A Culture Party Celebrating Chinese New Year for Kids

We have a great times throwing a culture party to learn about our beautiful world, so with Chinese New Year celebrations in full swing, I decided it was time to teach the kids about Chinese culture by showcasing the various elements that make up a typical Chinese New Year party. We had a blast! This Chinese New Year for kids celebration includes our favorite children’s books about Chinese culture, explanations of Chinese dragons, red envelope traditions and other symbolism, dim sum menu and a Chinese drum craft.

Celebrate Chinese New Year with a Culture Party!

The Chinese New Year is the longest and most ancient celebration in the Chinese calendar and is often referred to as the Lunar New Year. It lasts 15 days and typically ends with the Lantern Festival. Check out all the details of this culture party as we celebrate Chinese New Years for kids to learn, engage and become immersed with the world around them from home.

Chinese New Year for Kids

We’ve been preparing for our Chinese New Year culture party by learning about the Chinese culture and celebration for the past few weeks. We visited Vegas’s Chinatown where we bought all our party decorations and introduced the kids’ to some traditional Chinese cuisine. Although one day we hope to travel to China and fully immerse ourselves in this beautiful culture, your local Chinatown is a fun way to hear the language and explore.

Children’s Books on Chinese Culture

There are some wonderful children’s books on Chinese culture and the Chinese New Year story for kids. Here are a few of our favorites about Chinese New Year story.

Max Celebrates Chinese New Year – part of an early reader’s series and uses simple sentence structures and sight words that my preschooler is learning. I won’t deny that I also love that the main character is a little brown boy who is invited to celebrate Chinese New Year with his friend Lily, who has a Chinese mom and white dad. Ya’ll know I’m a nut for all things multiracial!

Dim Sum for Everyone to teach us about the culture of Dim Sum and create an expectation of the food we ate during our culture party.

Chinatown was a great read to reflect our family’s experience.

Paper Crafts for Chinese New Year was a fun resource for additional paper crafts that we enjoyed throughout the week.

Chinese New Year Story

Alina decided she wanted to make a DIY Chinese Drum Craft (seen below with Sebas) and we learned that kids used drums during the Lion Dance of the New Year’s parade to keep a rhythm and beat by twisting the drum between their fingertips. Alina and I had a great time making the craft together, while I was happy to watch Sebastian practice his fine motor skills.

Related: Chinese New Year Drum Craft for Kids

Chinese Dragon Symbolism

The Chinese dragon is a significant symbol in Chinese New Years parades and celebrations. They are friendly, mystical beasts who breathe clouds, often appear in human form, and are frequent characters in ancient stories. Chinese dragons represent power, strength, and masculinity. The Emperor of China is told to sit on the dragon throne, shown with 5 claws instead of the usual 4 to distinguish him from lesser beasts.

Chinese Fans for Chinese New Year Party

During our visit to Chinatown, a nice woman explained to Alina that Chinese Fans are used in a traditional dance that reflect beauty, grace and skill. This article from eHow on The History of Chinese Fan Dance is really informative, and we spent time watching videos of dancers on YouTube. Alina had fun practicing the dance moves with the fans we bought in Chinatown. In typical little brother fashion, Sebas was right behind his big Sissy, practicing his moves too!

 

Chinese Food Culture: Party Food

My plan was to pull our Chinese New Year culture party together on January 31st, but since we’ve been pretty sick over here, it didn’t happen until yesterday. Luckily, since the New Year is celebrated for 15 days, we are still culturally in-line with Chinese tradition.

On the night before Chinese New Years begins, families gather together for a party with lots of food and favor of good luck. Like in our children’s books, we put down a red table cloth, lots of red decorations and plenty of orange mandarins. We learned that Dim Sum is typically served, which translates as “little plates” and represents the family serving style of Chinese culture.

For dinner, we got dim sum from a new cafe in town… it was so yummy! We ordered some typical Chinese fare, like pork fried rice, low mien, sweet and sour chicken, Mongolian beef, wontons, egg rolls and egg drop soup. But we also got some dim sum of steamed chicken buns, baked bbq chicken buns, shrimp dumplings, stuffed mushrooms, and shrimp shu mai. This is a great time for the kids to practice their chopsticks skills!

Chinese New Year Red Envelope Tradition

In Chinese tradition, Red Envelopes are given during special occasions, like weddings, birthdays and Chinese New Year. During the New Year, children are often the recipients of Red Envelopes with money in them…. one thing we learned in Chinatown is that the monetary amount doesn’t have to be great, but it should be given in even numbers, but not the number 4. Also, a Red Envelope is always given and received with both hands to show gratitude and acknowledgment. I adore that aspect of the tradition and had fun showing the kids how to receive with two hands.

Happy Chinese New Year! 春節