On Friday my daughter's class celebrated the beginning of Chinese New Year.
Her teacher spent hours planning, prepping and decorating for several different activity stations. Everyone was blown away and had a great time!
I was put in charge of the Chinese Skipping Station! I had never Chinese Skipped before so it was fun to try. The skipper had to jump in the air and land with their feet on or beside the elastic ropes strung between the ankles of two friends.
We drew two foot diagrams on the board so the kids could see where their feet were meant to land. The top diagram spells out Mississippi but they were concentrating so hard on their feet I doubt any of them learned how to spell it! ;o) For the first P they had to land on the rope. For the second P they had to jump up and spin around so that they landed on the rope facing the opposite direction! Not easy!
Some groups tried the next "levels" by raising the elastic rope up to their calves, and then knees which makes it considerably more difficult to jump on the rope! I understand the experts go up to the thighs!
Chinese Skipping is also not easy to photograph! Some tried jumping in pairs which looked really neat when they were keeping in time with each other.
(For privacy reasons I have cropped out the faces of the children.)
Some of the other Stations were:
Chinese Checkers
A hand print Chinese Dragon art activity
Tasting Chinese Foods - Star Fruit and Dragon Fruit
Lychee Nuts, Haw Flakes, White Rabbit candies
White Rabbit candies again (they somehow hopped around the table), Dried Plums, Red Bean Cakes
Rice Crackers
They also played a Chopstick Rice Bowl Game that had them recording points while learning what different foods represent, for example: noodles (uncut) represents longevity. They learned about the Kitchen God, Stomping on the 4 Corners of the World and why Incense is burned.
Each child brought home not only more knowledge of the Chinese New Year Celebration but also a pair of chopsticks, a red envelope and some very happy memories! It's been a lucky year for us!
Gung Hay Fat Choy!
~ joey ~
how fun. personally i love that dragon made of hands! what a fab idea!
ReplyDeleteThis looks like so much fun! Your post brings back wonderful memories. Chinese jumprope was a very popular thing to play when I was in grade school. I would try to play alone at home using chair legs to hold the rope. It didn't work out too well!
ReplyDeleteGreat ideas! That dragon is awesome!! Thanks for sharing your post with us at Eco-Kids Tuesday. Hope to see you back today! http://likemamalikedaughter.blogspot.com/2013/02/melt-my-heart-eco-kids-tuesday.html
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