Gung Hay Fat Choy

Monday is Chinese New Year!  My dear friend Julie will be coming to read a book about the Chinese New Year to my class.  I am excited because Julie has the BEST taste in books and always finds amazing books to read that are unknown to me.  After the story my class will be making banners that will hopefully look like this:

I used to do this project with second graders, but have never done it with first or kinder.  I had my second graders use black paint to paint the characters for Gung Hay Fat Choy ("Happy New Year").  If I am feeling super courageous I will have my kinders and first graders paint the characters.  (Plan B is to have them use black crayons.)  My plan is to have the paper prepped and ready to go.  The red paper is 18" X 6" and the black paper is 6" X 3".  I wanted to post a link to the actual characters BUT I can't find one.  (The paper I use is copyrighted so I can't post it.)  I will keep looking because I know there must be a place online where I can find the characters printed out for us.

Gung hay fat choy everyone!
Love to all,
Camille

Addendum:  We did it!!!  My students did a fantastic job painting these banners today!  I suddenly got the idea of having them begin with pencils.  I did a directed drawing lesson of the four Chinese characters.  After they finished drawing with pencils, they painted over their pencil sketches.  Here is a picture of the banners hanging with the lanterns we made at a different time (but also in honor of Chinese New Year).  We are not allowed to string any type of wires across the classroom so I had to be content hanging all of these from the blinds.

As usual, Julie read a book I had never even heard of!  She read A New Year's Reunion which is a sweet book.  It was very appropriate for my young students.  This book was originally written in Chinese and has been translated into English.  I like that the author's voice is authentic - she truly understands what it is like to celebrate the new year in China.   Here is a link to Amazon.