Make Fun Paper Lanterns for Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is coming up soon (Jan. 28, to be exact) and it’s a lot of fun to talk about the traditions surrounding the holiday and to make crafts related to it.

Several times over the years we have gone to a presentation our local library does related to Chinese New Year, where they talk about the traditions and have traditional dancers (and a dragon).

A classic kid craft for Chinese New Year is making paper lanterns. They are made from red paper because red scares the dragon away.

I like this spin on Chinese lanterns from NurtureStore, where they used sparkly paint to decorate them and did a couple of different construction methods.

While you’re checking that tutorial out, make sure you don’t miss Cathy’s other great content for Chinese New Year including sensory writing, a few different dragon crafts, counting in Chinese and more. So much fun!

Do you celebrate Chinese New Year or do anything special for it with your kids? I’d love to hear about it! It’s the year of the rooster so I’ll have to pull together some rooster crafts soon.

[Photo via NurtureStore.]

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Celebrate the Year of the Dragon

Shark Week generally happens in July, but any time is a good time to learn more about sharks.

First, start with some fun whale facts like these from Kids Craft Room. Here I learned about the dwarf lantern shark, which is the smallest shark and only grows to about 6-8 inches (about 15-20 cm) long. It also emits light. How cool is that?

Natural Beach Living has some great printable shark information guides, where kids can learn about different kinds of sharks, match the facts to the pictures, or print out doubles and do a shark memory game.

Living Life an Learning has some great shark activity pages including the parts of a shark, types of sharks, a crossword puzzle and more. Also check out their parts of a shark and word scramble download, and a life cycle worksheet.

Learn about how sharks float with this great activity from JDaniel4’s Mom.

Need more facts about sharks? This fact pact from The WOLFe PACK on Teacher Pay Teachers includes fact sheets, a printable flip book, informational text, vocabulary, comprehension questions and more.

Living Montessori Now has a great collection of shark themed activities with a Montessori inspired twist. You’ll find a shark roll and cover, shark phonics and lots more shark activities Deb has collected from all over the Internet.

Remember the “Sharknado” movie? A Few Shortcuts turned the combination of sharks and tornadoes into a fun science activity. You’ll need a bottle connector for this project but otherwise should have everything you need on hand. Use their template to make your sharks out of aluminum foil. So fun!

You can also do some shark themed coloring with these coloring pages from Encouraging Moms at Home. Or make a cool 3D shark with this template from korkotak. And there are tons of different shark crafts collected in this post from Kids Activities Blog.

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