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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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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