8 Chinese New Year Children’s Activities

I had mentioned in my previous blog post that I would be sharing Chinese New Year’s craft ideas and different types of sheep crafts with you. Today, I am sharing eight different types of activities that you can do with your children.

I always wanted my children to learn and understand our Chinese culture. But living in the UK, it is quite hard to expose my children to our Chinese culture. So I decided to bring it closer to them by showing them the different types of crafts I made when I was young and let them taste different types of New Year’s food like Nian Gao and other types of goodies. One day I will bring them to Singapore Chinatown for Chinese New Year.

These are eight different types of Chinese New Year children activities that I did with my children.

1. Painting Paper Lantern

This is a very easy craft that we did for our mooncake festive and I decided to use the same idea again. These paper lanterns are great for hanging! I bought a lot of these 6 inch colourful paper lanterns from eBay for about 99p each. Simply give your children the paint and allow them to express themselves directly on the lantern. For this activity, I asked them to practise writing the Chinese character “sheep” on the lantern as this coming year is the sheep year. Once the lantern is completely dried, thread strings though the lanterns and hang it up.

One of my tips here is to place the lantern into a cup or bowl to prevent it from rolling away.

2. Learning the Chinese Zodiac

Last year, we made 12 different Chinese Zodiac ice cream sticks which can benefit the children in learning matching games and the Chinese zodiac.

3. Using Ang Pow to write Chinese character

Next is that I give both of my children a bundle of ang pow and ask them to use them to form a Chinese word.

This first one is Sheep (羊).

This second one is Good luck/Fortune (福).

This third one is Lucky/Auspicious (吉).

There are so many Chinese words that you can ask your children to do like Happy New Year (新年快乐). You could also use the Chinese character to decorate your wall!

4. Paper plate craft

This coming year is the year of the Sheep so we made this beautiful sheep using paper plates. Click here to read more about it.

5. Make your own Firecracker

This is great for younger children. You can use any cylindrical tin or toilet roll for this craft. Click here to read more about it.

6. Make your Chinese Fan

Fans are easy to make – it is mainly sticking and pasting or painting. You just need A4 size paper, string and materials to decorate it. Click here to read more about it.

7. Ang Pow Lantern

This is a very simple craft which is great for younger children. This is just using ang pow to make the lantern. Click here to read more about it.

If you wish to make more complicated Chinese New Year lanterns, please take a look at my Fish lantern, Star lantern and many more.

8. Paper Cutting

Lastly is paper cutting. The Chinese love paper cutting especially using red paper to cut out the auspicious word and sticking it on their walls. This craft is perfect for older children and adults. Click here to learn how I made the 3D Spring or Paper Cutting Huat.

These are my eight activities and hope you find it useful. Do check out my Pinterest board for more ideas.