FREE Chinese New Year Topical Pack for Schools!
Chinese New Year is the most important event in the traditional Chinese calendar and is celebrated all around the world. This year, the event marks the end of the Year of the Rabbit and welcomes in the Year of the Dragon. The celebration starts on 10th February and continues for 15 days, culminating in the Lantern Festival on 24th February.
The event, also known as the Spring Festival and Lunar New Year, is an ancient festival, and as such has many myths and traditions surrounding it. The Great Race, which is the story of how Chinese New Year began, is one of these and we’ve included it in our topical pack.
To find out more and to join in the celebrations with our activities, download our free topical pack below.
What’s in the Chinese New Year topical pack?
The pack includes:
- a fact sheet detailing what Chinese New Year is, how people celebrate, and the personality traits of people born in each year of the Chinese Zodiac
- an activity based on the story of the Great Race
- fact-finding activities to help your pupils find out what animal they were born under
- colouring sheets for younger pupils
- a Chinese lantern-making activity for older pupils
- a tangram puzzle activity
Download it free here!
How to celebrate Chinese New Year with Busy Things?
As well as our special topical pack for Chinese New Year, we have several online activities on Busy Things that are perfect for the occasion.
General Chinese New Year-themed activities
We’ve traditional Chinese dragons and lions as well as Chinese lanterns for your pupils to colour in.
Which colours will your pupils choose? Will they stick with traditional red or use other colours to add their own twist?
Play ‘Chinese dragons and lions’ here!
New Year’s Fireworks
Fireworks feature frequently over Chinese New Year. There are often displays on New Year’s Eve, on New Year’s Day and for the Lantern Festival too.
Why not ask your children to create a superb virtual display with our online fireworks activity? There are lots of different effects and colours to choose from!
Play ‘Chinese New Year fireworks’ here!
Animals of the Chinese Zodiac
We’ve colouring-in sheets for the dragon as well as all the other animals within the Chinese Zodiac.
The children can colour them in online and also learn how to write each animal’s name in Chinese.
Play ‘Animals of the Chinese Zodiac’ here!
Did you know Busy Things has an assignments area?
If you assign our Animals of the Chinese Zodiac activity, you can send each of your children a rabbit to colour using our online paint tools. All assignments will save to the same place, so you will get a multi-page PDF full of rabbit pictures at the end!
Why not assign our Chinese lantern activity too? You can then let the children choose which to complete!
The assignments area is available to both subscribers and trialists!
Summary
We hope this blog has given you some ideas for activities to incorporate into your Chinese New Year celebrations.
As part of this blog, we’ve included several of our activities to play for free. These are: our Chinese New Year topical pack (free to download above), Chinese dragons and lions, Chinese New Year fireworks and Animals of the Chinese Zodiac.
Want to see more activities?
If you’d like to see more of our activities, and explore how our assignments and other teacher time-saving tools work, we’d love you to take out a free 28-day trial with us! You’re more than welcome to have a virtual tour via Zoom too. If you’d like one, contact us here and we’ll get in touch!
This blog has been revised and updated in February 2024 for 2024’s festivities.