Celebrating Chinese New Year

What is Chinese New Year, and when is it celebrated?

Chinese New Year, or Lunar New Year, is a festival celebrating the new year across Asia and some other continents. It usually occurs from late January to late February, this year falling on 10th February, starting the Year of the Dragon.

Each year, is named from one of the 12 animals in the Chinese Zodiac: rat, ox, tiger rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. You and your students can find out which animal is linked to the year they were born here (2Simple is a Rabbit, if you were wondering! 🐇 ).

Planning to celebrate Chinese New Year with your class? Use some of Purple Mash’s huge variety of resources and activities in your classroom to ensure your pupils learn about the importance of this festival for many cultures across the world.

Here, we have mapped out a whole day of celebratory lessons for you:

Early Work

When your class arrive in the morning, why not use some of our printables to get them in the celebratory mood? They could:

• Work out which animal is linked to 2024 by completing this puzzle
• Decorate a Chinese Fan
• Look at and discuss the pictures of Chinese New Year

You could also set up some tablets for them to have a go at these activities:

• Paint a firework display
• Decorating a Chinese lion, ruqun (traditional dress) or a lantern
• Draw and decorate a lantern

English Lessons

Plan a whole lesson in English, researching and writing about Chinese New Year. Set your students the Chinese New Year Research activity for them to find and discover interesting facts, and then you can write a newspaper front page or leaflet all about the traditions surrounding the day.

Maths Lessons

Spend some time in your math lesson by learning how to write the numbers 1-10 with our Write Chinese numbers. Open up the discussion to other ways of writing and representing numbers (think Roman Numerals, Deines etc!) and see how many your class can show you.

History/Geography/RE

Fill your afternoon in the classroom with some cross-curricular learning. Explore our Shang Dynasty resources:

• Shang Dynasty Factfile
• Famous Faces – Shang Dynasty
• Battle of Muye
• Shang Dynasty vs modern China
• Diary of a Shang Peasant
• Shang Dynasty Religion

Or, continue the research with a geography emphasis with our China Fact File.

Mini Mash (for younger learners)

For those in Early Years, you can still get involved in the fun through Mini Mash! Use our labels alongside these pictures to play a fun matching quiz game. For a Funky Fingers activity, why not use our Time Savers templates and cut around the pictures to make finger and stick puppets, or even use them for labels and badges!

There’s also a wide selection of themed jigsaws and pairs games to complete and they’re all complemented by slideshows and worksheets.

However you celebrate Chinese New Year, we’d love to see what you come up with. You can share your work with us via our Twitter and Facebook profiles.

新 年 快 乐

Xīn nián kuài lè!

(Happy New Year!)