Welcome to the Year of the Dog

You may or may not know that I have began working for VIPKID last summer. For those of you not familiar with this company, it is the #1 work from home company as listed by Forbes. Basically, I am teaching English to children in China. I absolutely love my new job. Because I have been surrounded by these wonderful Chinese children, I decided to learn a little more about their biggest holiday, Chinese New Year.

I have learned that Chinese New Year is a 15 day festival. There are many traditional foods eaten during the celebrations. They eat long life noodles to have a long and happy life. They eat sweet rice cakes to have a sweet life. They decorate their homes in red and gold decorations. They use many paper lanterns. All of my students were really excited about hong bao, red envelopes filled with money. All of the members of the family give hong bao to the children.

I love the children's book "Popo's Lucky Chinese New Year", by Virginia Loh-Hagan and Renné Benoit. It explains so many of the customs and traditions. For a fun fanciful book, you should read "The Nian Monster" by Andrea Wang and Alina Chau. My children really enjoyed both stories.

This week we got together with our friends to learn about this holiday. We read the books above and discussed the traditions. Because dragons play such an important part of the Chinese culture, we made a fire breathing dragon puppet. We ate our long life noodles and tried dumplings. We watched a video about a parade in China Town.

If you want to use these books in your classroom check out my Teacher Pay Teachers store for literature units to go along with them.