Aaron showing his classmates the candy tray and the "lai see" (lucky money) envelopes (with 2 chocolate coins inside) he would be giving them.
Nicole reading Bringing In the New Year by Grace Lin to the class. Since it was Aaron's special "parent helper" day, he enjoyed sitting on Daddy's lap during Circle time!
Nicole dressed as the dragon.
After our Dragon Dance, the children used rhythm sticks while listening to Chinese music.
Aaron and Donovan's preschool is a parent cooperative one, in which each day a child in the class has his/her parent(s) as "parent helper(s)." We rotate through so that we parent help once every 17 school days. We had arranged it so that we would be the parent helpers during Chinese New Year.
We read the book, Bringing in the New Year by Grace Lin and talked a bit about what we do as a family to celebrate the holiday. For example, wearing red for good luck, getting haircuts before the New Year so we don't cut off the good luck, and giving "lai see" ("hong bao" in Mandarin) which is "lucky money." We brought a dragon head for a dragon dance with the children, which they all loved doing.
For snack we had clementines, Goldfish crackers to symbolize the whole fish, long noodles to symbolize a long life, Chinese New Year Cake -which they loved!, and fortune cookes.
We also brought our Chinese candy tray filled with candy and each child was so happy to choose some candy to start the new year off with sweetness! Aaron was so proud to hand out lai see (lucky money) to his classmates (with chocolate coins inside).
This is just Aaron's 3rd day of school and we were amazed at how comfortable he is with his new teachers and classmates (who have been together since September). Everyone commented and said it seems like he has been there all along! That was great to see!
Tomorrow morning we go to Donovan's classroom to do this again. His class has been studying about Chinese New Year and they have made a paper mache dragon head and a LONG dragon body. The local newspaper may be coming to do a story!!
Gong Hei Fat Choi!
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