Children will develop and discuss questions about a world community and Chinese traditions, recognize, use, and analyze different forms of evidence to make meaning in social studies, including primary and secondary sources such as, art, photographs, video, oral histories, and maps.

The World Awareness Children's Museum's mission is to bring our diverse world to children. We do this via our Museum play space in our physical building located in upstate New York, USA, through educational programs, and the international children's art exchange. Our educational programs our both in person and virtual. All of our educational programs are put together by our Education Committee and all educators who present the programs go through training. We love the rich culture of the Chinese New Year and are so excited to share this with children and broaden their appreciation for this Chinese celebration! This celebration's traditions include waving a leaf in front of the Lion Puppet to 'wake him up' for the Dragon and Lion parade, eating specific foods like wantons because they look like and symbolize gold and wealth, to cleaning up their homes so they can 'sweep' out the past years bad luck! We will study and explore this topic by trying to answer, 'What are some things that families do to get ready for and celebrate Chinese New Year?', and 'What is the significance of some of the traditions?'

We will refer to primary resources from our 8,000+ artifacts gathered from our Museum collection and 10,000+ art pieces from our Youth Art Exchange program, relevant to this topic of the Chinese New Year and observe 2-5 pieces of children's art from China!  Some additional secondary sources used to create this program are: HungryHistory.com-Symbolic Foods of Chinese New Year by Stephanie Butler, AllRecipes.com, Nationsonline.org-Chinese customs and traditions, wikiHow.com-How to Celebrate Chinese New Year, enchantedlearning.com-information and lists of Chinese New Year vocabulary, Chinese-Family-Adventure.com, Mandarinabout.com-pronunciation of words, firstpalette.com-art project ideas. Some additional resources YOU the parent could use to explore this topic are: Sam and the Lucky Money, by Karen Chinn, Happy, Happy Chinese New Year, published by Crown Books, enchantedlearned.com, and activityvillage.com.