CHINESE NEW YEAR

2016 has been a very rough year for the staff at my school.  In the first five weeks of this new year, we had many, many staff members lose a loved one.  As we are a family, we mourn with those who mourn, and we mourn the ones we lost.

While eating lunch with my Kinder and Pre-K teacher friends, we got to talking about wishing this year could start over, or be done with really quickly, since it hasn't been going too well.  Then someone brought up that Chinese New Year was coming!  That's it!  We decided to start a new year!  So the staff at my school made big plans for Chinese New Year!

As with any celebration, there must be food!  Everyone brought something to share!  I brought mandarin oranges, which symbolize an abundance of happiness and prosperity.  I did buy them in self-serve cups so no one had to peel anything.  :)  Our PTA provided drinks.  The Hospitality Committee decorated the Staff Lounge.  The staff wore wear red to symbolize good luck.  As an added bonus, we got permission to wear jeans with our lucky red shirts!  Lucky indeed!

We found these cute take out boxes and put an individually wrapped fortune cookie inside.  Someone had donated flower seed packets to my school, so we had parents make red envelopes to put the seed packets inside to give to staff.  Usually red envelopes contain money, but since we're teachers, that just wasn't going to happen with 60 people on staff.  Instead, the seeds will symbolize spring and new growth.  The teachers can plant them in our school garden with their classes if they want!

I did plan a few activities with my students.  We read a book on Chinese New Year, learned the numbers 1-10 in Chinese, and made dragon masks.  It was a fun day for all!

Happy New Year!  May the Year of the Monkey be a good year for everyone!