Learning Activities for the Year of the Horse

When Lunar New Year comes around (that’s February 17, 2026), we’ll be ushering in the Year of the Horse, so let’s look at some horse (and lunar new year more generally) activities to try in the classroom or at home.

I have a post on general activities for Lunar New Year including DIY drums and dragons.

Living Life and Learning has some Lunar New Year printables on the Chinese zodiac including an I-spy, crossword and wheel of the zodiac kids can color, cut and glue the animals to. There’s also a little story with comprehension questions and a page for kids to draw their own zodiac sign. They also have another set of worksheets that includes the zodiac years, animals, a different I-spy, writing practice and an activity to find others in the classroom or household with different animal signs.

Hub Pages has printable red envelopes and bookmarks for the year of the horse, as well as printable coloring pages with a horse theme.

Activity Village has year of the horse printables for members that include mazes and a worksheet for coming up with words in the letters of year of the horse.

Teachers Pay Teachers has a lot of good resources for Lunar New Year in general and the year of the horse more specifically. To point out a couple, GATER Educator Kris Prince has a set of activities that includes reading comprehension about Lunar New Year, the year of the horse and the history of paper, and activities including a horse collage and calligraphy.

And Hope Creek Art Studios has a great set for art teachers of all grade levels on how to draw a horse that includes different techniques for different ages and skill levels such as working on symmetry or doing a one-line drawing.

Grab a printable horse crown/headband from Let’s Go to Learn. They also have year of the horse and more general Lunar New Year coloring pages.

Or get a full unit study and activity pack from My Mega Bundles Shop. This one includes information on the Chinese zodiac, practice writing horse in cursive, history and trivia, color b number, puzzles, math games, printable decorations and red envelopes and more. This set is aimed at kids 4-10 and looks like lots of fun.

After sharing some witch themed math activities, I found a bunch more fun printable worksheets with a Halloween theme for kids to try, so let’s take a look at some more low-prep Halloween learning fun.

Give kids practice measuring bats, spiders, ghosts and more with these printables from What I Have Learned Teaching. Kids can use a ruler, unit cubes or even little Halloween themed erasers to measure and track the size of the images.

Practice symmetry by drawing half a haunted house, ghost, skull or other simple images with this activity from Printables Hub.

I always love a good roll and draw activity, too, so check out this roll and draw a ghost activity (which has printable instructions) from Finding Myself Young.

Missy Printable Design has a cute set of Halloween worksheets for preschool, including tracing the letter H and a haunted house, spider counting, number tracing, sequencing, coloring pages and more.

The Halloween themed printables from The Artisan Life are meant to be playdough mats, and you can definitely use them for that to make the shape and trace the letters. But you could also use pipe cleaners or Wikki Stix, or line up buttons or anything else on them.

Older kids will enjoy this witch’s brew logic puzzle from Education.com. The witch has made different potions with different colors that do different things, and using the clues you can figure out which one is which. (Don’t worry; there’s an answer key included if you can’t figure it out on your own!)

Another fun puzzle is this decoder activity from Crafting Cheerfully. The holiday icons each represent a letter, and kids can use the decoder to answer the riddle. This isn’t a free resource (and the link in the post is broken but you can find it here) but it includes 20 riddles and an editable file so you can make up your own codes to decipher.

Have you read?

Leave a Reply