Chinese New Year Activities for Ages 3-6: Plus Free Dragon-Themed Number and Letter Printables

This year, Chinese New Year is on Monday, February 8th, 2016.  I wanted to share the free printable I made last year and also share the China lapbook and some of the activities the kids did when they were ages 2-6 or so. I also highlighted some of the books that the kids loved at that age.

First, here is the free printable. There are clothes-pin number and letter cards.

Click here to get this free printable:

 Dragon-Themed-Number-Letter-Activities-PreK

China Lapbook Activities:

When the kids were 6, 4 and 2, we did a unit on China. We made Mooncakes and did a lot of activities that we put together in a lapbook. Well, actually, we put this one together with a comb binder. I’ll share some of those photos again below and will share some of the things we did along the way.

The great thing about making a lapbook or notebook project like this is that the kids can pull it out and look at their project for years to come.  We still have ours and pull it out from time to time. The kids will say, “Oh, I remember doing that!”

We went over the geography of China, colored the flag (Activity Village has great free flag printables), learned some Chinese characters:

We learned about the Great Wall and about foot binding. LD was fascinated by the photos I printed out of a woman we met in China whose foot had been bound as a child. For the Great Wall, I had them put glue along the China map and they drizzled sand on top of the glue. If you’re feeling really adventurous you could make the Great Wall out of foam project blocks like these: FloraCraft Styrofoam Kits, Make It Fun: Project Bricks Sand (affiliate link):

We did a cute dragon hand craft. There’s a free printable for learning about the Story of the Chinese Zodiac that we printed out here at Activity Village.

And we talked about a couple of stories from China, Chinese animals, and the art of Chinese paper cutting .

Again, some of the websites we used most were:

• Activity Village – Chinese New Year
• DLTK-kids.com – China
• HomeschoolShare.com – China
• Making Learning Fun – Chinese New Year

Some of the books we read for that unit included. The Story about Ping (affiliate link) was recommended by the Five in a Row Curriculum. We didn’t use that PreK curriculum, but we read a lot of the books they recommended. You can find  lots of activities over at homeschoolshare.com–The Story of Ping

 

We all LOVED these two books by Demi.  We read them over and over at the table.  The Empty Pot (affiliate link) has a lovely message to it and The Boy Who Painted Dragons (affiliate link) has gorgeous illustrations.  Highly recommend these two books!

Tikki Tikki Tembo (affiliate link)  was a  been a favorite of our for years! This is the story of a boy with the long name who fell down the well. Another highly recommended book!

The Magic Paintbrush (affiliate link)  is a chapter book I read to DD (80pages), who was 4.  It is about a boy who lives with his grandfather in Chinatown.The grandfather gives him a paintbrush that is magic and brings things to life.  DD and I enjoyed it.

We all enjoyed this version of the Liang and the Magic Paintbrush (affiliate link)  by Demi. The illustrations once are beautiful (sorry I sound like a broken record in this post!). I loved the message in this tale. We would all recommend this book.

The Five Chinese Brothers  (affiliate link)  is a folk tale about five brothers who have various abilities. A very cute story.  ED especially loved this book.

Of course if your kids are older, you may want to study China in more depth. In that case, you may be interested in these posts (and free printables) from a couple of years ago:

Posts in our China Unit (done several years later):

• China Fact Sheet
• China Unit: A Huge List of Children’s Books
• Ancient China Packet (Free Notebook Pages about the early dynasties: Shang, Zhou, Qin)

• Chinese Brush Painting Lesson
• Free Confucianism Notebook Pages
• Buddhism Learning Pack
• Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan — Free Notebook Pages, Books, and Resources

• Marco Polo – Free Notebook Pages, Books and Resources

That’s about it for today!  See you again soon here or over at our Homeschool Den Facebook Page!  Don’t forget to Subscribe to our Homeschool Den Newsletter. ~Liesl

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links in this post are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase.

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