Happy Chinese New Year! It’s the Year of the Rabbit and we had we had plenty of events at school to mark the occasion. Within our grade, we also arranged to celebrate Chinese New Year by organising a morning of activities to mark the Year of the Rabbit.
My students came to school in a variety of traditional Chinese clothing (typically in red) with different designs and many (including myself!) with rabbits as 2023 is the Year of the Rabbit.
Classroom activities: We arranged three rotations between classes which went well. Each rotation (start, finish and transitions) was 30 minutes in total.
- A Kahoot activity about Chinese New Year: The students are used to using iPads and entering the code on screen. Also, they enjoy the competition element of it and the regular leaderboard changes after each question.
- Musical chairs to Chinese music: This is fun game to get your students moving. They must focus by listening to Chinese music and it creates a bit of friendly competition amongst classmates. The students who were eliminated played games (truth be told they played a game with their fingers which I still don’t fully understand, but you could easily let them play rock, paper, scissors to stay engaged) while musical chairs continued.
- Bunny hop relay: This was a great one to mark the Year of the Rabbit! I was in charge of this station for our rotations. I divided my students into teams. On the one hand, if you can arrange groups of 3/4, it works very well. On the other, it could also work with groups of 5/6 if you have bigger numbers. My class kept referring to it as ‘the boingy race’. I took them outside due to space. I gave each team a bunny hopper ball and one set of bunny ears to put on their head. They lined up in single file behind the starting line. If you have chalk, marking an X and a few dots for kids to stand on might save you time. They hopped down the playground on until they reached a cone which they had to hop around until they bounced back to the start. Then, they had to pass on the bunny ears to the next person on their team and sit back down in cross-cross position on the ground. If anyone didn’t bounce properly, they were sent back and their bunny ears had to stay on their head at all times. They found it to keep the ears on their heads at times. Bouncing was harder than you’d think! After a practice round, they were well able. If you’re looking for an activity to really tire out you students, this will do the job!
Classroom decorations: My class made lanterns earlier on in the week which we hung up in class. I got some bunting on Twinkl to hang up in class. I also found some printable rabbits to put on the classroom door which I got on Twinkl. My students completed some colouring placemats which I also found on Twinkl and some completed ones were displayed on the classroom door along with a Chinese zodiac animals poster. Personally, I liked this one as it highlighted the zodiac animal for each year.
Brain Break: I find that Just Dance can be quite hit or miss with my class. That said, Gong Xi Gong Xi is a familar song for them to dance to, if anything else! Wishing you all a very Happy New Year.
新年快乐!
