Chinese New Year

Understanding the World: People and Communities

Chinese New Year has a wealth of different activities and resources to enhance an Understanding the World lesson about People and Communities.

The children are always interested in different cultures and customs, especially something they are unfamiliar with.

Chinese New Year dates depend on the lunar calendar. It falls on a different day each year.

You may see the words ‘Kung hei fat choi’ associated with Chinese New Year. This is the Cantonese way of saying happy Chinese New Year. Cantonese is mainly only spoken in Hong Kong. The majority of people in China speak Mandarin. The Mandarin way to say Happy New Year is ‘Gong xi fa cai’ (or gong see fah sigh).

I tend to teach the Chinese New Year topic and have accumulated a number of resources over the years.

Please see the lesson plan below..

In Birmingham near the Chinese Quarter, there is a lovely shop which sells Chinese items. There are some lovely Chinese clothes, musical instruments and lucky items that are hung around the house at Chinese New Year.

My Chinese New Year Resources

	Chinese New Year Lesson Plan This lesson plan contains links to different websites and a list of activities that you could include in your free flow time.
	Chinese New Year Book The front page of this book, with the Chinese writing on it, says Gung Xi Fa Xai, which means Happy Chinese New Year. The book has room for children to draw pictures, add photos and write about what they have learnt.
	Chinese Characters Tracing Chinese writing is done top to bottom, left to right. This resource is best laminated so that the children can trace the Chinese letters using a wipe-able whiteboard pen. You could even cut out the centre of these words to use as a stencil for the lucky money envelopes.
	Chinese New Year Assembly This is a very short assembly script, using the traditional Chinese New Year story of the animal race and some relevant You Tube videos. I hope this is useful.
	Chinese New Year Smartboard Activity This smartboard file contains pictures and links to video files on the internet which are interesting for the little ones. You could use the entire file or use some pages on different days.

There are lots of lovely resources and links available at different websites. The resources I’ve found so far are..

	TES Chinese New Year Teaching Resources The Times Educational Supplement website offers a variety of teacher supplied resources which have been used in real classroom situations.
	Primary Games, Chinese New Year Games Remember to check each game before use to make sure it’s suitable for the children in your class. Some of the games need to be used with a teacher but this would be a good website to leave independent laptop activities on.
	Apples 4 the Teacher Again, some lovely games but some of them are not suitable for little children as they can be a bit difficult to use. The matching pairs game is good for memory and ‘clicking’ practice.
	Activity Village There are a variety of different Chinese New Year themed resources on the Activity Village website. There are some lovely ideas which would make some very nice Chinese New Year displays.
	Twinkl Chinese New Year Resources Twinkl always have really lovely resources for a number of different subjects, but their Chinese New Year resources are particularly lovely. I thoroughly recommend signing up to their premium service as the resources are genuinely very good.
	Primary Treasure Chest Chinese New Year Resources Primary Treasure Chest often doesn’t appear on Google searches but there are a wealth of lovely free resources! The Chinese New Year resources are lovely and a good gateway into teaching the Chinese New Year topic to little ones.

See my previous post on Chinese New Year display.