#1: Chinese Traditional Holidays and Festivals
Everyone knows about Chinese New Year, but there are many other holidays celebrated throughout China. Many of these holidays are tied to the change of seasons or the lunar calendar. As teachers and parents you will find that sharing this aspect of Chinese culture with kids to be both rewarding and enjoyable. After, kids of all ages love learning about parties and celebrations!
Chinese Holidays and Festivals discussed include:
Traditional Lunar Holidays: Kitchen God Day, Spring Festival or Chinese New Year, Lantern Festival, Dragon Head Festival, Clear and Bright Festival or Qing Ming, Dragon Boat Festival, Double Seventh Night, Mid-Autumn Festival or Moon Festival, Double Ninth Day, Laba Festival
National Holidays: May 1st - Labor Day, Oct 1st - National Day, June 1st - Children's Day
Festivals: Nadaam Festival (Inner Mongolia), Water Splashing Festival (Bai Minority), Kite Festival (Weifang, Shandang Province), Harbin Ice Festival (Harbin, Heilongjiang)
Book includes teacher introduction and planning strategies, bulletin board resources and ideas, class discussion topics and projects, student information sheets, student activities, student Q&A, and references and resources.
Included CD-ROM (Win/Mac) features story-telling in English and Mandarin (Ten Chinese Traditional Festivals), story handouts, additional teacher tips and charts, more student handouts and activities, lunar calendars, photos, recordings of traditional holiday music, internet resource links, and puzzles.
The Chinese Culture Active Learning Series is endorsed by Huang Youyi, Vice President of China International Publishing Group and Vice President of Translators Association of China, and Lin Wusun, Retired President of CIPG, Senior Editor and Translator.
Price: $18 plus shipping/handling. Click here to order books from OCDF online, or you may order by calling 309-829-8202 (toll-free: 1-866-460-OCDF). Visa and Mastercard accepted. Checks in US dollars accepted for phone orders.
Reviews
Understanding holidays and festivals is often a child's point of entry into understanding other cultures. But rather than seeing other cultures as exotic and strange, educationalists believe that understanding a multi-cultural society (and indeed world) requires students to look at traditions both similar to and different from their own culture.
OCDF Publications and Dolphin Books present a multi-level curriculum tool for understanding Chinese holidays and festivals in this the first of their classic series. As with all in the Active Learning series, the beautifully crafted book is accompanied by a CD ROM of almost unfathomable riches in resources for both student and for teachers in planning their teaching modules. And, as with all in the series, this pack encourages active learning and involved teacher planning of activities to suit and develop students of all ages and abilities from K to Grade 8. The book and its associated CD ROM include worksheets, stories, songs, images for lesson development, puzzles, planned activities and teacher resources covers festivals in the lunar year and holidays taken in China. But underpinning that progression, the student is taken on virtual and real educational journeys to places in China which are emblematic of certain holidays, and via stories and songs to the history and mythology that lie behind many of the Chinese holidays. Understanding local customs is addressed in activities that students carry out as part of the project work. We are taken on tours of the culture of holidays and festivals by, for example, creating and hanging antithetic couplets for Spring Festival, or by learning how to make Mooncakes for Mid Autumn Festival. Children will soak up such learning activities!
How is active learning promoted in the teaching plans proposed? Teachers are encouraged to develop bulletin boards where children can hang and comment on artifacts they have created in lessons. Stories and songs are made available on the CD ROM to illuminate each festival. And of course these are available in Chinese, as well as in English. Whether or not students can understand Mandarin matters less than helping them hear the authentic voice of the festivals as would be heard in China. This added value comes directly from the collaboration of OCDF publications and Dolphin books, a Beijing publisher that has been able to source excellent original resources from China. The many student activities suggested in the pack are all very accessible to all but the smallest students , and can usefully be completed in a classroom or in a home schooling situation, as well as by participants in cultural heritage programs. It is suggested that students consider what it is like to celebrate Chinese holidays WITH Chinese people, and in doing this students are asked to look at what accommodations they would have to make in their own behaviour to be respectful to the Chinese customs. That in itself is a huge key to asking children to understand what multiculturalism really means.
Schools and cultural programs will want to snap up this book with its wealth of resources. It is a must for adults wanting to help children understand and participate in what it means to prepare and enjoy Chinese holidays and festivals.
--Sheena Macrae, co-editor of Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections
Chinese Traditional Holidays and Festivals is a motherlode of information for parents, teachers and students. Everything you would ever need to know about China's traditional holidays and festivals is packed into this slim, well-designed, child-friendly book and CDRom set. The book provides information that may be differentiated for elementary and middle school curricula, although high-schoolers, homeschoolers and sinophiles will also find the detailed collection of data invaluable. The book is divided into easily accessible sections: Teacher Introduction and Planning Strategies Bulletin Board Resources and Ideas Class Discussion Topics and Projects Assignments Reproducible Student Information Sheets Active Learning Student Activities References and Resources The CDRom that accompanies the book is full of Chinese music, songs, storytelling, additional handouts and teaching tips. These support materials supply literally hours of cultural fun, along with extra background facts for in-depth instruction. Chinese language learning is supported with reproducible stories printed in English, Pin Yin (with tones) and Simplified Characters. The organization of the book makes teaching / learning easy; each of the ten main holiday or festival lessons is broken down by original story and by present-day story. Each lesson is designed to be part of a dynamic, hands-on learning experience, and the projects chosen to highlight the Chinese holidays are engaging, helpful and graphically well-represented.
--Jean MacLeod, author of At Home in this World, a China Adoption Story, and co-editor of Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections
Our Chinese Daughters Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with offices in Bloomington, IL and Beijing. OCDF Publications is devoted to ensuring educators and parents have access to high-quality, accurate Chinese culture education resources.
Contributors to this volume include Li Fugen (President, Dolphin Books), Dr. Jane Liedtke (CEO, OCDF), Dr. Jason Patent (Stanford University), Sun Xiaobing (OCDF), Wang Hui, Wang Du Xia, and Emily Liedtke.
Updated 03.12.2010
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