ET Speaks From Home

Cuisine & Culture the Chinese Family Way

Ang Pow Monkey Craft

It is the time of the year to start making some Chinese New Year crafts – Ang Pow Monkey Craft! This year, the first day of Chinese New Year falls on the 8th February 2016 and it will last for 15 days. Over the past few years, I had made quite a few ang pow lanterns, taught the children simple ways to learn the Chinese zodiac, made various paper cuttings and also made a 3D Chinese “Spring” character. Click on the title Chinese Culture to look at my previous Chinese New Year crafts. Or pop over to my Pinterest’s Chinese New Year craft board below!

This coming year is the Year of the Monkey. Hopefully during these next few weeks, I will be sharing different types of monkey crafts or maybe Chinese New Year foods with you!

year of monkey 2016 poster Ang Pow Monkey Craft

Chinese New Year Pineapple Craft

Happy New Year to everyone! I have made this Chinese New Year Pineapple Craft.  It is almost the time of the year for Chinese to celebrate our Chinese New Year! This coming lunar year is the Fire Monkey. If you are in Asia or UK Chinatown, you would have probably seen lot of colourful, vibrant decorations.

Over the past year, I have blogged the step-by-step for creating various Chinese crafts e.g. Ang Pow Lantern, Fan, Firecracker etc. I have also written posts on Chinese New Year culture like how we celebrate the festivities in Singapore and UK. Do check them out if you are interested to find out more about Chinese culture.

Chinese New Year Pineapple Craft

Stapleless Chinese New Year Lantern

In these coming months, I will be partnering with a few major retailers for the National Stationery Week (27 April – 3 May 2015) to get Britain writing, and to focus on the importance of handwriting.

This week I have received this staple free stapler from KOKUYO, Japan’s leading stationery brand. Harinacs staple free stapler holds sheets of paper without using metal staples (maximum of 6 sheet of paper at a weight of 80 gsm). This innovative and quirky stapler comes in three different designs and in a range of fun colours; including pink, blue, green, brown, white and black. They are available to buy from www.stonegift.com. So I am using Harinacs staple to make a stapleless Chinese New Year lantern.

staple free stapler kokuyo

Chinese New Year Paper Plate Drum

This is my first challenge as a Bostik Blogger and looking through the crafting box, I decided to make a Chinese New Year Paper Plate Drum as part of the Chinese New Year theme.

Chinese New Year Paper Plate Drum

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.

8 Chinese New Year Children Activities

Chinese New Year Ang Pow Sheep

It is the time of the year to start making some Chinese New Year crafts! This year, the first day of Chinese New Year falls on the 19 February 2015 and it will last for 15 days. Last year, I had made quite a few Ang Pow lanterns, taught the children simple ways to learn the Chinese zodiac, did various paper cuttings and also made a 3D Chinese “Spring” character. Click on the title Chinese Culture to look at my previous Chinese New Year crafts.

This coming year is the year of the Sheep. During these next few weeks, I will be sharing different types of sheep crafts with you!

Today, I am showing you how to make a Chinese character sheep 羊 using ang pow (red packet). This is a very simple way to decorate your wall and teach your children Chinese words.

Ang Pow Sheep

Chinese New Year Paper Cutting Huat Ah / Wang

This is another post for my Chinese New Year series and today it is about craft.  Last week, we made 3D Paper Cutting Chinese New Year Spring 春 and today we cut the 旺 (wang in hanyu pinyin) Chinese character. In Singapore during Chinese New Year, you will often hear people say/shout Huat Ah (in Hokkien language) in the street, dinner party or when they want to win the lottery! It means to prosper and be wealthy. So people adapt 旺 into Chinese New Year culture.  旺 is the translation of Huat.

huat Chinese Character paper cutting

Simple Way to Teach Children Chinese Zodiac

I am bilingual and I would like both my children to learn Chinese, which is their mother tongue, as it will be very useful wherever they go.  I am not great at teaching my children Chinese and have to find fun ways to get them to learn.  We did this craft with our Lichfield Mandarin Club last year and this has proved to be a very useful way to teach children.

Chinese Zodiac Stick Craft

3D Paper Cutting Chinese New Year Spring 春

Lunar New Year is also know as Chinese Spring Festival.  It is a quite a long story as to why it is called Spring Festival but the short version is that it is mainly based on mainland Chinese ruling. Spring 春 is widely used on the Chinese New Year theme or Auspicious words on Festival Couplets (New Year’s wishes on pieces of red papers) like:

迎春接福 Yíng chún jiē fú – Greet the New Year and encounter happiness

春回大地 chūn huí dà dì – Spring has come back to the earth

Chinese New Year Flower 3D Paper Cutting

Chinese New Year Fan

Fans are easy to make – it is mainly sticking and pasting or painting.  While the kids had a go at making their fans, I also made two proper Chinese New Year Fans.

Chinese New Year Fu Fan

Hello Kitty Chinese Coin Lantern / Ang Pow

Yesterday, I made a Hello Kitty Lantern and had a few Ang Bao/Pow left to make a Chinese Coin Lantern. If you would like to find out more on Chinese coins, click the link to direct you to Wikipedia.  Some Chinese believe that carrying a Chinese coin in your wallet will also help to ward off evil spirits and bring in money.  I am not sure how true it is but I do carry one in my wallet!  These Chinese Coin Lanterns are much easier to make compared to other lanterns.

Chinese New Year Hello Kitty Ang Pow Coin Lantern

Hello Kitty Chinese New Year Ang Bao/Pow Lantern

My two sisters-in-law are big fans of Hello Kitty so when I came across some Hello Kitty Ang Bao/Pow when I was last in Singapore, I bought some for them. I bought some for myself too and with these, I decided to make a lantern.

Hello Kitty Chinese New Year Ang Pow Lantern

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