Chinese New Year Playdate

This week we celebrated Chinese New Year with a playdate at Jen’s house. Jen is a momstown mama who lived in China for a year teaching English and wanted to share her experience with us.

Jen taught us about the Chinese Zodiac and let us each know what our animal sign was.

It was fun to find out that I’m a tiger (could have told you that one – lol), my daughter is a rooster, my son a pig, and apparently I’m married to a snake (ouch!).

Each animal sign comes with an explanation of positive personality traits and ideal career choices.

Jen had prepared a traditional gift for the children in the form of a red envelope.

As per tradition the red envelopes always contain money so she filled these ones with gold foiled chocolate coins – a hit with the kids.

Red is commonly worn during Chinese New Year because it was once believed that red could scare away evil spirits and bad fortune. These are the attendees who wore red to our party :)

Jen even provided some traditional refreshments including Chinese green tea with flowering tea balls, cookies cut into the shape of fish, and mandarin oranges.

Since it’s the Year of the Dragon here’s a beautiful dragon craft you can do with your kids from our sister chapter in Calgary. You can find instructions here: http://momstown-calgarynorth.blogspot.com/2012/01/year-of-dragon-crafts-and-fun.html