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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Printable Letter Books for Preschoolers

I did a post earlier this year with activities and ideas for teaching the alphabet, but a lot or learning letters and recognizing them just has to do with seeing them and working with them a lot.

That means coloring, tracing, identifying things that start with different letters and more.

One way to reinforce the letters is through little activity books like these cute printable alphabet books from Life Over Cs.

These are available for free when you subscribe to her newsletter, and I’d say that’s well worth it if you have a little one (or a group of little ones!) working on the alphabet and letter recognition.

Each mini book includes a collection of things that start with that letter to color, color and read with words that start with the letter, tracing the letter, finding the letter in a grid and other coloring pages with objects that start with that letter.

These little books are super useful reinforcing the different letters and giving kids different activities related to the letters.

If you do a letter of the day or letter of the week you can use a new book for each one, and then keep the copies in your reading center or in a basket where kids can look at them again.

And of course you can add in all the other letter activities you like, go on a scavenger hunt for items that start with that letter, read alphabet books, practice writing letters in rice or with pompoms or playdough or whatever sensory activities you like.

You can grab the free printables when you enter you email address at Life Over Cs, and check out her other great alphabet resources and activities while you are over there.

Do you have favorite activities for teaching letters to kids? I’d love to hear about them!

[Photo: Life Over Cs]

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