Chinese New Year is on its way! February 14th is the first day of the Spring Festival or Chinese New Year.
Goodbye Ox (2009). Hello Tiger (2010)!
In honor of China’s most important holiday, I’m hosting a contest!
To enter, just celebrate Chinese New Year in your family in your own unique way. Then blog it. You can be elaborate or simple. Anything from a single coloring page to a full unit study will qualify. Chinese New Year Unit Study has lots of links to free printables and activity ideas to make it easy for you.
Here are a few simple ideas:
- Design your own red packets (hong bao).
- Learn about the Chinese zodiac and the year of the tiger.
- Put banners up on your door.
- Each Chinese food with chopsticks.
- Make a lantern craft.
- Wear red and yellow, the most festive colors of Chinese culture.
- Pray for the people of China.
I’ll select two winners, who can choose between two gifts. Both gifts are guaranteed to be authentic, “Made in China” treasures, mailed straight from China to you, anywhere in the world. I know that you don’t have a house full of stuff made in China, right? (wink)
1. An embroidered decoration with the symbolic animals of the 12 year cycle in Chinese folklore. The picture at left shows only the top third.
2. A colorful cardboard lantern that you can assemble.
Plus I’ll throw some additional, surprise goodies into each package.
I’ll choose two more winners to get these prizes:
- a blog button, twitter background or meme button from Darcy at Graphically Designing
- one Activity Village download and a Discovering the Continents Bundle from CurrClick
Here are the three simple rules:
- Blog about your activity (pictures are always a plus).
- Add the button to your post; there’s HTML below to make it easy.
- Post a link to your blog post in a comment right here on this page. Deadline is Feb. 21, 2010. I’ll announce the winners on Feb. 25.
Now get to celebrating! Happy New Year!
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh, I love your header actually!
I will have to take a look at your resources on China, I have relatives who recently moved there! I was planning to introduce the concept of the Chinese New Year to my girls this year, I don’t think they know about it! 
Oh, you’re making me so tempted to switch what we’re planning to do for geography and go with continents instead……. So tempting.
Ticia´s last blog ..Montessori Monday
This sounds like fun, Jimmie. One question, though. I’m not sure what to do to add the button to my blog. Can you or someone else run me through Adding Buttons for Dummies?
Emily Darling´s last blog ..First Time Read
what a fun idea!!! i’ll be sure to share it!
Marsha´s last blog ..F-R-I-D-A-Y
Good question, Emily!
When writing a blog post, you need to look for how to access the code or HTML or source (any of those words may be used). Then paste the HTML I gave you in your blog post’s code/HTML/source. When you click back off of code/HTML/source, you will see the button appear. (Like magic!)
I don’t use Blogger, but in looking at this site, it appears that there is a tab in your editor screen that says EDIT HTML. Click there and put the button code where you want it. Then click on COMPOSE again, and it will go back to “normal” view.
Hmmm. . . I think this might be a good time for us to pull out The Story About Ping. . .
I love your blog, btw, Jimmie. You’ve really inspired me!
Amy @ Hope Is the Word´s last blog ..What’s on My Nightstand::January Wrap-Up
Since I do not blog, how do I go about entering the contest, or is it exclusive to bloggers? I have begun our mini-unit with my homeschooled g’kids.
@Myra — good question! Do you have an online photo sharing site that you use? If not, get a free account at either Flickr (or at Photobucket). Upload your pictures and add some captions for explanation. You can link to your photostream instead of blog post. That would work instead of a blog.
Hello, heard about your great contest from another blogging buddy. Here are my contributions:
http://4crazykings.blogspot.com/2010/01/start-of-asian-new-year-and-valentines.html
http://4crazykings.blogspot.com/2010/01/asian-new-year-craft-tiger-lanterns.html
Mama King´s last blog ..Happy New Year Valentine: Coloring Page & Printable Card
Ok, here is my post. I need to go back and add your little button, forgot that part, I’ll do that tonight! but here is the link!
http://candacemercyisnew.blogspot.com/2010/02/chinese-new-year-our-great-wall.html
great FUN!!
We really enjoyed celebrating Chinese New Year. I have also loved reading all the great ideas here. This is our post.
http://lovingmylifeasamotherandawife.blogspot.com/2010/02/chinese-new-years-at-our-house.html
Ni hao Jimmie,
Xin Nian Kuai La!
We had a lot of fun for our CNY celebration. We weren’t nearly as adventurous as you food-wise. We stuck to chicken and beef – well, I couldn’t identify the meat in the jiao zi, but as far as I’m concerned, it was all chicken/beef! The only firecrackers we had was the animated gif on my CNY post here: http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/creekwoodchronicles/764763/
I hope the firecrackers don’t last all the way to Lantern Festival!
Blessings to you all,
Karen H.
Here is our Chinese New Year Post :0)
http://englishweather.blogspot.com/2010/02/chinese-new-year.html
Thanks for the inspiration :0)
We celebrated on Monday. Here’s our post—>
http://hopeistheword.wordpress.com/2010/02/17/chinese-new-year/
Thanks, Jimmie!
Amy @ Hope Is the Word´s last blog ..Chinese New Year
Thank you so, so much for your encouragement! I’m kind of a Valentine’s scrooge, so this was just what we needed this last weekend!
Click for our Chinese New Year Post
Melanie´s last blog ..Happy Belated New Year!
Hi Jimmie,
Well, here we go. We’ve got our post up finally! Here’s the link:
http://strainingonward.blogspot.com/2010/02/kung-hai-fat-choy.html
Emily Darling´s last blog ..Kung Hai Fat Choy