Another holiday...another decorated tree!

We're on a roll with our Chinese New Year decorations.  Tuesday night, Josie and I finished decorating our sunroom tree for the upcoming Chinese New Year. Thanks to our special friends from "let's go fly a kite", we have a few more special treasures to add to our tree this year.  Josie's holding a satin red lantern and a string of firecrackers.  

Here are a few more of my past favorites starting with Josie's baby shoes. 

In addition to the ornaments, a bunch of other goodies were sent to us from our Toronto friend "lets go fly a kite".  

The girls and I certainly appreciate their access to all these special wares. Aren't blogging friends great?!!

If you'd like to see beautiful pictures of an amazing Chinese mall, as well as see a wonderful CNY crafting activity that you can do with your little ones,  you really should go visit her blog right now.

XOXO

Chinese School and another "Year of the Snake" craft!

Josie started Chinese language school on Saturday. I wasn't sure how she'd feel about starting mid-year but she seemed to really enjoy it. The classes are offered at my University (actually in the same building as my office) from 1:30pm - 4:30pm every week through the end of April. I won't stay every Saturday with her, but I stayed this week just to see how she'd enjoy it.

Her school is having a Chinese New Year dinner and party at our local Public Museum on February 2nd.  As you can imagine, we're very excited to participate.  Speaking of Chinese New Year, we also worked on another Chinese New Year craft.  

We made a "Year of the Snake" wreath using a plastic snake from the Dollar Tree.


Because everything is better with glitter, Josie brushed on some white glue and sprinkled fine gold glitter to her snake before I hot glued him to the wreath.

By the way, the wreath was 50% off at Dollar Tree - it was part of their former Christmas stash.

Happy "Year of the Snake"!
 

Preparing for Year of the Snake!

Chinese New Year begins February 10th and we're starting to collect activities and crafts that we can introduce to Josie's classmates regarding this special holiday...the Year of the Snake!

For all my friends who want to get a jump start on Chinese New Year preparations, Panda Express is offering a FREE Chinese New Year Kit.   We've used this service last three years for Josie's preschool and Kindergarten and have been very pleased.  

The FREE kit is geared for second through fourth grades (I adapted some of it for Josie's grade level) and includes:  

• Panda Express’ Year of the Snake Video
• Year of the Snake Fact Sheet
• Jade Emperor’s Interactive Game and Activity Sheet
• Chinese New Year Decoration Art Activity
• Lai See Activity Sheet
• Bookmarks (with a Free Kids Meal with purchase coupon attached)

See here for details from Panda Express.

I recently placed an order with Oriental Trading company for mini red envelopes  that I'm going to fill with Chinese chocolate gold coins.  They were a big hit last year in Kindergarten.  

Over the next few weeks, I'm hoping to share a few Chinese New Year crafts.   

As you can imagine, Josie had fun constructing and decorating this paper chain snake.      

I think a fun variation would be to have each child decorate their individual paper link for a classroom paper chain snake.   

 The zodiac stamp for this year's Chinese New Year - Source

There's always a celebration going on at our house!