Lunar New Year Activities for Kids

January 16, 2018 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

The Lunar New Year begins on Feb. 16, so there’s plenty of time to think about activities you can do with your kids related to the holiday.

The upcoming year is the year of the dog, which of course provides lots of crafting opportunities.

But if you want specific Chinese New Year projects, here are some options for you.

Tips from a Typical Mom has a nice roundup of Chinese New Year related activities, including crafts, songs, learning to use chopsticks and information about the upcoming year:

The sign of 2018 Earth Dog is mountains over mountains. 2018 will be a very strong Earth. That implies the events related to land, real estate, county territory, agriculture, earthquake, mineral and the Earth will be more active than before. In Chinese astrology, Earth is also connected to stability, meditation and religion. Many people will be interested in spiritual or religious study.

She also has some fun dog crafts.

The Imagination Box has a great Year of the Dog art activity that is a free download at Teachers Pay Teachers, which is part of her larger activity pack that runs $5.95.

Holidappy has some year of the dog coloring pages, with different kinds of dogs so you can download and color one that looks like your dog.

And Red Ted Art has a nice collection of general Chinese New Year crafts and activities that are great for any year. Lots of great dragon crafts, musical instruments and more.

Do you celebrate Chinese New Year or Lunar New Year with your kids? I’d love to know what you do!

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Games to Make with LEGO Bricks

When my daughter was younger she had a ton of LEGO bricks, and I’m honestly a little sad we got rid of most of them because there are so many fun things to do with LEGOs outside of the kits you bought them in.

I love seeing all the ideas people have for LEGO building challenges, and I have shared some ideas for LEGO games before, but I saw one on Pinterest the other day that I felt was worth a mention.

This one is for those ’80s and ’90s kids who spent sick days home from school watching “The Price is Right”: LEGO Plinko!

For those who don’t know about Plinko, the original was a giant peg board set up at an angle and the contestant would drop a flat disc at the top of the board. As it moved down the board it would hit the pegs and change the way it moved, and there would be different prizes in the slots at the bottom where the piece would land.

This version from Play Party Game works on the same principle, using LEGO bricks to make the game board and marbles in place of the Plinko disc since your game board isn’t flat.

You can really use whatever bricks you have for this build, and while it shows all the pegs the same size and evenly spaced, you can play with different configurations and see what happens. It’s engineering and a game!

And while you’re playing with your LEGOs, make sure to check out this post from Kids Craft Room that includes minute to win it style games you can do with LEGO. From speed sorting to tower building as fast as you can, these ideas are sure to get you thinking about different ways to play with LEGO.

And if you need even more ideas, check out my post with LEGO building challenges you can print out for kids (and adults!) to try.

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