Chinese New Year Lesson Planner and Unit

For many of us, January and February are the longest, coldest, darkest months of the year. Spring vacation seems light years away. It never seems to get light out and the sun rarely ever peaks it head out. This is a great time to pull out a fresh exciting batch of lessons for your class or home school group. Why not explore the Chinese New Year with all its color, festivity, fun and pageantry? Chinese New Year begins on February 7 in 2008 and celebrates the year of the Rat. Here is a unit with enough lessons for a two week unit. You'll find social studies, literature, writing, art, music, craft and food lessons.

First, as with any good unit, it is important to give it a firm foundation in literature. And the Chinese New Year is a perfect place to find great literature. Click the preceding link to find children's' books specifically for the Chinese New Year. Here are also some recommendations for several ages and grades which can give us some insight into Chinese culture.

The Chinese Cinderella (Yeh Mah, Newbery)
The Story About Ping (Flack,Caldecott)
Yung-Fu of the Upper Yangtze (Lewis, Newbery)
Bound (Napoli)
Lon Po-Po (Young, Caldecott)
Mei Li (Handforth, Caldecott)
Shen of the Sea (Bowie, Newbery)
In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson (Simont, Newbery)
Yeh-Shen: A Chinese Cinderella Story Ai-Ling Louie)
Tikki-Tikki Tembo Arlene Mosel (Caldecott)

Depending upon your age level, designate some silent or read aloud time in class. I opt for read aloud at any age, or at least popcorn reading. Instead of large book reports or forms to fill out, give each student a one subject notebook for a reading journal. Assign a daily entry into the journal from a list of options posted the journal. This will assure a variety of writing response types. Students will also be able to make choices about how to write. Here are some sample writing options:

a haiku about a character (this is a form of Chinese poetry and does double duty as culture tool
What would you do if...?
Character map (show how each interacts with each other)
Story timeline
describe the conflict
cartoon or anime of the story or event
ten new words and definitions
book review