Let’s Celebrate Chinese New Year and Multicultural Book Day!
Chinese New Year’s Eve Day is January 27th, the same day as Multicultural Children’s Book Day! Let’s celebrate them together! Chinese New Year is celebrated for two weeks each year starting on the night before the lunar new year begins. This year it will end on February 11, 2017. Billions of people around the world celebrate this holiday (did you know that one out of four people in the world is Chinese?)
Take a look at this Chinese New Year Parade. What do you see and feel? The energy is so infectious! Can you feel the drums beating? Can you hear the firecrackers popping? See the lion dip, zig zap and prance down the street, shaking its head to the beat of the drums.
Did you know that the lion in a Chinese New Year parade comes from the imagination of the Chinese people? It has the soft body of a lion, the shaggy fur of a lion, the eyes of a rabbit, the antlers of a deer, the ears of a dog, the antenna of a dragonfly, the paws of a tiger, the horn of a rhino, and the beard of a billy goat!
Here are two crafts for you to help you celebrate Chinese New Year. Make your own “hong bao” and a Chinese lantern. Read about the traditions, and fun traditions Chinese families use to celebrate this most important of holidays in All About China: Stories, Songs, Crafts and More for Kids.
Allison Branscombe is the author of All About China: Stories, Songs, Crafts and More for Kids; she can be reached on Twitter @abranscombe2, on Instagram at #abwriter, on You Tube at http://Bit.ly/1rpkMdM and on Facebook at http://bit.ly/2kqvkYi
All images are from All About China: Stories, Songs, Crafts and More for Kids, Tuttle Publishing, copyright 2014.
