School Age Storytime: Chinese New Year

 

2017: Year of the Rooster (Bedminster School)

Share fold-out book: The Dancing Dragon by Marcia Vaughan

Read: A New Year’s Reunion by Yu Li-Qiung (Maomao's father works in faraway places and comes home just once a year, for Chinese New Year. At first Maomao barely recognizes him, but before long the family is happily making sticky rice balls, listening to firecrackers, and watching the dragon dance in the streets below. Papa gets a haircut, makes repairs to the house, and hides a lucky coin for Maomao to find. But all too soon it is time for Papa to go away again.)

Action: “The Chicken Dance” on 40 English Songs for Kids, disk 2, #14 (and other cds)

Read: The Rooster’s Antlers: A Story of the Chinese Zodiac retold by Eric A. Kimmel (shared Chinese horoscopes with some groups – you can find yours here: http://carolsimonlevin.blogspot.com/2015/01/chinese-new-year-celebration.html)

Read: The Chickens Build a Wall by Jean-Francois Dumont (Originally published in French in 2011 by Père Castor-Flammarion under the title: Une poule derriére un mur. When a hedgehog turns up in the farmyard, a pigeon stirs up suspicion of the stranger, and a rooster encourages the chickens to spend all wintering build an enormous wall to keep out "prickly invaders.” When the hedgehog emerges from hibernation inside the wall and can’t get out because there is no door, the chickens get to know him and discover he is a friendly guy.)

Action song: “I Know a Chicken” on Laurie Berkner’s Whaddaya Think of That. (track #11)

Read: Sam and the Lucky Money by Karen Chinn (Sam receives four bright red envelopes decorated with shiny gold emblems as part of the traditional Chinese New Year celebration, each containing a dollar. As he accompanies his mother through Chinatown, his anticipation of how to spend it diminishes when he realizes that the ``lucky money'' won't buy as much as he had hoped. Further sobered after an encounter with a man he stumbles upon in the street, he decides that his four dollars would be best spent on the barefoot stranger.)

Read: This Next New Year by Janet S. Wong (A Chinese-Korean boy relates how he and his friends celebrate the "lunar new year, the day of the first new moon." One child celebrates the holiday with "Thai food to go," while a non-Asian child likes to get "red envelopes stuffed with money from her neighbor who came from Singapore." The narrator talks about how their family’s luck hasn’t been good lately but through the traditions of house cleaning, lighting firecrackers, and vowing not to “say one awful thing, none of that can’t do, don’t have, why me, ” tomorrow will be a fresh start because he has “so many dreams I’m ready now to make come true.”)

Entering/Leaving Music for classes “Chinese New Year” track #11 on Kimbo’s MultiCultural Movement Fun.

Left Reader’s Theater Chinese New Year’s scripts.

Another good rooster book for K+: The Rooster's Gift by Pam Conrad. (Rooster thinks his Gift is making the sun rise, until one morning when the sun rises without him.)

2.2017

General plans:

Talk about different kinds of New Years (January 1^st, 1^st day of school year, Rosh Hashonah), then introduce the holiday “Chinese” or “Asian” New Year:

Read: This Next New Year – Janet S. Wong (Lovely multicultural book in which a young Chinese child talks about how the new year offers a chance for a fresh start, compare clean dust with Passover.) or A New Year’s Reunion – Yu Li-Qiong (Young child celebrates the new year with her father who works far away and can only return home once a year) or Sam and the Lucky Money by Karen Chinn (a boy in Chinatown eventually decides to spend his lucky money to help a homeless man – also available as a DVD/video from Weston Woods)

Share fold-out book: The Dancing Dragon by Marcia Vaughan (action/sounds) booktalk: Lion Dancer (394.268 WAT)

Read a Chinese New Year’s folktale variant: The Runaway Rice Cake (Gingerbread Man) or The Runaway Wok (Magic Pot) both by Ying Chang Compestine or Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas by Natasha Yim (Goldilocks) or One Grain of Rice by Demi (Chinese mathematical folktale on the power of exponents!) or Stone Soup by Jon J. Muth 398.2 MUT

Introduce Chinese Zodiac – comes from a legend – read one of the variations:

The Race for the Chinese Zodiac by Gabrielle Wang or The Rooster's Antlers* (398.20951 KIM) or The Animals of the Chinese Zodiac (J133.5 WHI) or Cat and Rat (J133.5 YOU) or The Great Race: The Story of the Chinese Zodiac (398.20951 CASEY)

*Rooster doesn't say the usual "cock-a-doodle-doo" -- remarked that different languages hear animal sounds differently - here (as promised) are some websites that explore this:
http://foundintranslation.berkeley.edu/?p=2440
http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/animal.html

Figure out animal signs for children in your group – share their Chinese horoscopes from one of the Zodiac books above, or use longer versions in Animals in the Stars (133.5 Crawford)

Other possible read-alouds:
The Paper Dragon – Marguerite Davol (beautiful but LONG)
The Dragon New Year: A Chinese Legend – Bouchard
The Seven Chinese Sisters – Tucker
The Last Dragon – Nunes
The Wishing Tree – Thong
Stone Soup by Jon J. Muth
The Runaway Wok by Ying Chang Compestine
BeeBim Bop! by Linda Sue Park

Bedm 1.11