Chinese New Year!

Did you know that Panda Express does a fun little presentation for school age children to teach them about Chinese New Year? Well I had no idea until a very enthusiastic parent happened upon it as she was on their website. This mom decided to take it upon herself to organize this fun little event for our preschoolers. This wasn’t mandatory and not everyone participated because they weren’t interested and had already made other lesson plans and this was a last minute thing. However, the classes that didn’t participate soon learned that they missed out on a cute and fun event for their class! I for one am thankful that I participated because the children had so much fun and this mom went above and beyond for us!

 

Before the day of the event the mom who was coordinating the event came to each of the 4 classes that were participating with a basket full of goodies…she prepared crafts to go with the Chinese New Year theme, she bought each teacher two new books that had to do with Chinese New Year, she gave us each a gift card to Panda Express for lunch, a fun hate, chopsticks and some other goodies.

She came in the day before to decorate the Fellowship Hall and get everything set up. She also prepared goodie bags for each child and included a red envelope for each kid with a dollar inside because it is customary to give little red envelopes with money inside as part of the Chinese New Year celebration.

There were 3 employees who came for the event: the manager came and read a story to the kids and showed a 7 minute video that taught them about Chinese New Year, a second employee played a fun animal game with the children where they acted out each of the twelve animals, and a third employee was kind enough to dress up in the Panda suit in order to take pics and hang out with the kids!

After all the fun, each child got a fortune cookie and some Chow Mein noodles as a snack and they received a little red envelope from Panda Express with free meal certificates!

Not only did they have a blast, they also learned about a different culture and their tradition and I am so grateful to the mom who put this all together, this was definitely right up my alley as a teacher and party/event planner! It never goes unnoticed by me how blessed we are as a school!