Happy Chinese New Year!!!

We had such a great time yesterday, celebrating Chinese New Year! This was actually a week-long celebration, as we began our study of China using Galloping the Globe. The first thing our children did was learn about where China is located, the capital, etc...  They completed their country fact sheets I printed from Homeschool Creations. They also colored the flag of China.  This year was the Year of the Rabbit, and so my children did a coloring page and a "bunny search" puzzle.

Activity Village had an entire section dedicated to Chinese New Year, and I was able to print off these wonderful bookmarks, each with a picture of one of the 12 animals of the Chinese calendar. It was fun to read the descriptions of each animal and see which one fit us best!

We practiced writing in Chinese too, and enjoyed listening to some beautiful Chinese music on You Tube.

One of our favorite crafts from China was this cute little cherry blossom pot. The instructions for making these are on Activity Village.

My little girl really enjoyed practicing all the different yoga positions. Here she is doing the tree. Taoist Yoga is an ancient practice that originated in China many, many years ago.

The kids made some nice paper lanterns to decorate our home. Paper lanterns are used throughout China for most all celebrations.

The girls had fun making these little paper dolls I found at http://www.education.com/  They have paper dolls from around the world. Some of them are a bit detailed and may be difficult for little ones to cut out ( I had to help my 9 year old) but they still enjoyed it and even gave names to their dolls.

We ended our week-long celebration with a delicious dinner from our favorite Chinese restaurant. This was such a great week and the kids really learned a lot about China and Chinese New Year. There were so many different things to do we didn't get to all of them, but that's quite ok- I will have some new things for them to do next year!