Chinese New Year Card

Friday ( 21/01/2011)

a) Zodiac Animal Story
Teacher: does anyone know about this story?
• The kids were not sure thus, I shared the story with them. That allows them to understand the animal sequence better.
• The king of China wanted a proper Chinese calendar. Thus, he suggested a competition among animals to swim across a long river. The first 12 animals would be named as the years.
• The ox could swim across and allow the rat and cat to sit on its back. Upon reaching the finishing line, the rat pushed the cat into the water. The rat the jumped to the line and became the first animal. The ox the second. The tiger swam slowly as it enjoyed the water and rest upon the way. Tiger was the third. The rabbit hopped onto each log that it could find and reached the finishing line. Dragon came later as it was making rain for the people and puffing wind to help the rabbit hop onto the log. The snake hid behind the horse’s leg and it didn’t know about it. As the horse reached the finishing line, the snake jumped and flew to it first. So snake was number 6 and horse number 7. The goat, the monkey and the rooster found a raft and worked together to sail to the finshing line. The Emperor was impressed and named the goat as year 8, the monkey as year 9 and the rooster as year 10. The eleventh year was named after the dog. The dog swam and bathed at the same time. It also slept thus, it was late. The twelfth was the pig because it kept swimming and eating a lot. So, It was the last to reach.

b) The pop-up card.
• First, I showed the kids the steps to make the card. They cut a short line in the middle part of a colour paper. Then, the part was folded. Next, each kid cut 2 pieces of flowers and pasted to a stem each. After that, they pasted the little flowers to the colour paper.

c) Drawing: My family.
• As this Chinese New Year card is for their loving family, the kids drew pictures of themselves together with their family. There are picture of a house, a car and etc.
• Some preferred to draw pictures of dragon dance or lion dance.
• We would continue with the cover page next Monday.