Do you learn about and celebrate Lunar New Year in your primary classroom? Using books alongside a response craft is one of my all-time favorite ways to deep dive into new learning. With Lunar New Year having such a rich history filled with meaningful tradition, there is much to learn, honor and celebrate.
Writing Crafts
These Lantern and Dumpling top and bottom crafts are perfect for layering a response pages and a color sheet – just add staples and you’ve got yourself an *interactive* display of new learning. You can use the crafts in isolation or pair with a fiction or non-fiction book of choice!
These two crafts both allow littles to showcase their new learning using different prompt options. The Lantern is more focused on the zodiacs and Lunar New Year as whole. On this one, kiddos can share facts about:
- What Lunar New Year Is
- The Meaning of the Lantern
- Share about the The Year of ____
- They could even discover what their zodiac animal is
For the Dumpling, it is focused on the themes of family, the big feast and the special meaning behind the food.
These tops and bottom crafts do include primary lined and standard line page options + a color page. You can also select a vertical or horizontal display.
Book Pairings
To pair with my learning crafts, I like a good mix of fiction + non-fiction and personally love the ease of use with digital books on Epic – especially when making a KWL chart. So, I put together a collection here of reads perfect for little learners. To access it and use in your room, double check that you’re logged into your account first.
For fiction, I’ve gathered up a couple picture books that are my favorites that showcase some diverse Lunar New Year celebrations. You can pair your fiction stories with these FREE Lunar New Year story element graphic organizers and check comprehension along the way.
Here’s quick snapshot each: each showcase a little something different & all include strong visuals to support new vocabulary! A Sweet New Year for Ren is pretty but also has a lot of context mixed in the storyline about the history of the celebration. Ruby’s Chinese New Year shows little learners the 12 different Chinese zodiacs (+ origin story in the back) A Grumpy New Year takes us to China to a Lunar New Year parade. They also have commonalities, food – family – tradition on this special day.
Leave a Reply