Lunar New Year is one of my favorite holidays. Being half Chinese, my family always celebrated it as Chinese New Year it growing up, but many other countries observe this holiday as well. Now, as an adult, I’m so happy to see many public schools in America teaching about Lunar New Year and diversifying the educational experiences of our students. If you work in a school or are looking for Lunar New Year activities to use with your own children at home, I put together a little list of Lunar New Year books and a sample lesson plan for you. Since I’m an elementary school speech language pathologist, this lesson plan is geared towards younger children with a focus on receptive and expressive language. However, it can definitely be modified for a preschool, kindergarten, or first grade reading or social studies lesson. Whether or not you celebrate Lunar New Year, I hope you’ll find this lesson plan easy to use!
Lunar New Year Books for Kids
Most of the books I found talk about Chinese New Year, but like I mentioned above, many other countries also observe this holiday. For example, you can read about how Korean families celebrate the Lunar New Year at this post. I haven’t personally read books yet that talk about Lunar New Year in other cultures, so they’re not in this list. However, it’s definitely on my to-do list. If you have any that you’d recommend, let me know!
- My First Chinese New Year
- Dragon Dance: A Chinese New Year Lift the Flap
- Peppa’s Chinese New Year
- Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas
- Ruby’s Chinese New Year
- Nian the Chinese New Year Dragon
*Disclaimer: these are affiliate links.
My First Chinese New Year and Dragon Dance may be good for infants and toddlers, as they’re pretty simple and don’t really have a narrative. My daughter is two and a half and her favorites are Peppa and Goldy Luck. The last two are a little bit longer and more complex, so they may be best for preschool age and up.
Lunar New Year Reading and Language Lesson Plan
For the lesson plan, I used Goldy Luck as my main source of material. This story is great because it is simple enough for younger children to follow, but it has tons of great tier 2 vocabulary and opportunities for inferencing.
If you don’t have the book, you can find a read aloud video on youtube!
Like I discussed earlier, I wrote this plan to very generally target receptive and expressive language. There’s notes on vocabulary, some recommended comprehension and inferencing questions, general conversation questions, and some ideas for accompanying activities. Obviously, feel free to adapt the lesson to your needs!
You can download a pdf of the lesson plan here.
If you found this post helpful, leave me a comment here or on Instagram and let me know! Happy Lunar New Year!