Lunar New Year 2025

The Lunar New Year will begin on the 29th of January and 2025 is the year of the snake. I don’t often get time to fit it in to my plans but it could be a really fun theme for the rest of the week if you are looking for something a little different, even for a Friday afternoon or something!

Lesson Ideas:

The Lunar New Year Animals

Each year in the Chinese calendar is represented by one of 12 animals and each animal has its own personality traits. A fun way to get students involved is to have them discover their own Chinese Zodiac animal based on the year they were born. They can explore this animal and do a project on it! The students find their animal using a printable Zodiac chart. They could also make a poster that includes the traits of their animal. They can draw the animal and decorate it with symbols of things they think represent them

Chinese Calligraphy:

Exploring Chinese characters and writing the symbols is a lovely lesson for the older classes, I would say fourth class up. The students could explore writing their names using Chinese characters as part of an art lesson.

Paper Lanterns:

Paper lanterns are a big part of Lunar New Year celebrations. You can make these with students and discuss the significance of light and how lanterns are used during the celebrations, especially during the Lantern Festival (the 15th day of Lunar New Year). They can decorate their lanterns with their own designs.

History/ Explore traditions:

Lunar New Year is full of interesting customs, like giving red envelopes (hongbao) filled with money, the traditional Lion Dance, and feasting on special foods for good luck. Have a class discussion about the Chinese New Year. You can even create a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting how we celebrate New Year compared to people in China.