Chinese New Year

In January, we learn about the Chinese New Year during social studies. We spend about one week studying the holiday by sharing nonfiction texts, showing videos of past Chinese New Year celebrations from YouTube.com, bringing in artifacts, making Chinese New Year lanterns, leisees, and dragon hats. Throughout this week, the students work on creating their own dragon for our Kindergarten Chinese New Year Parade! We discuss cooperative groups and the social language that should be used during this type of whole group activity. At the end of the week, we put on the parade for the whole school and march up and down the hallways with our dragon. If it is still in tact, I try to hang parts of it up on our bulletin board. The students are always so proud of their dragon! 

Gung hay fat choy!

Decorating the dragon head.

This will be the dragon's body. 

Creating dragon hats. 

It's finished! Now we just have to cut it out.

He is making a silly dragon face. His hat was awesome!

Another cute hat.

A couple more...

The students completed the scales for the dragon by rounding the edges of a fourth sheet of paper and glueing it onto the butcher paper.

They are practicing their dragon faces and getting ready for the parade.

Here they are!

Lots of smiles!

Fractions

After introducing fractions, I created a sort for 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4 using the Easiteach program for our Interactive Whiteboard. I found all the images on Google and then resized them and rotated them to show the students a variety of fractions and how they can appear. The students used the stylus pen to select a "mystery fraction" out of the blue box on the bottom of the screen. I created the box by overlaying it on top of the fractions and locking it in place (for those of you who use this program). The students enjoyed this very much and it's a great tool to use as a refresher!