A Chinese New Year Story

I just discovered it's Chinese New Year on Friday 31st January.  When my children were little we always used to read a lovely rhyming Chinese story called The Magic Paintbrush by Julia Donaldson.  A little girl gets a magic paintbrush, which enable her to paint and bring to life anything she likes.  She only uses it to help the poor and needy, but the greedy Emperor really wants that brush and chases Shen to get it - Shen wins in the end of course!

This year I wanted something different.  So, I'm trawling the internet for some ideas as usual.  And I've discovered some really good story resources...

I've found three websites that have some great Chinese New Year ideas and printables.  Mostly free, but some resources require a subscription.  I'm just going to give the links here as there is so much stuff to look through and choose from!

1. Twinkl - have a look here.

2. Teacher's Pet - have a displays website (free) and an activities website (subscription).  Here's the link to the displays one.

3. Sparklebox - also have some good stuff for Chinese New Year that could be useful for a role play area.  Have a look here.

The Chinese New Year Story

The Chinese New Year story is about 13 animals who gather on the riverbank with the Emperor.  His challenge is a race - whoever wins gets a year named after them.  So the winner got the first year named after them, then the second place animal got the second year named after them and so on.  The cat did not have a year named after him because he came in last!  A lovely story for story-telling without a book, maybe using a piece of blue cloth as the river and some animals from your animal collection!  The animals were in order:

1. Rat

2. Ox

3. Tiger

4. Rabbit

5. Dragon

6. Snake

7. Horse

8. Goat

9. Monkey

10. Rooster

11. Dog

12. Pig

and the cat came in last because he was getting a lift on the back of the ox but the ox wanted to win so chucked him off!!  Nice.

Maybe accompany your story telling with some noodles, mini corn on the cob, mangetout peas and a fortune cookie for lunch!

For more see my pinterest boards here.

and the Facebook group here.

Enjoy!