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!

Learning Personal Information

This was a brilliant idea that my colleague came up with to motivate the students to learn their address, birthday, and phone number. We assess home information every quarter and it's vital that the students remember this in case of an emergency. We hang up our poster year round in the hallway and as the students learn all of their information, they get to put a piece of the popsicle puzzle onto our popsicle. Once all the pieces have been put together, I am going to treat the students to a popsicle party! They can earn this special treat every quarter!