Students Celebrate Chinese New Year with Dragons and Dance

See Below for Live Streaming

Chinese New Year is an exciting time of celebration, honoring the past and looking forward to the future. One school in San Francisco is celebrating this year—the Year of the Horse—with art and song and dance. AntiquityNOW invited the Chinese American International School (CAIS) to share the festivities with us and let us showcase the remarkable student artists in their midst. One project involved having the students from different grades work together to create their own dragon mural in honor of the New Year. The scales on this elaborate creature were made by the kindergarten and first grade classes and the head was painted by the second grade gold class. As you can see, their dragon is colorful, imaginative and full of historical symbolism—a splendidly sinuous being that reminds everyone of the ancient heritage that still resonates today.

Scroll down to enjoy a slideshow of these students’ work as well as images of the CAIS children and teachers. To learn more about the dragon in Chinese history, go to our recent blog. And look for more student artwork coming your way this Saturday, the start of Chinese New Year. Spoiler alert: If you love prancing horses, wait till you see the ones that have sprung from these students’ imaginations.

Live stream today! Founded in 1981, the Chinese American International School is an English and Chinese dual language immersion program for pre-kindergarten through 8^th grade. Today they are hosting the “Year of the Horse: Mass Greeting.” The celebration will feature music, dancing, costumes and color and will be streamed live at http://www.cais.org/news.php?item=2475. You can also visit their website to learn how to say several Chinese New Year greetings. And don’t miss the fun activity below for all of the kids who want to celebrate Chinese New Year just like the students at CAIS!

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Activity

Get out the art supplies and have your students/children create their very own Chinese New Year Dragons. They can use markers, crayons, paints, paper mache and more. Use the artwork above and the images at this link for inspiration. Your imagination is the only limit!