February 12th marks the start of the Year of the Ox and gives an opportunity for families to celebrate their child’s heritage in the case of families with children from China and other Asian countries as well as an opportunity for all families to talk about people all over the world and the significance of holidays for bringing families and communities together.
Here are some parent-friendly resources to inspire ideas for how you might be able to take the opportunity to connect with your children.
Readables
- Chinese New Year – Did you know there’s a whole website dedicated to Chinese New Year? Make sure to explore all it has to offer including taboos to avoid like saying happy new year to someone still in bed!
- 22 Things You Should Know – Why fish is a traditional food, what the lantern festival has to do with it, red envelopes, and what’s not allowed.
- History.com’s Chinese New Year 2021 – Updated for the year of the ox, this is a nice overview to explain things like long noodles, house cleaning, and red envelopes.
Interesting videos to watch
- Lunarfest 2021 – Click here to access Yale-China’s online offerings for families in light of COVID restrictions that have canceled in-person celebrations. They’ve creatively put together 16 virtual red envelopes with something special families can access each of the 16 days of celebration including trivia, watching martial arts, shadow puppet demonstrations, crafts, and recipes.
- Fortune Tales, The Story of Lunar New Year – This 5-minute, child-friendly video explains very simply traditions and legends of Chinese New Year.
- Bet You Didn’t Know – Did you know 1/6th of the world’s population celebrates the lunar new year? This 3-minute video published by the History Channel is a nice simple overview.
- The Myth Behind the Chinese Zodiac – This 4-minute animation tells the story of the Great Race, the fable behind the 12 animals assigned to each year.
- The Chinese Zodiac Explained – In this TED talk from technologist and Chineasy entrepreneur ShaoLan Hseuh, you’ll learn about how asking your zodiac sign is a polite way to ask your age and other interesting cultural facts about the animals that mark each year.
- Bringing in the New Year – This 3-minute video features a reading of Grace Lin’s children’s book Bringing in the New Year.
- Chinese Dragon Dance – This video of traditional Chinese New Year festivities was filmed in Shanghai in 2011 and is fun for kids and grownups alike to watch.
Crafts + Activities
- Paper lanterns – Find here some easy instructions for a classic craft that you can use to decorate for the holiday.
- Good luck banner – This will take you to easy instructions for making a traditional new year banner and an explanation to why it’s displayed upside down.
- Lion dance puppet – With this template, you can make a lion dance puppet that looks like the ones in traditional parades.
- Printable red envelope template – The template is free, but it may end up costing you something since traditional red envelopes with money inside are a traditional gift for Chinese New Year.
- Chinese character decorations – Click here to download printables for 8 different Chinese characters (faith, hope, love, friendship, luck, courage, peace, and wisdom) that you can hang up as is or invite your children to decorate.
- Chinese New Year dragon cake – Bake a few bundt cakes and then have fun decorating this dragon as a family.
- 35 Children’s books about Chinese New Year – A list with reviews of each children’s book title related to Chinese New Year.
- Celebrating Chinese New Year activity book – This link takes you to Lifeline Adoption Agency’s free resource with recipes, information, and crafts for your family.