Chinese New Year

I gave the children oranges and hong bao (lucky red envelopes filled with money) at breakfast, and they both wore red in honor of Chinese New Year.

Sebastian's amazing and inspiring kindergarten teacher organized an entire day to recognize and celebrate Lunar New Year and Chinese culture in general. Seb's classmates include two very recent Chinese immigrants (as in, they began the year with almost no English), plus three or four other Asian/part-Asian kids, so it was very appropriate and really fun.

Ethan Z. and his younger brother are wearing new clothes at the top of this picture, in honor of the day. Their father brought in red envelopes with a crisp, new $1 bill and passed one out to each of the children - Mrs. Huntley had them all recite "Xie xie" in response to Mr. Zhang's "Xin nian kuai le".

Here they are (with Liesl in the mix, next to Seb), singing a song called "Gung Hay Fat Choy" - Happy New Year.

They made yellow paper lanterns, decorated with streamers.

They decorated dragon masks and cut them out to do a dance. They also learned to write some very simple Chinese characters and then painted them onto a red scroll.

Ethan brought in a Korean lunar new year outfit that he had worn as a toddler, and we tried it out on Liesl. It fit perfectly, and she was super happy and so cute in it. Mrs. Huntley lifted her onto a table for everyone to see, and then paraded her around to all the other kindergarten classes.

And finally, for lunch they had rice and orange chicken, with tea, chopsticks, fortune cookies, and oranges, in a festively decorated lunchroom.