Winter Celebrations: Chinese New Year Fun!
We are now half way into our winter dreaming season! While many animals go into hibernation during the cold winter months, so far at our winter celebrations class, we’ve been learning how winter can be filled with so much life, traditions, and festivities! We started our winter celebrations class learning about Chinese New Year, specifically about the traditions and tales that are tied in with this widespread celebration!
First we learned about the zodiac calendar and the zodiac animals. We discovered that it was through a “Great Race” participated by all the zodiac animals, that they got their order in the calendar. We even got to act out the animals using flashcards and asked our fellow Big Kid friends which animal we are!
We also learned about the Nian, who was a not so nice monster that would frighten the people of the village until they discovered the 3 things he hated the most! He was scared of:
-Lights
-Loud sounds
– and the colour red!
So after learning about this, our big kids had a mission of making lanterns, painting pictures of fireworks, and decorating everything with red and yellow!
Theres no festivities and celebrations without food! So for the following BKC class we learned how eating certain dishes and food during Chinese New Year could be good luck!
We discovered that eating noodles is a sign of a longer life, and mandarines also bring good luck. Spring rolls are also part of the Chinese New Year celebration since it symbolizes wealth because they look like gold bars! So guess what? For snacks that day we had mandarine oranges and yam spring rolls!
Lastly, we ended off our Chinese New Year month learning by going around Chinatown to admire all the beautiful red dominated decorations!
Our first half of Big Kids Club has been filled with so much fun! We hope you can continue to join us as we slip, skate, and slide into Canada’s very own Carnaval de Quebec. So far we learned about ice sculpture competitions, winter sports, and maybe we we’ll even have a chance to make maple syrup popsicles! Come join us in our BKC celebrations on Tuesdays at 1-4pm!
