activities we’ve done in the past. While I think of some new activities, here are some of our memories.

When Pickles was three we focussed on the colours considered lucky in China. She created pictures with red and gold sequins and glitter.

She also made a drum out of two paper plates, a lantern and a dragon (and a panda) out of air-drying clay.

Every year, she uses the dragon in her Chinese New Year Story small world.

Pickles makes the set and retells the story using small animals. It’s a good vehicle for learning ordinal numbers.

A few years later, her maths skills had progressed and she enjoyed solving money problems using coin envelopes.

Last year, Pickles wanted to learn a few Chinese characters so I dyes salt red and we used a chopstick to practise drawing them. Some children are more willing to try writing using a transient material.

Those chopsticks were put to good use! She tried a few Chinese goodies. Lots of prawn crackers were consumed!

She was keen to try ink painting using the art set we picked up on a trip to China before Pickles was born.

Time to start planning a few rabbit themed activities…