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.
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.
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