Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Each year, on the first new moon of the lunar calendar, Chinese people start to celebrate New Year.  Chinese New Year, or Lunar New Year, is the most improtant of the traditional Chinese holidays.  It is known as the Spring Festival because it marks the end of the winter season.  This is a time for wishing peace and happiness for everyone and for families and friends to spend time together.

Kung Hei Fat Choi means "Congratulations and wishing you prosperity!" but many people use it to say "Happy New Year"!

The kids had no school today due to a teacher workday, so we went to the Children's Museum for the morning to celebrate the Chinese New Year with them.  Each child was given a red envelope upon entering.  This is a symbol of the New Year and traditionally may contain money.  It would be common to find $8 in the envelope because 8 is a lucky number.  But, for us, these envelopes contained a small pencil and a paper with 4 questions on it.  They told the kids to fill in all the answers and return the sheet to the desk for a small prize.

We started  with the Zodiac question.  In order to find out what animal year the kids were born, they sent us to the cooking room.  Miss Mary Ellen was reading some books to the kids and then helped each one make a bowl of Chinese noodles.  The kids mixed sesame seed oil, almond butter, ginger and soy sauce and then added green onions, cut up cucumbers, sprouts and noodles.  Gretchen eagerly took her noodles in her bowl of season mix, but Carl asked for plain noodles.  Miss Mary Ellen was happy to give him a plate of plain noodles.  Noodles symbolize long life. 

Each child took a set of chopsticks, too.  The placemats had the information they needed to learn their Zodiac animal.  I have 2 roosters.  Question 1 was filled in.

In the art room, we made Chinese lanterns out of construction paper.  They colored and stamped their paper, cut it and taped it together in a cylinder.  That was another sort of question on the list.

We learned that red is considered the lucky color.  Another question done.

The final question they needed to fill in was to go to the science room and learn to write some Chinese symbols.  They needed to write their age on the little paper.  There were 2 school aged girls helping with that station.  They had fun paper that turned red when you painted on it with the first liquid.  Then, if you painted over that with vinegar, it took the red away.  Carl had fun just doing that.  Gretchen did a beautiful painting of the number 6.

Then, since the museum was so crowded (our schools are all on the same calendar - so the entire county had a teacher workday today) we headed out without playing in any other rooms.  We'll be back tomorrow or Wednesday anyway.  We're there a couple days a week after school.  They have the coolest little classes at 3:30 every day.

We stopped at the front desk to give them back the tiny pencils and to show them our completed questions.  Each child was given a fortune cookie as their prize.  We decided to hang onto them for dessert after lunch.

We headed out to meet Daddy and Lindy for lunch.  We had a few extra minutes, so we walked the long way back to our car.  They are holding their lanterns in the next pictures.

We met Lew and Lindy for lunch at Costco.  That's when they opened their fortune cookies.  Gretchen's read:

Many new friends will soon be attracted to your friendly and charming ways.

Carl's read:

You will move to a wonderful new home within the year.

OK, that one made us all laugh.  and wonder. 

From Costco, we headed to the post office.  Then to the grocery store.  Then home where we walked to the neighbor's court to play with their cat for a few minutes before heading in to watch a video and make rice krispy treat before supper time rolled around.  They managed to talk me into "No nap today!"  No problem.... but, it means early bedtime tonight!