Chinese New Year Resources

I don’t think I ever got around to wishing all our visitors a Happy New Year, so here goes… Happy New Year to y’all. It’s been a good year here at ELHQ so thanks for your support. We hope that 2012 will be even better as we strive to produce even more high quality, free teaching resources.  

You could say that January the 13^th is a bit late in the day for a New Years greeting but on the other hand I’m getting in there early for the Chinese New Year which in 2012 falls on January the 23^rd. In preparation for this event we’ve updated our resources in preparation. As well as new designs for a Chinese New Year poster, banner and red envelope (reflecting the year of the Dragon) we’ve also put together a rather comprehensive Chinese New Year photo pack featuring all manner of pictures relating to the Chinese New Year, including photos of every animal of the Chinese Zodiac.

In addition to these we’ve also got a Chinese New Year Number line and a set of illustrated Chinese New Year topic cards both of which were very popular on the site last year. As a wy of introduction to the topic I thought I’d outline a bit of background about the mythology of Chinese New Year.

Chinese New Year Mythology

Legend has it that Chinese New Year began with a fight between villagers and a great beast called Nian that is said to live in the mountains or under the sea. The Nian would emerge from hiding on the first day of New Year to attack and eat livestock and people (it’s said to particularly like eating children)! To appease it the villagers would put food in front of their houses at the beginning of every year. They would also dress themselves in red robes and hang red lanterns on windows as it is said that the Nien is afraid of the colour red. It is also thought to be fearful of loud noises hence the association between the Chinese New Year and firecrackers.

Here’s a link to a really useful clip about the Chinese New Year from the BBC’s excellent ‘Lets Celebrate’ series: //www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/lets-celebrate/watch/lets-celebrate-chinesenewyearclips/