Violet
31/1/22
Lunar New Year 2022
Tomorrow is the start of the Lunar New Year. Lunar New Year begins with celebrations on the first new moon of the year and lasts for15 days, ending with the full moon and a lantern festival.
It is a time when many people around the world say goodbye to the old year and welcome the in new. The celebrations are supposed to bring luck and prosperity for the year ahead.
Celebrations include spending time with families and friends, fireworks, dancing dragon or lion parades and the giving of lucky red envelopes containing money.
The zodiac calendar lasts for 12 years with each year being named after an animal. The animals that feature are a rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig. This year will be the year of the tiger, while last year was the year of the ox.
Each year is named after one of 12 animals, one of which is a dragon, but the dragon is a big feature of the Lunar New Year every year as it is a symbol of power and good fortune.
There is an ancient story based around the 12 animals the years are named after. The story goes that the Jade Emperor, an important figure in Chinese culture, invited all the animals in the world to take part in a race across a river.
Twelve creatures turned up to race a rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig.
The Jade Emperor named a year after each one of the animals that came and the race decided the order in which each animal would be placed.
The rat won the race, by sitting on the ox as it crossed the river and then jumping off ahead of it to win the race. The ox came second and then the other animals that followed behind determined the order of the years.
Lunar New Year Crafts
We have been having lots of fun making some tiger crafts as this year is the year of the tiger. I think it helps that we all like tigers! We made Chinese rattle drums which we made into tigers, paper plate tiger masks, tiger lanterns and tiger puppets. Which one is your favourite? Could you have a go at making one of these?
We made Tiger Chinese Rattle Drums. They made a great noise!
We made Chinese lanterns but made them look like tigers.
We made puppets out of kitchen rolls. They looked great bouncing around!
We made tiger masks out of paper plates.
All photos and illustrations in this blog post are Whizzbots, Public Domain and Shutterstock Images.
Other images on the site may be Creative Commons Images, which are credited appropriately.