Welcome to the Year of The Dog! In a recent story we read in our Wonders Reading program, we read about a girl who was able to celebrate the New Year twice! Twice? Huh?
Well, the story begins with how she first celebrated the New Year while in the United States of America. To celebrate, they had a lot of festivities in her city, with many people watching a parade, and gathering to countdown the last seconds of the old year and welcome the new year with spectacular fireworks coloring the night sky!
She then went on a plane, traveling to China! In China, they celebrate the Lunar New Year! It's not celebrated in just one day, but over several days! Fifteen days to be exact! The Lunar new year lands on a different day each year, unlike the new year that is celebrated in the U.S., which is always on January 1. So that is how she could celebrate the New Year TWICE!
To read more about the rest of the story, check out the Wonders (Connect Ed.) online program! Read about it in Unit 4, week 3!
On February 16, we couldn't let the day go by without having some Chinese New Year festivities ourselves! In another article we read in Scholastic News, it was about the Lunar New Year and lion dancing. We viewed a video to show us how actual martial artists in China maneuvered around in lion costumes, entertaining and celebrating with many people along the streets of China-town. Some of them were skillful acrobats, but that took years of training to do! We could probably handle moving the lion's head up and down, side to side, and even shimmying our way around the room! Thanks to Mrs. Saito's recent donations of her son's lion head puppets, we were able to practice just in time for the up-coming 2nd grade manapua making event!
Enjoy these pictures of our very talented lion-dancers in the making! Kung Hee Fat Choy!
Aloha, Mrs. Wong
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| Here comes the lion! Get your lucky red-paper ready! Feed him for Good Luck! These RED envelopes are called "hongbao" in Mandarin and "lai see" in Cantonese. |
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| Can you just imagine how long it takes to learn how to jump from one platform to another while being under a huge lion costume? That takes a lot of patience and hard work! |
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| Moving around in the lion costume takes focus, imagination, creativity, and even muscles!! |
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| The Year of the Dog is expected to bring peace and calmness. Let's hope it will! |
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