Melendra shares a great program for all ages:
I created a program celebrating Chinese New Year for the Year of the Dragon.
I started out by sharing some basic information about Chinese New Year, such as things that are done to celebrate it and the Chinese Zodiac. I used a PowerPoint to show some images of Chinese dragons, and we watched a Youtube video of dragon dances. I brought all the library's books about Lunar New Year for display and check out as well.
After the "intro," we split up into stations. I had 5 craft stations:
- Writing a good luck Kanji using a template;
- Folding lucky red envelopes;
- Making paper lanterns;
- Scratch board dragons;
- Decorate the dragon table. (The dragon was made of a large head that I'd made out of papermache and painted red attached to a long body made of red, gold, and purple plastic tablecloths taped together.)
Kids rotated through the craft centers and a sweeping out the bad luck game. I also made a large Chinese Zodiac spinner that had birth years associated with specific animals. I talked about how each year aligned with an animal, and let them spin the wheel just for fun.
I happen to own 2 giant carp windsocks from when I lived in Japan, so I used those to help decorate (carp signify fame and fortune).
We had fortune cookies and orange juice for snacks. To finish off the party, we had a dragon dance of our own where we paraded through the library with the decorated dragon. Kids held on to the table cloth as we marched around together. We ended up back in the original room and everyone got to pop a popper to scare away any evil spirits.
We had a huge turnout for the party, and many of the Chinese students who attend KSU brought their kids. It was fun to have this demographic mix more with our more traditional patrons.
Graphic courtesy of Pixabay
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