Chinese New Year RAH Style

You may think I'm a little behind on my post since Chinese New Year was January 26th, but if you did your homework, you would know that the new year is celebrated for the next 15 days after. So, I'm pretty much on track still.

At RAH we had a Chinese New Year activity, which I was in charge of probably because I'm Chinese or something. I gave a brief explanation about it, then I taught them how to say Gong Hay Fat Choy. I'm pretty sure my tones were off, but I don't think it really matters for them. Next I showed them lucky money and had them each come up by their animal groups and had them say Gong Hay Fat Choy before handing them their lucky money (a whoppin 50 cents and a fake 50 dollar bill). Not gonna lie, it was pretty adorable especially since most of them said it completely wrong or just mumbled something. They all still got their packets.

See, here I am giving them out.

Then I taught them how to use chopsticks and they practiced on marshmallows. So yes, some of them ended up stabbing the mallow instead but hey, whatever works right? Some of them took on the challenge to pick up pieces of candy and succeeded!

Next I gave them their animal year to color listed with the characteristics that are associated with the animal.

Here's all of them (55 people) holding up their finished product.

After, I taught them how to write Good Luck in Chinese. I taught them about stroke order and did a step by step demonstration while they followed along. Hopefully I did the strokes in the right order... I really just guessed what seemed logical, applying what I was taught in my very young childhood. Too bad my characters are incredibly boxy and not very flowy like they should be.

But they did a pretty good job following along. Ok, so not everyone's character looked like this persons, but for the most part, it went over well.

Then we did the dragon parade/lantern festival. We don't have a big dragon costume, but we did have this tiny accordian dragon you see pictured that led the parade. Everyone else carried a small lantern and paraded around the room following the dragon and to the tune of Chinese music I found at the library.

Look how happy they are!

I had them hang up their lanterns in our fake trees.

Looks pretty snazy huh?

This is what they ate for dinner.... I didn't plan the menu so I'm not sure what it all is, I didn't end up eating any of it, but it's Asian food... I did pass out those tangerines though because those are good luck!