Chinese New Year!

It has been a crazy past 3 weeks! We had 2 weeks of snow days and 2 hour delays so I felt like I fell so far behind. We also got observed by our principal for 5 minutes to see if we are interacting with the standards and are being global since we are an IB school. Well lets just say I didn't get checked for either, and instead of getting discouraged I took it as a challenge. They want us to be global in all, yes ALL, subjects. 2nd grade's continent of focus is Asia, which can have difficulties sometimes finding materials. Luckily these past few weeks we have been able to focus on the Chinese New Year.  We started with making Chinese Lanterns and tied this into our writing unit for How-to's.

                                                        Chinese Lantern

 

 As we made the lanterns I modeled how to write a How-to with the title, materials and method, which was introduced to them prior to this activity.  We did a few different crafts that connected to the Chinese New Year as well to practice the format of a How-to. We made a Chinese Red Envelope and a Chinese Rattle Drum. The kids loved doing these crafts. Next week they are making an Asian hat and Dragon Puppet.

                                             Chinese Red Envelope

Chinese Rattle Drum

 

To make our Chinese New Year Celebration more authentic we had Chinese food and a parade around the school.

 They even carried their lanterns with them during the parade. They also made Sheep Masks since it is the year of the sheep.

To show all we have learned about the Chinese we created Flip Flap Books from Simply Skilled in Second that came out adorable! We worked on 2 letters a day and usually when I do these adorable books I do it with them, but this time I had them work on this independently, except my kiddos that need teacher help. 

The kiddos were able to work on these independently because Anna included a brochure of all the information needed to answer all the information on each letter.

 

                                                         Finished product
Due to being told I wasn't being global you know I had to display these beauties in the hallway for everyone to see! :)   Thank You Anna from Simply Skilled in Second for these adorable Flip Flap Books!

 If you would like to get that mazing Flip Flap Book click on the picture just above.

Hope you enjoyed seeing all the wonderful things we did the past few weeks for the Chinese New Year. I will keep you all posted on what other fun global things we are doing in our classroom.