Celebrating Chinese New Year

As a part of my MK Orientation Events yesterday we celerbated Chinese New Year.  (Chinese New Year is not until Feb. 5th but we used it as a great learning opportunity.)  Many of our students will be moving to another country and will begin living in another culture.  As they enter a new culture they will want to learn as much as they can as not to out right offend the people in your new culture.  A good way of starting to feel at home in another culture is learning to adabt to new ways of thinking and doing things.  In celebrating Chinese New Year is was a great way for the kids to learn few fun facts about the holiday, the Chinese people, and their language. Since I love having food at these types of events we enjoyed some egg rolls, "sushi", rice, fortune cookies, and mandarins.  Before everyone tried eating with chop sticks we had a litte race carrying marshmellows with chop sticks.  The kids raced against their parents.  The parents had to carry mini marshmellows while the kids carried giant ones.  I think there were a lot of parents who know how to use chop sticks as their bowl still ended up having more marshmellows then the kids.  As a part of the New Year celebration all the kids also received a little red envelope with a "Chinese" coin inside.  It was such a fun learning time spent together!