Lunar New Year
Welcome to Lunar New Year Week!
This week make your own red and gold sensory bin, cut out a red paper lantern and enjoy a quest to find the 12 animals of the zodiac!
Book and Rhyme of the Week
Teach your toddler the story of the Chinese zodiac with the book The Great Race. Full of colourful illustrations, this book is entertaining and educational in equal measure. And expose your toddler to a different language with this fun song.
Sensory Play
This week, make your own Lunar New Year sensory bin by finding red and gold/yellow items in your home.
For the base, we dyed some pasta red using red paint (food colouring would also work) and vinegar and put this on top of a gold foil blanket. We cleaned up a stash of copper coins that were growing dust on a shelf and added this along with red and yellow buttons, strings and fish we already had around the home.
The dragon posting insert can be downloaded for free below. It's designed to be printed on 2 pages of A4, which you can either stick to a cardboard box or the lid of a trofast tub.
Arts and Crafts
For our arts and crafts this week we are going to make paper lanterns.
1. Take a red piece of paper / cardboard and get your toddler to decorate it however they want!
2. Fold it in half lengthways and cut out slits at equal spaces along the long length
3. When you get to the end cut out a piece that will be for the handle
4. Open it up and connect the 2 sides to make your lantern
5. Attach the handle to the top
Active Play
Go on a quest to find all the animals of the zodiac this week. Download and print out the 12 animals below. If you don't have a printer you could draw them out, write the animal names on pieces or paper or see if you have toys already in a farm or zoo set. Then hide them around the room and get your toddler to find them!
Next Week's Theme
What You'll Need for Next Week's Theme
Next week get some baking powder, vinegar, a cookie cutter or mould (heart shaped ideal but it doesn't matter), some tissue paper and chalk.