Temple Fair 2014 at IST

24 January 2014-

It's that time of year….it's time to celebrate Chinese New Year and welcome the Year of the Horse!

This year the school hosted a Temple Fair for the students.  They split the elementary school into two main groups- Grades 3-5 students (who had the morning sessions) followed by the Nursery – Grade 2 students (who had the afternoon session).  There were lots of fun, hands-on and age-approporiate (the two groups didn't have all the same activities), Chinese New Year-related activities for the kids and their parents to participate in. (hmmm…that got a little wordy!)

The Temple Fair:

Paper cutting-

 

Annika with her Chinese New Year Temple Fair Passport (getting ready to make the rounds at all the various crafts/activities stations):

Annika with her paper cutting:

 Chinese characters:

A local Chinese man showing the kids how to create modeling clay puppets.  This group of students is making a yellow duck…or is it a chick???  Let's just call it a yellow bird, okay?

 Annika working on her clay yellow bird:

 Isn't it cute???  (And there's Annika with her best fake-smile!)

Want a snack?  Some of the students are manning a snack booth filled with various nuts, candies and seeds.  They carefully weigh the snacks using this hand-held scale (can't speak for its accuracy!) and then place your selected snacks in a paper cone:

 Annika's class was in charge of serving traditional Chinese New Year foods.  Here's a quick tutorial on how to order politely in Chinese:

 

Annika's turn to serve Tang Pi Er (a sweet bread..like a Chinese version of a donut and quite tasty to eat!):

Tiffany serving jasmine tea in a beautiful, tiny clay tea pot:

Another station had paper mask painting (as in Beijing or Peking opera masks): 

Each and every mask is unique:

Annika concentrating hard on her masterpiece:

Annika's final mask:

 

Now it's Ava's turn:

The Grade 2 students took turns telling stories…Adonia is telling story in Chinese using her fingers: 

 

Ava's turn to tell her story:

IMG 0044 from Astrid Breutzman on Vimeo.

 Ava may or may not be a bit of a ham.  ;-) You decide.

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Ava practicing her Chinese calligraphy skills:

Now check out the mountain of paintings:

Since it's the Year of the Horse they had Pin the Tail on the Horse (as opposed to donkey).  It's Ava's turn:

Ava and her what-the-heck-I'm-not-really-sure-what-it-is clay creation:

 

(to be fair she had less than five minutes to create it since the Temple Fair was coming to an end)

It's time to watch the Dragon Dance in the school's gymnasium:

 

WOW!  That was a fun way to spend the day!  Thanks to all the Chinese staff at IST for sharing a bit of their culture with our students.

Happy Chinese New Year!!!!!