A Field Trip Proposal - San Francisco 2015 Chinese New Year Parade

We had a great time today at our club meeting, singing the newly learned Chinese Zodiac Animal song, playing Bingo and Memory Matching games, and discussing some Chinese New Year celebration ideas! Our kids have shown great enthusiasm for the San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade that happens annually, and close enough to us for a possible one-day field trip. So I did some research and here's what I found:

http://www.sanfranciscochinatown.com/events/chinesenewyearparade.html

For this year, the parade will be happening on the March 7th, about two weeks after the Chinese New Year day (2/19) and perfectly scheduled on a Saturday evening. I think I can make it and it would be great if you can make it too (with families of course)! We may gather together right before the parade starts or as early as at lunch on that day and have some cultural exploration together in Chinatown. This is just my proposal. If it sounds an interesting/fun idea to you, please kindly drop me an email so we can plan it together. I wish we can make it!   

Jan Theme: Chinese Zodiac Animals

To celebrate the forthcoming Chinese New Year, I decided to introduce the Chinese Zodiac in our Jan meetings.  The Chinese Zodiac, known as 生肖 （sheng xiao），or 十二生肖（shi er sheng xiao) is based on a twelve year cycle, each year in that cycle related to an animal sign. These animal signs are the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. It is calculated according to Chinese lunar calendar, which makes the Jan and Feb birthdays a little tricker to find out which animal that person "is."  For example, this year, babies born before or on Feb 18 (on the western calendar) would be little horses, instead of sheep (or goats），even though you may find the year of 2015 is the year of sheep (or goat 羊年）. 

Starting on this Tuesday, after reviewing the animals that we have already known, we identified the twelve zodiac animals and learned a song that contains all of them in the right order.

To find out which animal is our zodiac sign, each of us made a "Zodiac Wheel." By turning the "wheel window" to the year of your birthday, it shows the animal of that year! What a cool and fun craft.  

We made flash cards and played Bingo games, which all helped us memorize the new vocabulary. 

Few More Videos We Recorded Last December

I wish you had a great holiday season! Happy New Year, 新（xin）年（nian）快（kuai）乐（le）!

Today, I uploaded four more video clips that were recorded before the winter break. Good job, Alex and Isabella! Hope you all are having fun watching these and at the meantime reviewing what we've learned lately!

I'm looking forward to seeing you all next week! Welcome back to our Chinese Club!