Friday, January 24, 2020

Chinese New Year

Today is the Lunar New Year, and we spent the morning watching the live broadcast of the Spring Festival Gala on Central Chinese TV.   (Culture for homeschooling win!)

Chinese New Year

This TV show is a big deal.  Huge deal.  More than 1.17 billion people watch it every year.  It is kind of like the Times Square broadcast in New York on New Year's Eve, only much, much bigger.  Guinness Book of World Records Big.  (The biggest TV event in the USA is the Super Bowl, and only 114 million people watch that.)

It's a variety show with singing, dancing, acrobatics, comedy sketches, etc.  We just wished there were subtitles.  I liked the dancing best, because you don't need to speak Chinese to understand that.

The other great thing about it, is that at midnight in China, it is 11:00 AM here, so we didn't even have to stay up late.  All of my students in China were staying up until midnight, so we spent some time video chatting with them while we were all watching the same TV program.  It was awesome.

While we watched, we did a little pagoda faux painting project that piqued my interest when I saw it online:

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year

Connor didn't really like the watercolor effect, so he didn't bother.

Chinese New Year

To be honest, it didn't really look as great as it did on the internet.

Chinese New Year

Lex's pagoda

Finally, we drew a mouse for 2020, which is the Year of the Rat.  But mice are way cuter.

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year

Happy New Year!


新年快乐!

No comments: