Lunar New Year (or Chinese New Year as we call it at our house!) is coming up on February 1st. I wanted to share some of the ideas we did last year that made celebrating together extra fun.
My mom is Chinese and grew up in Taiwan. She came to America when she was twelve with her mom and brother. They were able to get away right before the Iron Curtain, leaving their father and other siblings behind in China. They did not reunite again until many years later.
My grandmother passed away when I was a baby so I unfortunately never got a chance to know her. But by the time I was born my grandfather and step grandmother were now living in the states with us. I have many fond memories of our Chinese heritage from visiting them. While my children won't have quite the same experience as I did, I hope to share with them what I can about our family legacy.
My mom and uncle were able to come to America at such a young age that gave them so many more opportunities that the American life brought back then. It is what makes our family who we are and I am so grateful for that.
First we painted and put together these toilet paper roll koi fish (following this tutorial). They turned out really beautiful and were so fun to make!
We hung them on display from our fireplace to easily reach and look at.
We read some of our favorite books about Chinese culture - I just love Grace Lin's books!
We also put together these fun paper dragons (finished photos near the end of this post). The dragon printables I got from The Magic Playbook.
And we enjoyed some grocery store premade Chinese food! I believe we were just coming out of a week of snow so instead of our usual Chinese take out, I had purchased a few things in case we were snowed in. We have chopsticks for us and the kids that are always fun to use.
Then the kids got to open up their red envelopes they receive from my mom.
She is definitely generous! I always remember getting a one dollar bill from my grandmother when I was a kid!!!
Then we had some leftover sparklers from the summer that we lit.
The dragons are really fun to make and play with! I plan to have the kids make these again this year.
Happy Chinese New Year!
