CNY celebration at school

Yesterday Maisie and her classmates learned a little bit about Chinese New Year.  Wednesday mornings I usually teach sign language in her class so to start out, all the children learned to sign Happy New Year and China.  Then I read a short book, Bringing in the New Year which just talked about some of the customs and traditions of celebrating Lunar New Year.  After that all the children were offered Mandarin oranges and dumplings.  A funny thing though, when I first told the children that we were going to have dumplings many of them got excited and yelled out that they *loved* dumplings but then when I was serving them they looked and said no thanks, that they didn’t want them….and trust me it wasn’t my cooking because I make great dumplings.  At the time I didn’t think much about it but last night I told Eammon what happened and he pointed out that when I said dumplings the children probably didn’t think Chinese dumplings but thought southern dumplings and what I was offering wasn’t what they had envisioned.  I’m neither a southern girl nor a southern style dumpling lover so the thought of what they know as dumpling never crossed my mind.

After the food Maisie passed out red envelopes to all her friends and that was a big hit as they each contained a cute Chinese New Year eraser, notepad and pencil as well as chocolate gold foil wrapped coins. 

Maisie and Sarah being silly with their chopsticks.

The lack of dumpling eating by their classmates made Maisie and Maya two very happy girls as they got to have as many dumplings as they wanted and I think that they managed six each!!  It was fun and all the children seemed to enjoy the little lesson and celebration.

Today after Maisie finished her homework she asked if she could have one of her Valentine’s Day candies and look what she picked!!  I knew that she would nibble on it for a while but in the end would barely make a dent in it so even though the lolly is as big as her head, in the end she’d eat very little.  

Maisie did try her hardest to eat a lot of the lolly and in comfort!  She decided to set up a little lounge for herself with her old crib mattress which we still use as a cushion under her balance beam.  She is one funny little girl!

We have one more Chinese New Year celebration this Saturday and then we’re ready for the year of the rabbit, let’s hope that it’s a great one!

Gong xi fa cai.