Easy Activities for Lunar New Year

January 17, 2023 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

Lunar New Year (also sometimes called Chinese New Year) is coming up (January 22 in 2023), and it’s a great opportunity to get kids interested in a bit of Asian culture.

One of the most common symbols of Lunar New Year is the dragon, which is said to bring luck in the new year.

Adventures in a Messy Life has a great tutorial for an upcycled dragon craft made with egg cartons and other things you might have lying around the house.

Messy Little Monster has a printable dragon mask and a printable dragon puppet, both of which would be fun for kids to cut out, color and play with. The puppet can even be folded in the middle to look like the long dragons that might be used in a parade this time of year.

Of course it’s not just about dragons, and making and playing musical instruments is another fun thing to do when learning about Lunar New year.

Chinese drums are fun and easy to make with minimal materials. Here’s a version using a wooden spoon and an old CD from Activity Village. I also have one on my blog where we made a monkey drum (bolang gu) out of paper plates and a paper towel roll.

Add some movement into your learning by coming up with yoga poses or other moves to mimic the animals of the Chinese zodiac (this idea is from Carrots are Orange). 2023 is the year of the rabbit, which is a pretty easy one. You can find more on the zodiac and which animals represent which years, here.

We’ve also got a collection of Chinese New Year books to read with kids, and you should also check out this fun, easy, classic paper lantern craft. Here’s another good roundup of Chinese New Year crafts for kids if you need more ideas!

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Easy Pen and Paper Games for Road Trips and Beyond

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

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